Comment by soulofmischief
4 days ago
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. A foreign enemy keeps us from focusing on our own domestic policies. Turns out, if you look into it, we're the baddies.
In addition to widespread data collection and social manipulation, we also intentionally shove our culture down the throats of other nations in order to maintain cultural supremacy.
> A foreign enemy keeps us from focusing on our own domestic policies.
The nice thing about fiction is that you can make anything sound plausible. Ironically, what people consider the most prosperous time of America happened to be the time when America was opposing a vague foreign adversary. If anything, nihilist platitudes like this that have created a void in civic engagement that megacorporations and malicious actors are happy to fill in.
> Ironically, what people consider the most prosperous time of America happened to be the time when America was opposing a vague foreign adversary.
It happened to be at a time when the rest of the world's industrial capacity had been almost completely destroyed by a devastating world war which hardly touched US infrastructure.
¿Porque no los dos?
Outsized returns to the post-war US economy were consequent on being the only intact industrial economy; the regulatory system which ensured those gains be shared with the working class was a response to communism.