Comment by Terr_

> Another thing they got right was [...] None of these people really believe in anything, though sometimes they pretend to as part of some power play.

I think it's worth asking whether "nobody really believes anything" is itself the result of a cynical manipulative play, one that occurs in the real world, and thus affects our judgement as we compare "today" versus a sci-fi book.

In particular I'm thinking of how certain regimes encourage a kind of "everybody is lying truth is pointless" nihilism, because it gives them a net-benefit in mentally exhausting their victims and deterring anyone without power from organizing.

In other words:

1. The dystopia-story may depict an amoral/post-truth fog and imply that it's an inevitable world-constant within the human hive. Not necessarily because the author believes that's human nature, but because it's window-dressing to the story they want to focus on telling.

2. We may feel like there's a similar fog around us today.

3. We could be harmfully-wrong if we assume our disempowering fog must likewise be an inevitable constant, while instead there are some beekeepers waving smoke-pots to generate it.