I’d like something more extended and literally episodic the way the word looks?
The wave of fascism going throughput Europe in the 19th and 20th century of course.
But the state of the American people is also portrayed well in The Hunger Games (books and movies).
I’ve found the expanse to be somewhat loosely analogous, but making the associations is a bit of a stretch I guess.
UN is America, Mars is Israel, Belters are Palestinians or other brown folk.
Or they’re any number of similar analogues.
Spoilers from the last books (post the current end of the show)
! The entire premise of the current leadership is endless unchecked growth
! This mirrors the Laconian goal of superiority through holding onto what’s basically a free infinite energy machine, only it’s not really free, it’s just being stolen from neighboring universes who’s very advanced inhabitants really don’t like that.
! We see the same hubris from the people in charge thinking that just a little more control or a little more power will be enough to save us, when really the answer is to let go and stop trying to control everything
The historical precedent is the rise of Nazi Germany during the 1920s and 1930s. You should now be somewhere in the early 1930s.
Nazi Germany was the template, so there can be no answer more right than this that isn’t based on Nazi Germany.
And Canada and Greenland are Poland.
or Poland and Austria
To get spoilers, watch Downfall.
Not a good example, since that shows the happy ending where powerful countries are finally finishing off the fascist regime after years of war and millions of lives lost. That is the amount of effort and determination it took to rid Germany of its fascists.
No such prospects for the American fascist regime. On the contrary the most powerful countries in the world will happily support it, because it undermines Western dominance.
The Plot Against America by Philip Roth. Great book and a TV miniseries. An alternative history that has Lindbergh winning the presidency in the 30s and the US government enacting fascism domestically. The book does a great job of portraying the chaos that ensues. The series is also very good.
Leaving off with an ellipsis makes it look like I should click your comment to continue reading.
There’s a satirical (well, don’t know how long it will be considered that) movie about it… it’s called Idiocracy
That applies as far as the dumbing down of the population, but even they didn’t go for fascists as leaders. That’s right, the population of Idiocracy was smarter than what we have now.
It’s a great movie, but the eugenics theme is bullshit. The causes of modern decline have nothing to do with the half-baked idea that idiots will overrun the world through breeding.
Idiots aren’t born in increasing waves, they’re made by chronically underfunding education and flooding the world with propaganda and manipulative social media algorithms.
I don’t think the reason for the setting of the movie was to be taken very serious. It could have been much more realistic in its scenario, but then people would have criticised it for being too “on the nose” or similar, like they did with Don’t look up.
I used to think this movie was funny but now it’s just kind of painful because it’s largely true.
Except Camacho was a caring president, in his own way.
He is the most unrealistic part of the film, he had a problem, found the most qualified person to fix it, listened to them (eventually), and then didnt take credit for it.
I would much rather have Camacho as president than Cheeto Benito.
Terry Crews 2028!
Veep is probably more generally accurate.
You can treat Costa Gavras movies like a series: Z, State of Siege, Missing
Babylon 5.
Rewatched this again a year ago and it has never been more relevent
The bobiverse series (about a guy who is hit by a car right after signing up for a cryogenics thing and then wakes in the future to find out he’s basically been legislated to have no rights and is stuck into a self-replicating drone for space exploration, it’s pretty good) kind of starts off setting the backstory like it. The christofascism just started a bit later.
Obviously it’s not one to one but given Trump’s performative Christianity it was all I could think about around the failed coup on Jan 6.
on the non-political side, i recommend Mickey 17. the synopsys of bobiverse sounds like it has similar theming except this story focuses more on the character and less on the world (though the world is still there).
Take a serious look at the collapse of the Soviet Union, the gutting of the Commonwealth, and the rise of Russia under Yeltsin, then Putin. I’m not sure of any fictionalized works that examine this in any detail, but the aftermath and the new reality is well-described in Nothing is True and Everything is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev. Link is a 10 year old review in the Guardian.
The falls of other empires would also be instructive. There is an excellent podcast/YouTube channel, the Fall of Civilizations(YouTube Link)(Spotify Link). In listening, I found several parallels to the first Trump presidency. I haven’t listened in years.
A paper-thin skinned hegemon leads a dying empire against his staunch allies. I fed this prompt to ChatGPT and it handed me back Dune by Frank Herbert and Foundation by Isaac Asimov.
There is also Adam Curtis’s series TraumaZone, showing tons of footage shot in the USSR during it’s collapse.
Episodes are around on YouTube.
Wow. Hadn’t heard of this one. Power of Nightmares and the Century of Self are among my favourite docs.
Idiocracy
They found the smartest person in the world and listened to them to fix their problems… Not at all accurate.
Once zoomers can vote and Mr Beast gets elected, things will change.
Over half of Zoomers can already vote. Gen Z is roughly 1997-2012.
Unfortunately the younger they are the more likely they are to be conservative it seems. More poisoned by the algorithms.
Yeah I’m a zoomer (97) and I’ve been able to vote for a decade lol
Is he that Jesus Christ looking guy who’s really snarky about other YouTubers?
I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.
They also tried to publicly execute him.
You make a convincing argument.
we’re in the “what if they didn’t” timeline…
We’re only 20 years after Joe got frozen and he hasn’t been thawed yet. We still have 480 years before things get that bad.
Pretty sure we’re speed running that part.
Who knows. We need a movie set in between the time frames we see to tell us.
We’re in the time he was frozen. We have 40 years or so before that part happens.
That is the typical internet response whenever that movie is brought up in this context. But that response fails to take into consideration that they only did that after not having done that for hundreds of years until the point where the movie begins.
Star wars episode 3.
The Man in the High Castle.
Black mirror. Maybe a ww2 documentary
Babylon Berlin
