https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death
Postman distinguishes the Orwellian vision of the future, in which totalitarian governments seize individual rights, from that offered by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World, where people medicate themselves into bliss, thereby voluntarily sacrificing their rights. Drawing an analogy with the latter scenario, Postman sees television's entertainment value as a present-day "soma", the fictitious pleasure drug in Brave New World, by means of which the citizens' rights are exchanged for consumers' entertainment.
The reason the USSR failed is because it attempted to impose its system all at once and people noticed. Even today, repression is only maintained in China through force and shiny baubles.
ReplyDeleteThe reason communism is slowly winning in Canada is because it's playing a generational game. A new regulation here that's pushed as being "the right thing to do", a government overreach there but "it's necessary to ensure everything is fair" and slowly rights are taken away in the name of decency until none are left and no one notices.