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Notes -
The last AC10 book review is real fun, as the strange phenomenon of Trump fan fiction “Real Raw News” is reviewed. It is a universe in which Trump only pretended to relinquish power, but kept control of the US military to court marshal and execute his (traitorous) enemies. Did you know that both Bill and Hillary Clinton are dead? They were detained by special elite soldiers and tried for their crimes.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-real-raw-news
I didn’t know the site, but was surprised of the many hundred comments under most articles. Most comments seem like they are into the joke, but the review shows that at least some want to suspend their disbelief very very hard.
It also examines how the narrative had to be adjusted over time, like a comic book universe for Batman or The Simpsons has timeless parts which are static, for example Bart being perpetually in fourth grade, but the world does stay up to date and the characters history has to be regularly retconned (in a few years the boomer parents Homer&Marge will need to be born in the 90s and are then ostensibly part of Generation Z…).
The review also theorizes a bit why such conspiracy theories are popular:
Very curious and bizarre corner of the Internet I did not know about.
I was never dumb enough to fall for this kind of thing, but for the record, I see the appeal, for people who are better at deceiving themselves. My great disappointment with the Trump presidency was that I wanted many elites - probably at least tens of thousands of them - rapidly publicly executed for their great and horrific Satanic treason. And for a brief historical moment, I was optimistic enough to think Trump might be willing and able to do that; "you'd be in jail", etc.
(Still not convinced, years later, that Pizzagate was actually fake. You've most likely been sold a bill of goods about it being ridiculous and unevidenced.)
Anyway, I was young and dumb then - I had hope and energy for politics - but I remember that feeling. And it's made it awfully surreal for me to see the right wing as a whole, in the wake of the Trump assassination attempt, citing norms of civility and how you're not supposed to want enemy politicians dead. So much has been memoryholed. The young right-wing movement really has been eaten by the establishment.
Out of curiosity, do you have any examples of a country where a leader rapidly and publicly executed tens of thousands of elites and things went well afterwards (e.g. the country did not descend into civil war and standard of living did not decline substantially)? I ask because my inclination is to believe that such an action would have horrible consequences and typically only occurs in countries that are (or are about to become) basket cases—the French revolution or the USSR in the 1920s and 30s. However, I am not knowledgeable enough to be certain my impression is historically accurate.
Most mainland European countries in 1946.
Only a few dozen of the most senior surviving Nazis were executed. The vast majority (in excess of 98%, certainly) of the elite class in every European country West of the Iron Curtain survived.
The soviets exterminated most of the eastern European intelligencia for being the wrong type of communists, catching any the Nazis didn't get.
It did not go well for Eastern Europe afterwards.
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