History will not be kind to the plastic fantastic. Corporations fabricated this entire clusterfuck from end to end. It's all by and for corporate profit. They control all aspects of it from the phony governments to the phony economy, to the phony people.
Eight years of corporate shock doctrine:
We'll save the archaeologists some trouble:
By the end...
Faux News/24 hour bullshit was the main source of infotainment propaganda. Orwell's Ministry of Truth was de facto.
Reality TV predominated, devoid of all reality. The history channel was devoid of history and the Learning Channel was devoid of learning. The Matrix was complete.
Soylent junk food and junk culture were de rigueur as monocultures supplanted anything real.
The Yuppies of the day were maxed out in every direction: financially, mentally, emotionally, physically. They never saw it coming. They were the handmaidens to collapse. They even laid themselves off to make the last quarter. Ever efficient, loyal corporate bukkake whores to the very end.
Central Banks orchestrated the end game. Printing money replaced the erstwhile economy. Escalating poverty was monetized into 0% Ponzi loans as a proxy for a real economy. It was economic euthanasia.
The stock market devolved into a momentum-driven casino wholly disconnected from the outsourced economy. Stoned gamblers threw their money down a shit hole while pretending to be wealthy.
Politics devolved into the circus it aspired to be. Choosing a candidate was like playing Russian roulette with a full revolver.
University had long since devolved into a social stratification mechanism to control entry to the country club. Fraught with rampant date rape, alcoholism, rote memorization, pointless theories, all culminating in personal bankruptcy.
In lieu of personal responsibility pharmaceutical companies created chemicals to treat every symptom of a bad lifestyle. Doctors sold more narcotics than the Medellin Cartel. Pills were used to fix pills. The silver bullet was ever at hand with side effects ranging from uncontrollable diarrhea to sudden death.
Bear in mind, it all made perfect sense at the time.
Because nothing was more fake than the people who believed in all of it.
