For Donald Trump the paranoia allowed him to hide the fact that he was doing nothing to get rid of the corruption in America as he had promised. ibid.
Millions had become addicted to opioids and yet no-one in power had come to rescue them. But the liberals couldn’t face this because they too had no idea how to solve those problems. ibid.
The virus was a force that came from completely outside the systems of power. But it has come at a moment when many of the old certainties of this age are already cracking. ibid.
One possible feature is that individualism will disappear, and with it the very idea of individual freedom … Another possibility is that the future will be like the past … The third possibility is to try to imagine genuinely new kinds of futures. ibid.
The reality is that all these societies, not just America and Britain but China and Russia too, are exhausted, empty of any new ideas. All of them have corruption that has burrowed deep into their institutions. ibid.
The psychological theories that tell us we are weak and manipulable are cracking. And more and more people are beginning to realise that the fragmented emotions of anxiety and suspicion that they feel inside them may really be just the raw material for the technology corporations to feed off. It may be that we are really far stronger than we think. ibid.
‘The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make, and could just as easily make differently.’ ibid. David Graeber
I’m finding it more and more difficult to tolerate your paranoia. House of Cards s3e6: Chapter 32, Frank to Petrov, Netflix 2015
Claire: Don’t get paranoid, Francis.
Frank: If not now, when? House of Cards US s5e11: Chapter 63