Charlie Brooker is a British controversialist, comedian, and satirist. Here’s his take on 2014, admittedly from the British perspective and featuring British politicians. But if you give it half a thought, you’ll see that by the principle of analogy what he says extends to this side of the Atlantic as well. Don’t we have quantitative easing and a declining economy, too? Of course, the most interesting aspect of the video is the segment about Vladimir Putin’s confusionist-in-office Vladislav Surkov, who uses marketing techniques and devices of conceptual art to confuse and demoralize the opposition (see “Putin’s Rasputin” and “BBC’s Adam Curtis On The “Contradictory Vaudeville” Of Post-Modern Politics” and “The Hidden Author of Putinism” — Surkov may actually have published a novel as well!). The video, as I say, is intriguing but probably misleading because, of course, the avant-garde deliberately confuses the reader/viewer in order to provoke thought, to lift the veil of illusion as it were (what is a work of art?) whereas no one seems to want to provoke thought amongst the constituent public, only keep it confused.
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