Sublime

This isn’t a country in transition but some sort of postmodern dictatorship that uses the language and institutions of democratic capitalism for authoritarian ends. I would rarely see Benedict angry, but when he talked about

“Politics is the ability to use any situation to advance your own status,”

To believe in something and stand by it in this world is derided, the ability to be a shape-shifter celebrated.

of two Russian figures—Vladimir Lenin and the much lesser known Vladislav Surkov, a former postmodernist theater director who’s been described as “Putin’s Rasputin” and the Kremlin’s propaganda puppet master—informs many of the troubling political and social dynamics at work in the post-truth era.

As the filmmaker Adam Curtis told The Economist, ‘People are frightened of instability. But the job of a good politician is to give them a story that says “yes this is risky, but it’s also thrilling and it might just lead to something extraordinary.”’