It’s always been a hypocritical ideal. Even the US Military acknowledged our xenophobic tendencies, and the constant struggle against them. And slowly doing better. That’s the point.
…But I think the radical shift of the “attention economy” is what makes it feel like the ideal is finally collapsing. The population is sucked into doomscrolling Fox News (for example) at such scale that makes this US Army video feel quaint.
If they published the same thing today, no one would even notice. There’s too much noise. And that is unprecedented.
See the 1947 US Army video: “Don’t be a Sucker”:
https://archive.org/details/DontBeaS1947
It’s always been a hypocritical ideal. Even the US Military acknowledged our xenophobic tendencies, and the constant struggle against them. And slowly doing better. That’s the point.
…But I think the radical shift of the “attention economy” is what makes it feel like the ideal is finally collapsing. The population is sucked into doomscrolling Fox News (for example) at such scale that makes this US Army video feel quaint.
If they published the same thing today, no one would even notice. There’s too much noise. And that is unprecedented.