Baraka_Guru

This was covered quite extensively by 20th century philosophy. Louis Althusser and Michel Foucault come immediately to mind (and I think Slavoj Žižek has picked up the torch since them, though I haven't looked at his work much). You might recognize what they've explored more overtly in such fictional works as Nineteen Eight-Four and Brave New World, namely, state control over citizens through various means.

There are generally two categories: repressive and ideological.

The repressive tends to trigger the most alarmism: government, judiciary, prisons, military, police, etc.

However, it can be argued that it's the ideological that is the most "damaging" to our enlightenment and is the biggest culprit for fomenting ignorance: societal expectations (e.g. familiy), the media, religion, education, etc.

What I find to be the most harrowing is the idea developed by Foucault that he called governmentality. In a nutshell, it's how governing power has accounted for all aspects of social action and thought. This means that protest, anarchy, or other political action are rendered as "norms" rather than deviations or disruptions because they are expected and therefore already planned for.

This dovetails nicely with Althusser's thoughts on repressive and ideological apparatuses: they work to ensure the effectiveness of ruling power vis-à-vis governmentality.

I guess I mean to say that these phenomena aren't anything new. I guess what's new is the level of sophistication with regard to technology. I suppose you could argue for the slow decay of liberalism in America as well. What is new are the conditions within which these things operate.

You could say things are getting worse, yes. I'd be willing to hear opinions on the contrary.

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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot