> Another thing they got right was [...] None of these people really believe in anything, though sometimes they pretend to as part of some power play.

I think it's worth asking whether "nobody really believes anything" is itself the result of a cynical manipulative play, one that occurs in the real world and affects how us as we sit here judging how "today" compares to past dystopias.

In particular I'm thinking of how certain regimes encourage a kind of "everybody is lying" nihilism, because it mentally exhausts their victims and deters organizing among those who believe things quite strongly.

In other words:

1. A dystopia-story may depict an amoral/post-truth fog and imply that it's an inevitable world-constant within the human hive.

2. We may feel like there's a similar fog around us today.

3. We could be very wrong if we assume our fog is a universal constant, when instead there seem to be some beekeepers using smoke-pots.