Activity?

Here's the sense I got

- What politicians tell us is increasingly divorced from reality
- Social media clusters people into polarised bubbles
- Ideology is stronger than wishful thinking
- The Middle East is complicated

So the OP probably can find where it is being discussed but, as a consequence if Curtis is right

- The truth is hard to find, in fact much of modern politics is actively trying to muddy the waters
- There are competing narratives that explain the issue in opposing ways
- You'd end up on a board that belongs to one side or the other
- This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning

... Sanity and Happiness are an impossible combination ...

You have basically described Curtis' style in a nutshell. Yes, he does stretch at times with his links, but he there is nobody who makes documentaries like him, they are cynical, depressing and sinister, but they are also genius in their use of archival footage and music to weave a mesmorizing visual pastiche. He is the Radiohead of documentary film makers.

--
Surrender Dorothy!

Thanks for the link to the parody, Yavoyavo - I was sorely in need of a good laugh after watching 160 minutes of cynicism, disillusionment, carnage and chaos.

I don't agree, however, that Hypernormalisation was nothing but "a late night drunken Wikipedia binge" - I think it made some very pertinent observations. In particular, that politicians and activists have been gradually retreating from the changing the world, to merely seeking to stabilise it or tinker with it.

There really is a growing poverty of vision, a poverty of ambition, across the political spectrum, and it isn't just the establishment but those deemed outsiders. I found it very striking, for example, that the British Left seemed to be overwhelmingly pro-Remain in the EU referendum, even though they had a long history of Euro-scepticism. Ask them why and they'd often say it's because we need the EU to protect workers' rights or the environment. But isn't this just another kind of defeatism? That we are so pessimistic about our own ability to campaign for workers' rights and environmental protection that we need a vast supranational organisation to do it for us?

"I have excellent peripheral vision. On a good day I can see my ears"

The parody video is great.

I think you accurately described the glaring ease to critique this doc. It had the pace, and lack of depth, of a project thrown together all too quickly. As if it were forced into existence to frantically counter the natural sensibilities of the indignant masses. I expected, and received, much more from Curtis with his other projects. But I fear he, like many of the intelligentsia, leapt before looking, and never bothered to consider the selective moral outrage so prevalent in this years (2016) political tsunami.

what ails most madmen is realitys grasp or escape, a paralysis of analysis