Alt Text: an image of Agent Smith from The Matrix with the following text superimposed, “1999 was described as being the peak of human civilization in ‘The Matrix’ and I laughed because that obviously wouldn’t age well and then the next 25 years happened and I realized that yeah maybe the machines had a point.”
So much horseshit happened around 2000 that forever split our timeline…
W Stealing the election
Bin Laden attacking and making the entire world forever lose their mind and hope
Never ending wars and climate destruction because no-one cared anymore about collaboration
That 4 year period altered the world’s trajectory for the worse on so many levels.
W lies and propaganda led to Putin and Trump and it set the stage for all of the anti queer and anti immigrant rhetoric
At least talking about Putin, that jerk and his family (both actual and “family”) created most of the lies, propaganda and war in the ex-Soviet space themselves. Starting right with year 1991 (Yeltsin had a different public image, but it was one team), hijacking a honest democratic movement, breaking what institutions limiting them USSR still had (under democratic excuses), and making every regional conflict a thorn in its body, either hard to remove or fulfilling their goals when removed. Consummating their achieved right to answer legal arguments with cannons in 1993, their achieved right to arbitrarily wage war on their compatriots in 1996, and their achieved right to kill anyone they don’t like in 1999. They literally rule Russia as an occupied country, they even live mostly abroad.
So by 2000 Russia was already deep in shit. Dunno about USA.
FTFY
If you don’t think the anti terror bullshit panic didn’t spread around the world, then you weren’t paying attention. A lot of governments used it to pass all kinds of anti democratic bullshit in guise of “security”
That AND the war on terror was something the west and Putin could “agree on” regardless of what their definition of terror meant.
It helped Putin do his thing without it being so shocking
Freedom fries.
Not even nearly as bad as the USA though