> Over that span, the time that felt most like our current situation came in 2002 and early 2003, when President George W. Bush began to pressure European allies to join the I-can’t-believe-we-actually-called-it-that “Coalition of the Willing” to invade Iraq, based on what turned out to be false claims. When France was reluctant to join our fight, the response of the American public was as immediate and intense as it was nonsensical. Many Americans, who insulted the French as “surrender monkeys,” pledged to rebrand French fries as “Freedom fries” and boycott French’s mustard… which is based in Rochester, New York. Sales of our tours and guidebooks in France took a significant hit.<p>One silver lining of the post-truth hellscape we live in is that it's far harder for the US government to directly manufacture consensus like this. In 2002 Bush had every US paper <i>burying</i> anything outside the narrative[0]. In 2025, if Trump so much as says the sky is blue, you'll see at least one clueless, schismogenic[1] idiot insisting that it's green, always been green, and that green is better. While that's an obviously stupid example, it's generally good that people are questioning ShitGovernmentsSay™.<p>Now if only we could get the MAGA hats to start questioning their chosen god-emperor...<p>[0] To be clear, most people in Europe knew Saddam wasn't buying yellowcakes, because the papers were reporting on the obvious falsity of the evidence over there.<p>[1] Schismogenesis is the process of social division, see <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schismogenesis" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schismogenesis</a>