The word to describe late-Capitalist, Post-Post Modern, Corporatist society is "Kayfabe." This is the time of Kayfabe.
Back when professional wrestling bothered to maintain the fiction that it was really an athletic contest, the performers maintained their characters and rivalries whenever they were in public, and strongly resisted any suggestion that what they did was "fake." It isn't fake, it's scripted. And that's the key thing to understand.
Kayfabe was (and is) more than just a lie. It is a contract between the performers and the fans to make the performance emotionally significant by pretending that it matters. The performers and managers know, and the fans know it's scripted, but they agree to put reality aside in exchange for an entertaining illusion. Indeed, some fans (who the people in the business dismissively call "smarks" - smart marks - suckers who think they're smart) wink and nod at the unreality, all the time putting their attention up and their money down.
And that's how we live now. We know the game is rigged, that the outcomes are scripted, but we pretend not to know so that the game goes on.
We pretend that working hard at our careers matters, when we know we can be fired for nothing at any moment, or replaced by a machine when it is more profitable to have the machine do the work. We pretend that a particular piece of art or music is deep or fulfilling because that's the price of admission to a subculture. We pretend that there's a god, or karma regulating all this, rewarding good and punishing evil, despite the clear and unambiguous fact that those who profit the most, exploit the most, hoard the most, and screw people over the most.
We pretend that choosing between millionaires, backed by billionaires to rule us matters, as if they had any loyalty to their voters, or anything else that would interfere with their loyalty to their funders.
We teach our children to believe the kayfabe, and then when it becomes obvious that it's a lie, we teach them to respect and uphold the kayfabe in turn, and call this "maturity."
We want to believe it all matters. Turns out it's kayfabe all the way down, sports fans. There's no truth at the center, nothing solid at the bottom, except that greed and hatefulness make the rotten old world go round.
We know, for example, that Trump and his people are fascists. Everyone knows what he's about. He's a heel - a cartoon villain set up for the rubes and smarks to hate. But if the "bookers," the people writing the scripts, want him to win for whatever reason serves their interests, he will, no matter what all us "smarks" want.
"The table is tilted, folks. The game is rigged. And nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care." - George Carlin
Enjoy the show. What choice do you have?
Perfectly describes Project 2025.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0P-rThumS94