https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/...osmetic-veneer

However, what Lewis, Orwell, and Huxley and other dystopian prophets have not predicted is what might be called the “Disneyland Dystopia” of the contemporary United States, in which the horrors are covered with a cosmetic veneer and the nightmares and screams are smothered with smiles and miles of plasticized dreams. Evelyn Waugh prodded the monster with his wickedly satirical novella about Hollywood morticians, The Loved One, but to my knowledge, no one else has put a bomb under Cinderella’s castle.

What exactly do I mean by the Disneyland Dystopia? As I write in May 2018, the government is considering a candidate to run the CIA who has not only participated in torture, but has been in charge of a facility designed specifically to torture people. She has been proposed by a president who has boosted military spending even further and is on the record for not only being in favor of torture, but thinking it ought to be increased.

Despite mouthing pro-life platitudes, his budget continues to fund Planned Parenthood—an organization that is not only an abortion mill, but one that intentionally places its clinics in low-income, ethnic-minority communities, reminding one of Supreme Court Justice Ginsberg’s observation that “We don’t want more of those kind of people do we?” So our tax dollar not only supports an organization started by a racist eugenicist, but one whose employees were caught selling baby body parts and planning abortions so that particularly valuable parts are preserved intact for later sale.

A future dystopia? All these horrors are already part of our everyday American society, but they are candied by our affluent entertainment culture. We go along with the Disneyland Dystopia because we enjoy the benefits. Middle America has never had it better. We have comfortable homes in the suburbs with luxuries that would have made a Roman emperor blush. Our garages have swollen to park three or four cars, and the storage facility business is booming because we don’t have enough room in our houses for all our stuff. We enjoy security and calm, and the stock market is bullish.
Like a ubiquitous amusement park, our restaurants and retail centers offer us a constantly “themed” experience. Here we enjoy an Italian experience at a restaurant that looks like a Tuscan villa. Next door is a hacienda where we eat Mexican food. Further on is an Australian steakhouse with “steaks on the barbie.” Should our plates be empty but our palates bored we can be entertained by a Chinese Emperor, a magical Japanese chef who flips food at your table, or dine at the Persian Palace or the Indian Taj Mahal. Next door is Mama’s Country Kitchen, Bobby’s Ole Fashioned Bar-B-Q, and Papa’s Pizza Place. All of them shimmering like a crass casino.

With theme parks and cinemas and casinos and our noses in a screen 24-7, we are entertainment addicts. Even our homes have become like Disneyland. Furnished by designers who “theme” a room, they do not project our personalities as much as they reproduce yet another artificial atmosphere of affluence. As an African friend observed, we have larger and larger houses for smaller and smaller families. In new subdivisions, there are no lawns and gardens for no one wants to be torn away from the screen to go outside. We are distracted to death, putting our heads into the sand of our screens.

So in modern America, all the dystopian horrors exist hand-in-hand with what seems like one perpetual theme-park existence. The war, torture, abortions, castrations, murders, suicides, drug addiction, homelessness, and medical horrors reside side-by-side with the smiling face of America, where everyone has perfect teeth and waves out a cheerful, “Have a nice day!”

Most alarmingly, this dystopia has not been forced on anyone. The junta who have produced it do not wear military uniforms; they wear the suits of the advertising men, the movie moguls, television producers, newspaper and magazine editors, politicians, academics, and journalists. No one has frogmarched us at gunpoint. Caught up in the entertainment culture, we have not been forced. We have been seduced.