Czechoslovakia 1976 v. United States, 2000-2008

"An exhausted society quickly got used to the fact that everything once thought impossible was now possible again, and that an often unmasked and ridiculed absurdity could rule once more. People withdrew from themselves and stopped taking an interest in public affairs. An era of apathy and widespread demoralization began, an era of gray, everyday totalitarian consumerism."

-- Vaclav Havel, 1986.