People trying to escape North Korea since it's the only place at that level mostly.

However, during communism in Bulgaria people didn't openly talk about the issues of the system due to fear of essentially snitches and there was a whole lot of propaganda going around in the form of the little TV access they had, radio, local events, etc. In spite of that, practically everyone knew that despite the marketing of everyone being equal, some were "more equal".

From there you had a split of people who knew how to play the game, and those who didn't.

The grandfather of a friend used to be one of the top people in National Security and was privately against communism despite benefiting from it greatly (warehouse full of western cars, properties, etc), helping good people with big mouths whenever he could. He had the right vote ready but wasn't suicidal about using that right.

My grandfather was incarcerated for not being subtle about disliking communism and fear of retaliation for the regime killing his grandfather without judge or jury and incarcerating his father. Later he learnt to play the game and got pretty far career wise, passing a couple luck roll checks since his big mouth sometimes got him in trouble. Luckily there were quite a few people willing to help good people in spite of their opinions on "the party". That's someone who was punished, drilled with communism propaganda non stop in prison and still maintained his beliefs. He also read a LOT of the books sold at the time (colored to fit in with the beliefs of the regime whenever appropriate). We have an entire library at home since he bought every book he could.

My grandmother also had a big mouth on her but she was stationed as a special needs teacher by the turkish border so she mostly avoided trouble by being in bumfuck nowhere around a disliked by the regime minority.

Mentioning the particular examples because those are actual people, who, if you went to as a tourist in Bulgaria 40 years ago and asked "Do you like communism/Zhivkov" would most likely nod and go on despite being aware the situation is shit and would only give you their actual opinion if they trusted you to a certain degree which makes it very difficult to go to a place with no freedom of speech/opinion and get an actual picture of the political opinions of people.

> In spite of that, practically everyone knew that despite the marketing of everyone being equal, some were "more equal".

It’s the “practically everyone” that I question. Some people, sure, but “practically everyone” seems like a stretch. Your previous claim (which is consistent with that one) was:

> Even people under regimes with media consisting of 100% propaganda can see the real picture.

But what we can see is that even under regimes where media is not 100% propaganda it is not true that “practically everyone” “can see the real picture”. You need only look at the USA right now. Regardless of what you think the real picture is, about half the country believes the opposite of the other half. By definition, that cannot be “practically everyone”.

Unless you mean that specifically in countries where media is 100% propaganda, practically everyone can see the real picture. Which I don’t think is true either, and I’m close with people who lived in a dictatorship which can attest to that.

It's a stretch in the sense that I exclude people who don't see/accept/care for the situation even if it's provided to them with scientific proof. After all quite a few people simply don't give a shit about politics or are just illogical.

In the US the picture is generally unclear. You have a big direction change in maybe the most influential country in the world and I believe everyone without learning difficulty realizes the situation is unpredictable since it's changing significantly on a weekly basis.

The confidence in comments is not people being convinced they can read the future but positions of confusion being unworthy of sharing causing everyone to present theories as facts.

Also hyperboles. Plenty of hyperboles going around to push the needle further in the direction you want it to go. You'll see topics about muslims "conquering" Europe and calling for a race cleansing written by people who fucking hang with the homie Mahmood but want to display their dissatisfaction with the general situation online and hence say some dumb shit.

Anyway, I believe the US is a bad example at the moment because the situation is very volatile and I believe no one can tell what will happen. I believe a situation being unknown is viable and that a lot of the discussion on it mentions how unpredictable it all is with a side note on confident extreme predictions IMO being a cry for a stronger move of the needle in a certain direction via either propaganda botting, irrational people or, most often, hyperboles.

> it doesn’t seem controversial to say if your media diet is bad your vote is misinformed.

This is an instance of the naturalistic fallacy [1] and it contradicts your very first sentence.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy

It is neither a fallacy nor a contradiction, you completely misunderstood the point. What I am saying is precisely that you can defined those however you see fit and your definitions don’t even need to match the other person’s for a consensus.

To pull it to an extreme of simplicity, we can all agree that good things are good and bad things are bad without having to agree on which specific things are which.