My grandmother said that this was the most terrifying part of living in the Soviet Union. Since most of my grandparents were high up military (doctors, not soldiers), aerospace research, and medicine in the Soviet Union, they saw the reality of the USSR with a lot less propaganda. When they went back home or visited family in other parts of the country, they would immediately enter into a surreal world where the reality described by propaganda was starkly different from the reality they had experienced.
What's even more terrifying is that by nature of their isolation from international news sources and dependence on TV, most of America already lives in roughly this reality. The world as they see it is shaped by television.
