Anti-war apathy is the thing historians notice first. In 2003 the marches started before the bombs did. Main streets shut down. Embassies closed. This anniversary lands with a conflict being called potentially more dangerous, and almost no one in the street.

The Oscars came and went this year without a single reference to war. In 2003 Michael Moore won an award and got booed for bringing it up on stage. That difference is not just cultural drift. The monoculture that made Iraq impossible to ignore is gone, replaced by pocket universes on phones where AI-generated footage sits next to real footage and the two are getting harder to separate.

This conflict is already being called the first major one where AI propaganda is playing a significant psychological role. That is not a small thing to absorb, and the Epstein files have not even come out yet.

Topics: anti-war apathy, Iraq War 2003 comparison, AI war propaganda, media fragmentation, protest culture decline, twenty-year cultural reset

GUEST: Ed Conroy | retroontario.com | @‌retrontario

Originally aired on 2026-03-19