Why does Game of Thrones resonate so much with the real world?

The Washington Post

George R.R. Martin released his Game of Thrones novels more than 20 years ago and the HBO series premiered during Obama's first term. Yet so much of the show resonates today. "How can something so long in the making, set so safely apart from our present reality, be misconstrued as topical?" asks Hank Stuever. "Usually I might agree — such analysis can be irritating or inaccurate. It can also ruin the fun. Yet it’s all there, isn’t it? Right in front of our mesmerized faces? The pointless political scheming in the face of profound climate change. Cutthroat grabs for power, with a galling subversion of protocol and order. Weapons of mass destruction. Violence everywhere you look. Vile expressions of racism and discrimination. Human trafficking. A societal collapse across a continent, engineered by the ruling class and funded by the big banks, with little to no regard for the poor and sick. Radicalized religious faith as a response to cultural upheaval. The mutual disdain between urban cores and rural heartlands. A massive wall providing what turns out to be a false sense of security. Women ascending to power; men preoccupied with birthright entitlements and jokes about their genitals. Game of Thrones even showed millennials complaining about their parents’ generation...Fantasy isn’t always just a fantasy, not if the subtext is doing its job, establishing a mythology and rewriting some moral code. Those of us who watch Game of Thrones and sense relevance aren’t watching it wrong or trying too hard to see what isn’t there. You can get to Season 8 and have at least a passing thought that all Westeros politics is local. You can arrive at this penultimate moment and realize, hey, maybe, this is us."

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