https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/03/putin-dict...
> In Kim Jong Un’s North Korea, for example, the lies have gotten progressively more ridiculous. Once a lie becomes widely accepted, the value of that individual loyalty test declines. Once everyone knows that Kim Jong Un learned to drive when he was just 3 years old, a new, more extreme lie must emerge for the test to serve its purpose. The cycle repeats itself, and a cult of personality is born.
As for the propaganda films with martial arts fighting: I get what you mean, but it sounds a bit less silly when you realize that the US military has been effectively underwriting hollywood films for decades...and the absurd things they portray US military members doing (like, say, almost single-handedly re-activating a WW2 battleship and using its deck guns to blow up alien space ships.)
An Army War College study made waves a few years because it found:
> that many Army officers, after repeated exposure to the overwhelming demands and the associated need to put their honor on the line to verify compliance, have become ethically numb. As a result, an officer’s signature and word have become tools to maneuver through the Army bureaucracy rather than being symbols of integrity and honesty. [1]
In that light, if I were rolling out a combatives program I’d focus on the physical training and mental toughness benefits rather than the increased lethality in hand-to-hand combat.