IDIOCRACY 2013
Johann Wagener 4-11-13
Johann Wagener 4-11-13
Some people say that today’s science fiction predicts tomorrow’s reality. Case in point take the 2006 film, “Idiocracy” that at the time was considered a funny spoof has turned out to be an accurate prediction of what was to come.
Here’s a part of the review;
Idiocracy's story begins with an average Joe from the beginning of the 21st century. Joe Bauers (Luke Wilson) to be exact. A low level military scrub, Joe tests out as the most average guy the American armed forces have to offer. When told to lead, follow, or get out of the way Joe happily steps aside to let other soldiers get through. In other words it's a perfect role for Luke Wilson. Luke's at his absolute best here, this is the role he was born to play. Joe on the other hand is perfect for the military's latest experiments in cryogenics. He and a hooker turned guinea pig named Rita get frozen, stay in too long, and wake up 500 years later where Joe Bauers is now the smartest man in the world.
The future is full of idiots who've thrown everything they have into buying Big-Gulps and watching porn. The most popular television show is called "Ow, My Balls" and features exactly what you'd expect. The highest grossing movie of all time is called Ass, and consists of 90 minutes of the same naked, hairy butt on screen farting itself silly. America has gone to hell in a hand basket. Garbage avalanches are common, crops have failed, and people are staving, all because there's no one left who's smart enough to know how to fix any of it.
The film's all-out, hilarious assault on the future's culture is also a biting criticism of our own.
The future is full of idiots who've thrown everything they have into buying Big-Gulps and watching porn. The most popular television show is called "Ow, My Balls" and features exactly what you'd expect. The highest grossing movie of all time is called Ass, and consists of 90 minutes of the same naked, hairy butt on screen farting itself silly. America has gone to hell in a hand basket. Garbage avalanches are common, crops have failed, and people are staving, all because there's no one left who's smart enough to know how to fix any of it.
The film's all-out, hilarious assault on the future's culture is also a biting criticism of our own.
Guess what? The future is today folks!
Our Secretary of State hit the nail on the head when he proudly boasted to a group of foreign students that “in America, you have the right to be stupid.” As if to say, hey, no big deal. We are just exercising our rights. Next thing will be to add the word “stupid” to the motto on the Statue of Liberty.
The only “real news” outlet left on TV is PBS and politicians are trying to cut the funding and snuff it out. Coming in a far second and 3rd is Aljazeera and the BBC (the British version of PBS).
As for the rest of the ‘news”media?
· Network evening news is nothing than a 30 minute infomercial comprised of 20 minutes of Big Pharma ads touting treating limpness, leaking bladders, and out of control twitches. There’s a twinge of news and most of that is trivial vignettes about “home town” America that is completely unrelated to anything going on in the world at large.
· The weather reports consists of maps that no one other than meteorologists like to look at and an army of weather scouts dressed in hooded parkas being blown apart in the middle of a hurricane or tornado, or donned in hip boots standing in 2 feet of water demonstrating how 2 feet of water comes up to your knees.
· The “cable news” outlets are nothing more than propaganda machines funded by whatever side of the political spectrum they represent. Mostly left or right but a few whackos like Limbaugh, or Beck out in the fringes.
· Rather than getting the actual news “ala Cronkite” your get hours upon hours of blabbering by people introduced as “consultants” who give us their “opinion” about how the world turns. Somewhere in all the rhetoric, buried deep in the BS, is the news. Good luck trying to find it.
An example is the “North Korea” scare that is reported to be a rogue regime run by a juvenile tyrant who might go off the deep end any time now and nuke the world if for no other reason than he wants to .
What you are not told (unless you happen to watch PBS) is that N. Korea doesn't have the capability to nuke us even if it wanted to. While the USA has a stockpile of nukes capable of blowing up the planet 100 times over. When you consider that at one time we had put "dubya" in charge of the arsenal you have to wonder who's crazy and unstable here?
North Korea's leader is doing what any rational leader would do, and is responding/reacting to threats and actions from both the United States and South Korea.
When it is brought up (usually only on PBS) It’s dismissed as nothing more than “war games” which the US and S. Korea play on N. Koreas borders using real guns and war machines, with lot’s of troops and even a few “nuke capable” B-2’s bombers dropping “dummy” loads near by.
Could there be a slim possibility that N. Korea is responding to what is a “real” threat? No one in the media asks why would we want to provoke someone that we claim is unstable by scaring them so bad that they react?
DUH!
For those who might be concerned about what you are leaving behind for the next generation it might help if you take a few hours over a weekend and watch “Idiocracy” and then compare notes with what is going on today.
Six percent of Americans believe in unicorns. Thirty-six percent believe in UFOs. A whopping 24 percent believe dinosaurs and man hung out together. Eighteen percent still believe the sun revolves around the Earth. Nearly 30 percent believe cloud computing involves… actual clouds. A shockingly sad 18 percent, to this very day, believe the president is a Muslim.
Do you believe in angels? Forty-five percent of Americans do. In fact, roughly 48 percent – Republicans and Democrats alike – believe in some form of creationism.
A hilariously large percent of terrified right-wingers are convinced Obama is soon going to take away all their guns, so when the Newtown shooting happened and 20 young children were massacred due to America’s fetish for, obsession with and addiction to firearms, violence and fear, they bought more bullets. Because obviously.
In sum and all averaged out, it’s safe to say about 37 percent of Americans are just are not very bright. Or rather, quite shockingly dumb. Perhaps beyond reach. Perhaps beyond hope or redemption.
Widespread ignorance of objective reality poses a genuine threat to democracy. The people of the United States have ignorance in abundance.
The way representative democracy is supposed to work is pretty simple: you protect the fundamental rights of the minority (so it doesn't become two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner), and then the majority of citizens, acting in their own rational self-interest, elect representatives who will pursue the greatest good for the greatest number of citizens.
That's the theory, but “rational” is a key word in that formulation. What happens when lots of citizens don't have a solid grasp of what's going on in the real world?
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