Tag: Idiocracy
How We Created This Idiocracy
“What we’ve done in our politics is create a situation where we’re electing idiots.”
— Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), quoted by CNN.
Scott Favors Science, Technology Over ‘Liberal’ Arts
Part of the series, Assault on Florida.
I confess — I was an English major in college. Fortunately, I somehow parlayed that into a successful career as a journalist and PR guy or else Florida Gov. Rick Scott probably would have consigned me to one of his privatized re-education facilities to teach me a useful trade like welding or astrophysics.
OK, it hasn’t quite gotten to that point, but if Scott has his way, science, technology, engineering and math curriculums will receive more state education dollars and liberal arts courses will receive fewer. I think it’s the “liberal” part of “liberal arts” that sticks in the gov’s craw. Said Scott:
If I’m going to take money from a citizen to put into education then I’m going to take that money to create jobs. So I want that money to go to degrees where people can get jobs in this state.
A quick glance through the Miami Herald’s classified ads does reveal some positions available for computer techs, but nothing specific for scientists, engineers or theoretical mathematicians. Granted, an English degree qualifies one to discuss the French deconstructionist movement while flipping burgers at Micky D’s, but liberal arts also includes journalism and communications majors.
The Tea Party’s March of Folly: Idiocracy, Here We Come
In her Los Angeles Times column on Thursday, Meghan Daum made note of the rise references in political commentary to the movie “Idiocracy,” a 2006 burp-and-fart, sci-fi political comedy set 500 years in the future, written and directed by Mike Judge, the creator of the animated series “Beavis and Butthead” and “King of the Hill”:
And it was no accident that Republican fatcat operatives recognized these dumbasses as suckers whom they could easily dupe into believing that it was the government, not big business, that caused the financial collapse in 2008; that tax cuts create jobs; that corporations are people; and on and on — or that a mild-mannered DLC centrist Democratic president who happens to be black is actually a terrifying Kenyan anti-colonialist Marxist Muslim Nazi fascist illegal alien
References to the film seem to be everywhere, and not just in op-eds penned by cranky columnists (I mentioned it in a column last year about public spaces being sold as advertising space). The latest issue of the Economist has an article about the business-sabotaging effects of the battles in Washington, headlined “American Idiocracy.”
A recent blog post on the Psychology Today website was headlined “Idiocracy: Can We Reverse It?” Meanwhile, it’s popping up in causal conversations, Internet comments and, most notably, on Twitter, where it often appears as a hashtagged topic…
Daum suggests that the movie has been given a second life — it bombed at the box office — because are behaving like idiots. She cites the sexual antics of Arnold Schwarzenegger on the right and Anthony Weiner on left, as well as “a Congress that gets the nation’s credit rating lowered thanks to toddler-like stubbornness over an issue that many of its members barely seem to grasp?”
Daum’s hope is that interest in “Idiocracy” and the shock of recognition of that society is being driven toward the future it predicts will give pause to partisans on both sides and bring them to their senses.
“Maybe it’s naive,” she writes, “to think that ideological opponents can be brought together by a common fear of mass stupidity: Call it idiocraphobia.”
But, see, the problem here is not naivete. The problem with this analysis is a reflexive reliance among media types on the equivalency meme: both sides are equally guilty, equally bad. A pox on both your houses.
