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Stupidity is Not Progress
Are we smarter than our past? Or just more equipped to fail?
Years after its debut, a friend insisted I watch Idiocracy, the cult classic that imagined a world undone by its own stupidity. The movie follows Joe, one of the most average and mundane soldiers in the U.S. Army, who is frozen in a government experiment. Joe wakes up 500 years in the future to find that society has become overwhelmingly dumbed down due to generations of anti-intellectualism. Actor Terry Crews hilariously portrays the President of the United States, Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Camacho, a former WWE SmackDown champion and porn star. Camacho recruits Joe to fix food shortages after a corporate monopoly convinces people to water crops with a Gatorade-style electrolyte drink. Idiocracy was satire — a warning about the dangers of neglecting education and critical thinking, but eighteen years later, it feels disturbingly prophetic.
It’s often said that truth is stranger than fiction, so imagine my surprise during a recent rewatch of Idiocracy to discover rampant parallels within our own society. Regardless of what you think of President Donald Trump, just like President Camacho in the movie, Trump is a former WWE SmackDown participant and reality star. Echoing the movie’s themes, Atlantic staff writer Derek Thompson recently warned that the mass urban exodus of…
