Stupidity Isn't the Problem - It's the Result

Last week the screenwriter for the 2006 satirical science fiction comedy Idiocracy came out and said his film’s nightmare vision of a country run by improperly bred morons had indeed come true:

[...]

Stupidity is not what created the rise of Trump; a deliberate poisoning of the discourse by the wealthy over decades combined with the left’s inability [to] offer a clear class-based alternative has.

[...]

The film's legions of defenders call it satire. Well, the overt argument of the film is that good breeding prevents social problems. The so-called satire proceeds from there, presenting the ridiculous consequences of what will happen if we don't rethink how society breeds. Satire isn’t a get-out-of-jail-free card for all vulgar and illiberal ideas; it has to be pointed and targeting the powerful, not targeting vague notions of idiocy illustrated by Appalachia accents and trailer parks without consideration for what caused the idiocy in the first place.

The message is cheap and easy and doesn’t require us to meaningfully challenge power, much less ourselves. Instead, we direct our disdain at the pseudo-problem of not being adequately intelligent, as if such a problem operates independent of material factors.

[...]

While nowhere near as reactionary or meanspirited, being smarter than the other guy was a feature of the Jon Stewart era of political comedy. Snark was more important than ideology, hypocrisy the only unforgivable sin and throwing clips together to make right wingers look like morons, rather than people with sinister politics, was the point of "The Daily Show" fan base's political enterprise.

This was also seen in the left’s mockery of the Tea Party, often painted as illiterate boobs, despite the fact that those identifying as Tea Party members have, on average, higher income and education levels than the population in general.

[...]

[T]he problem isn’t "intelligence" but rather toxic ideology that operates independent of people’s IQ. As Michael Tracy notes, Trump actually won voters with post-graduate degrees in the state of Massachusetts, the "crown jewel of American higher education."

[...]

We are not living in an idiocracy, we are living in an oligarchy, for which political stupidity is one of many symptom caused by the large, malignant cancer of inequality and runaway capitalism.

[...]

When we can’t, or won’t, direct our ire at those responsible for the vast majority of the world’s problems, namely the superwealthy and the capitalist system that props them up, we are left with nowhere to aim. Instead, we highlight the problem—in this case political ignorance—without addressing its primary culprit: the consolidation of media into large corporations, a PR-fueled think tank industry fed by billionaires designed to promote toxic right-wing canards, a sprawling Islamophobia industry, a corrupt campaign financing system, and a decades-long corporate assault on K-12 and postsecondary education.

  Adam Johnson

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.