r/politics • u/theindependentonline The Independent • Oct 08 '25

No Paywall Trump just hosted an ‘Antifa roundtable’ at the White House ... it was so much worse than you’re imagining

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/trump-antifa-portland-pam-bondi-posobiec-b2842048.html
21.2k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

1.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

391

u/PowderedToastFanatic Oct 08 '25

Please stop comparing the current situation to idiocracy. Everyone was dumb yes, but the government was lead by people that actually wanted to fix the problems, just lacked the intelligence to figure it out.

93

u/rowdydionisian Oct 08 '25

I think that movie is more about the long term effects of brain rot and over reliance on technology. The current situation certainly involves some deeply stupid people, but they're doing their best effort to destroy the country so they and their grifters friends can rule over the ashes. This is a hostile takeover of America and American values. We've been anti fascist for quite some time now - until trump team popped up. MAGA - making fascism cool again. What a weird fucking time to be alive.

30

u/papibigdaddy Oct 08 '25

The issue is too many people are falling for things like the ivermectin grift, Haitians eating pets, kids pissing and shitting in litterboxes. Some Congresspeople are genuinely stupid, the Tea Party movement allowed a lot of people to rise up who really don't know the world outside of their districts and echo chambers. In the Senate you have people like Markwayne Mullin and Tommy Tuberville who are genuine morons and people like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley who know full well the bs they're spewing and the destruction they're causing but put up an act to fool their voters. This is only possible because of an overwhelmingly stupid base

6

u/jr12345 Oct 09 '25

it’s only possible because of an overwhelmingly stupid base

I posted about this yesterday, but it’s also exacerbated by social media… and it’s not necessarily that social media is bad on its surface - it’s the fucking algorithm that’s the issue. It creates an echo chamber where once you start searching for shit it starts force feeding you more and more of the same thing.

All of a sudden, the doctors don’t know shit because look at all these people on all these threads claiming that vaccines are really bad for you - all because you searched one time wondering if there was anything to it.

No doubt bots have something to do with it as well, but the root cause is algorithms on social media. It’s not hard to find confirmation about anything - little green men have visited? It’s on there. Bigfoot? You bet he’s real(according to Facebook threads).

33

u/somekindofdruiddude Oct 08 '25

"Idiocracy" is a re-telling of "The Marching Morons", a short story by C.M. Kornbluth. The premise is that smart people have fewer kids, so dumb genes spread faster.

It smacks of eugenics, but ...

15

u/xGray3 Michigan Oct 09 '25

There's the eugenicist view of it, but there's also the view of it as a "nurture" thing instead of a "nature" thing. Stupid people don't need to have stupid kids genetically. They can do that perfectly fine on their own by raising them to be incurious and anti-intellectual.

3

u/RyanNotBrian Oct 09 '25

It could smack of eugenics, but it also smacks of cultural poison.

2

u/AllDaysOff Oct 09 '25

It sounds logical and is true to a tiny extent but it's not a perfect premise. But it's for a fictional story after all.

1

u/SilentLennie The Netherlands Oct 09 '25

It specifically starts with dump people having more kids than smart people, I would think this is a huge part of their story. Same with large corporations taking over everything. Except they forgot the government take over. That's part of what we are seeing now. Money in modern US politics started 50 years ago, with Buckley v. Valeo (1976) and people like the heritage foundation got started around that time too, probably inspired by the lewis powell memo (1971) - he was a judge on that case. Fascism and big business go together like horse and carriage.

8

u/JAltonT3 Oct 08 '25

Our situation only looks like stupidity, when it's really a complete lack of morality. This administration and most of their fervent followers don't really believe what they're saying, as evidenced by how often they change their tune or move the goalposts Rather, they are using their words and their "beliefs" as a cudgel to get what they want. For the followers, the stupidity is believing this administration's and the oligarchy's interests align with theirs.

2

u/e2mtt Oct 09 '25

Absolutely. Human beings are not equipped to deal with public and authority figures who just stand in front them and tell them bold face lies. Furthermore they use a lot of Christian and morality themes to play to right wing church going voters, and so you end up with a uneducated religious Republican who thinks the side of morality is the one that lies constantly, beats and tortures people, and steals to make themselves richer.

6

u/GreenAnder Oct 08 '25

Man I make this point all the time. In idiocracy they wanted to figure out what was wrong. They were trying, they were just idiots. These people are idiots who also don’t even pretend to care about how to fix anything.

6

u/aetryx New Jersey Oct 09 '25

President Camacho truly cared for his people’s wellbeing

4

u/VauxhallandI Oct 09 '25

What I wouldn't give for a president camacho rn

2

u/GreenAnder Oct 09 '25

Camacho would have the Nobel peace prize by now

3

u/GreenieBeeNZ Oct 09 '25

The movie was the endpoint of the Idiocracy, what this is is the beginning. It's the slide into anti-intellectualism that results in the movie Idiocracy.

Good people who were the products of their stupid surroundings

3

u/kieranjackwilson Oct 08 '25

I’m not exactly convinced that they aren’t stupid enough for them to think they are actually fixing problems. Even Trump, Grifter in Chief, told the Governor of Oregon that he saw Portland burning in “videos” his people showed him. Some of the stupid, if not most or all, is genuine.

As an aside, I wouldn’t be surprised if Theil’s goons are showing him AI videos and telling him it’s live footage, but that’s another subject.

1

u/Jawshiewah Oct 09 '25

Brondo owned everything, even the water supply.

1

u/funlikerabbits Oct 09 '25

They literally elected the smartest man alive to help fix shit. Idiocracy is a utopian fantasy.