Idiocracy
this post was submitted on 05 May 2025
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They found the smartest person in the world and listened to them to fix their problems... Not at all accurate.
Once zoomers can vote and Mr Beast gets elected, things will change.
I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.
Over half of Zoomers can already vote. Gen Z is roughly 1997-2012.
Unfortunately the younger they are the more likely they are to be conservative it seems. More poisoned by the algorithms.
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we're in the "what if they didn't" timeline....
We’re only 20 years after Joe got frozen and he hasn’t been thawed yet. We still have 480 years before things get that bad.
They also tried to publicly execute him.
You make a convincing argument.
We're in the time he was frozen. We have 40 years or so before that part happens.
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The historical precedent is the rise of Nazi Germany during the 1920s and 1930s. You should now be somewhere in the early 1930s.
And Canada and Greenland are Poland.
or Poland and Austria
To get spoilers, watch Downfall.
Not a good example, since that shows the happy ending where powerful countries are finally finishing off the fascist regime after years of war and millions of lives lost. That is the amount of effort and determination it took to rid Germany of its fascists.
No such prospects for the American fascist regime. On the contrary the most powerful countries in the world will happily support it, because it undermines Western dominance.
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Andor
Whys that?
fascist top-down government that rules without checks and balances stripping away civil rights through exploitation of the vulnerable using fear-of-the-other propaganda and outright lies to further centralize its abusive, selfish control over society while a small dedicated decentralized band of civil rights activists fight the expanding power and influence of the dark side.
Yup, dude even gets disappeared just for being in the wrong street at the wrong time.
Nah that dude was very mexican. Should have tried to not do that.
Just started watching that show recently and it's so amazing I'm surprised Disney allowed it to be made. The parallels to the current state of society are so apparent. In one of the episodes of Season 2 a character says "Why can't they just leave us alone" and that resonated with me so much
The Man in the High Castle.
1984 by George Orwell
Not TV (at least not that I am aware of), but it was the first thing to come to my mind. They made a movie if you prefer but, as always, you'll get more from the book.
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It’s a novel, but “It Can’t Happen Here” follows a scenario where a populist becomes President and removes all opposition.
The Plot Against America by Philip Roth. Great book and a TV miniseries. An alternative history that has Lindbergh winning the presidency in the 30s and the US government enacting fascism domestically. The book does a great job of portraying the chaos that ensues. The series is also very good.
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VEEP
Seriously. “Today the secretary of defense with a drinking problem reveals military secrets to a reporter due to a texting error.”
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Elysium; the Matt Damon movie where the rich live on a space station and leave the rest of us to rot.
I'm not saying it's what's going on right this moment, but it's the end-goal of everything that Musk, Bezos, etc... are doing.
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Idiocracy
The Prequel to Schindler's List
There’s a satirical (well, don’t know how long it will be considered that) movie about it… it’s called Idiocracy
I used to think this movie was funny but now it's just kind of painful because it's largely true.
Except Camacho was a caring president, in his own way.
He is the most unrealistic part of the film, he had a problem, found the most qualified person to fix it, listened to them (eventually), and then didnt take credit for it.
It's a great movie, but the eugenics theme is bullshit. The causes of modern decline have nothing to do with the half-baked idea that idiots will overrun the world through breeding.
Idiots aren't born in increasing waves, they're made by chronically underfunding education and flooding the world with propaganda and manipulative social media algorithms.
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The bobiverse series (about a guy who is hit by a car right after signing up for a cryogenics thing and then wakes in the future to find out he's basically been legislated to have no rights and is stuck into a self-replicating drone for space exploration, it's pretty good) kind of starts off setting the backstory like it. The christofascism just started a bit later.
Obviously it's not one to one but given Trump's performative Christianity it was all I could think about around the failed coup on Jan 6.
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Ever heard of the rise of Nazism in Germany?
A lot of what he talks about prior to previous insurrections are pretty similar to what's happening now.
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The Ultra podcast has two seasons and goes in-depth into previous attempts by fascists at taking over the US government.
Sitting members of Congress aiding and abetting a plot to overthrow the government. Insurrectionists criminally charged with plotting to end American democracy for good. Justice Department prosecutors under crushing political pressure. Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra is the all-but-forgotten true story of good, old-fashioned American extremism getting supercharged by proximity to power.
When extremist elected officials get caught plotting against America with the violent ultra right, this is the story of the lengths they will go to… to cover their tracks.
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The wave of fascism going throughput Europe in the 19th and 20th century of course.
But the state of the American people is also portrayed well in The Hunger Games (books and movies).
The Twilight Zone (2019), "The Wunderkind"
Synopsis: A down-on-his-luck campaign manager (John Cho) is determined to get a kid (Jacob Tremblay) elected as the next President of the United States.
I find the last days of the Qing dynasty China to be somewhat analogous. Institutional rot, rampant corruption, a complete failure to adapt to crises and open hostility to anyone proposing workable solutions or trying to learn from foreign examples. Basically the two voices in government were, "Learn how guns work while completely refusing to understand the scientific principles that allowed them to be developed" and "Learn absolutely nothing." The "lesser evil" was woefully inadequate, and once the government finally collapsed, both factions that emerged (communists and nationalist) were far more influenced by Western ideas than even the most radical in the Qing government were.
Literally the first novel ever written "Sinuhe" speaks of a very similar crisis in ancient Egypt.
Take a serious look at the collapse of the Soviet Union, the gutting of the Commonwealth, and the rise of Russia under Yeltsin, then Putin. I'm not sure of any fictionalized works that examine this in any detail, but the aftermath and the new reality is well-described in Nothing is True and Everything is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev. Link is a 10 year old review in the Guardian.
The falls of other empires would also be instructive. There is an excellent podcast/YouTube channel, the Fall of Civilizations(YouTube Link)(Spotify Link). In listening, I found several parallels to the first Trump presidency. I haven't listened in years.
A paper-thin skinned hegemon leads a dying empire against his staunch allies. I fed this prompt to ChatGPT and it handed me back Dune by Frank Herbert and Foundation by Isaac Asimov.
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Player Piano by Vonnegut
Babylon Berlin
Any sci-fi by Ray Bradbury, Aldous Huxley Phillip K.Dick, some by Robert Heinlein iirc.
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The Great Dictator
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