When Mike Judges movie Idiocracy came out in 2006, almost no one saw it. (The film grossed less than $500,000 at the box office.) Now everyone should see it.
Luke Wilson plays an average Joe who is put into suspended animation and reawakens 500 years later to find himself the smartest person in America because everyone else has gotten so dumb. The No. 1 TV show features contestants being hit in their private parts; crops are watered with a sports energy drink, causing a famine; and the president is a former wrestler and porn star who curses freely and fires automatic weapons on TV.
Is there a better prophecy of our end times? The only thing Idiocracy really got wrong was its timeline. It has taken just 15 years, not 500, for America to become an idiocracy. Dont believe it? Look at our response to the coronavirus pandemic.
In other wealthy democracies, coronavirus cases have been plummeting. In the United States, they have risen 80 percent over the past 14 days. On Monday, the United States reported more than 40,000 new cases, while the European Union, which is more populous, had fewer than 6,000. The number of confirmed coronavirus deaths in the United States is approaching 130,000, more than twice as many as in any other country.
--paywall--https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/30/welcome-united-states-idiocracy/