Idiocracy

 

With what's going on in America these days, I wonder if we're already in an Idiocracy.  The movie was supposed to be one big joke.  Yet, somehow, reality is becoming stranger than fiction.

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To start, I'll note that as I have become more educated, my politics have turned leftward.  No, it is not because my core values have changed.  But it is because I understand the world as a complex system that has no ideal solutions to its many problems.  People who lean right see the world in simplistic terms, as if the universe was a simple binary system.  

Unfortunately, the more complex a system becomes, the more unlikely it is to work well as there are a greater number of failure points.  America was designed well for simpler times.  Our constitution was designed to be flexible enough to be adopted to changing times.  But the one thing that couldn't be foreseen was that as our nation grew and technology advanced, that we would have millions of poorly educated people stuck in dead-end jobs, bereft of opportunities to advance themselves.  To make things worse, each of these uneducated people has an equal power in their votes which determine the direction our country takes.  Since each of these poorly educated people is a point of failure in our nation, no wonder why we are so dysfunctional as a nation.

Our founding fathers' big mistake was to assume that the majority of men (now people) running this country would be people of reasonable virtue.  They could not foresee a time where a person like our president to be could get elected by lying in his campaign statements.  Although educated people did not believe these lies, the poorly educated echoed them as if they were truth, helping to get this convicted criminal elected president.

When one looks at the president to be and his cabinet nominations, one sees great incompetence ready to take over the reins of government.  The best example of these bad choices is RFK jr. to be in charge of the nation's health.  Vaccinations have been responsible for the eradication of Polio; the reduction (if not elimination) of diseases such as Rubella, Whooping Cough, Measles and Mumps; as well as helping to slow down the spread of Covid-19.  Yet, RFK jr. is the darling of the conspiracy set who believe that vaccinations should be banned.  I have met the man, and found him to be lacking in the things needed to be an effective leader.  And he is only the tip of an iceberg.

I fear what will happen on inauguration day.  Will we be a nation run by idiots?  Or, will congress and the courts come to their senses and stop the executive branch from hastening the decline of our nation?  Only time will give us an answer to these questions....