I’d like something more extended and literally episodic the way the word looks?
Idiocracy
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.
Is he that Jesus Christ looking guy who’s really snarky about other YouTubers?
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.
Yeah I’m a zoomer (97) and I’ve been able to vote for a decade lol
I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.
You make a convincing argument.
We’re in the time he was frozen. We have 40 years or so before that part happens.
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.
Pretty sure we’re speed running that part.
Who knows. We need a movie set in between the time frames we see to tell us.
we’re in the “what if they didn’t” timeline…
They also tried to publicly execute him.
That is the typical internet response whenever that movie is brought up in this context. But that response fails to take into consideration that they only did that after not having done that for hundreds of years until the point where the movie begins.
The movie is about smart people not breeding. The smart people stoped existing. It wasn’t a decision to ignore smart people and listen to dumbasses, there were only dumbasses. The obvious problem with the movie is that it’s about eugenics (which doesn’t work that way), but your take changes the plot to be about something that it isn’t.
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.
It’s not that long of a book either, and it’s an important part of our culture; for the wrong reasons I’d argue, as surveillance is what “1984” has come to stand for but is a more minor part of the book compared to controlling thought.
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.
Leaving off with an ellipsis makes it look like I should click your comment to continue reading.
As intended!
The Man in the High Castle.
Veep is probably more generally accurate.
Andor
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
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.
It’s extremely poignant right now
The problem I see is that in Star Wars, the goodies win because they appeal to the inherent good in people, their willingness to actually act
I fear that apathy and learned helplessness have taken root too deeply in the US. People just shrug their shoulders
I sincerely hope that I’m wrong
Its insane that project 25 isnt taught in schools as the actual destructive blueprint for society, its too dangerous for people to be as ignornat of all this shit as they clearly are. Its suicidal
US schools have long been a disaster
Starting the day by saluting the flag and reciting some shit about it being the greatest country in the world is the behaviour of people being indoctrinated into a cult
Gotta get 'em young
Add the twisted version of the history of America taught, and the ignorance of the rest of the world and it’s not surprising that things are in a shit state
That’s actually a large point that Andor makes, interestingly enough. When Andor is being asked to fight against The Empire he says something along the lines of “it’s better to live and eat, isn’t it?” He is stuck in a mindset of just getting by, like most people are, until he can’t just do that anymore. He has a hatred for The Empire, but he’s too scared at first.
Andor is, by far, the best Star Wars thing that’s been made (at least season 1, I haven’t seen 2 yet) because it takes its world seriously, unlike the rest of Star Wars. There aren’t these perfect heroes and perfect villains. There are flawed people doing what they need to do, and bureacracies doing their jobs without considering what that actually means. It’s in the Star Wars universe, but it’s taking a realistic look at how The Rebellion could have actually started with regular people making it happen because they couldn’t stand by any longer.
I mean, isn’t the joke that there are only like 20 people who really do anything that matters in Star Wars? The rest of the trillions of beings in the SW universe are apathetic too.
That’s also one of the underlying threads in Andor, Luthen is trying to agitate the empire so that they lash out and start really interfering with people’s lives. The more the Empire tries to crush dissent, the more apathetic people they disrupt, and the dissent only grows. That’s where we’re at now, most people’s lives haven’t meaningfully changed yet, but it’s coming.
When you say poignant, do you actually mean “prescient”? Poignant usually means emotional and like tender or tear-jerker kinda
Like of course its also extremley sad, but I feel like prescient is more appropos for what you’re trying to express
I meant “pertinent”
So basically yes
It’s all 3
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.
The Prequel to Schindler’s List
A lot of what he talks about prior to previous insurrections are pretty similar to what’s happening now.
Oh hey, it’s the same host as Behind the Bastards. Thanks for the recommendation!
They also have a podcast called It Could Happen Here. Originally it talked about what to expect if a civil war breaks out basically, but it’s now a news show about stuff going on and also with some leftist political discussion thrown in.
(Robert Evans created these, Behind the Bastards, and wrote the book It Could Happen Here.)
But, do you know who, allegedly, would never instigate an insurrection?
The wonderful people at BLEEEP. So long as you leave them and their child-hunting island alone they’ll never instigate an insurrection against anyone.
VEEP
Seriously. “Today the secretary of defense with a drinking problem reveals military secrets to a reporter due to a texting error.”
Game of Thrones.
I’ve tried watching veep twice and couldn’t
Along the same lines, from the same writer/creator, Armando Iannucci, there’s The Death of Stalin. The absurdity of how the inner circle navigated the politics around Stalin, including after his death, is hilarious but also a good look at how these power dynamics work in an authoritarian, despotic government.
Or also from Iannucci, Avenue 5, which basically is set in the future where all of this political nonsense continues, and is in the background of a comedy about a space cruise ship.
Babylon 5.
Rewatched this again a year ago and it has never been more relevent
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.
There is also Adam Curtis’s series TraumaZone, showing tons of footage shot in the USSR during it’s collapse.
Episodes are around on YouTube.
Wow. Hadn’t heard of this one. Power of Nightmares and the Century of Self are among my favourite docs.
Black mirror. Maybe a ww2 documentary
It’s a novel, but “It Can’t Happen Here” follows a scenario where a populist becomes President and removes all opposition.
Player Piano by Vonnegut
There’s a satirical (well, don’t know how long it will be considered that) movie about it… it’s called Idiocracy
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.
I don’t think the reason for the setting of the movie was to be taken very serious. It could have been much more realistic in its scenario, but then people would have criticised it for being too “on the nose” or similar, like they did with Don’t look up.
Yeah, I watched it again not too long ago and it really hurts the movie in my opinion. It’s still fairly funny, but I can’t really recommend it.
That applies as far as the dumbing down of the population, but even they didn’t go for fascists as leaders. That’s right, the population of Idiocracy was smarter than what we have now.
I would much rather have Camacho as president than Cheeto Benito.
Terry Crews 2028!
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.
