At this point, I think aliens would do a better job.
Alt: duck soup movie poster, in which a grifter con man fails upward to leading a country, makes a mockery of justice, appoints idiots spying for a foreign government, and ends up in a losing war and destruction.
And it came out in 1933.
Something about history rhyming and all that.
And some song lyrics from the first music number:
The last man nearly ruined this place,
He didn’t know what to do with it
If you think this country’s bad enough now,
Just wait till I get through with it. /
The country’s taxes must be fixed,
And I know what to do with it.
If you think you’re paying too much now,
Just wait till I get through with it. /
I will not stand for anything
That’s crooked or unfair.
I’m strictly on the up and up,
So everyone beware. /
If anyone’s caught taking graft
And I don’t get my share,
We stand ‘em up against the wall…
And pop goes the weasel!
V for Vendetta seems close though
I kind of thought this was the joke. Many many dystopian plots are about governments ran by corporations and filled with foreign spies.
I figured this was just kind of a blurb by someone who just lacks depth in knowledge of these things
Sarcasm often employs acting as someone who lacks knowledge about something. You can easily identify this when the person describes something unusually specific.
It’s not unusually specific here, per se. It’s just a list with descriptions of several Americans who were elected into government. I couldn’t name novel or movie characters that precisely fit these traits off the top of my head.
The techbrocalypse is a woefully underexplored dystopian future setting
Back to the Future 2 was pretty close
Read more Philip K Dick.
The amount of sexual predators Epstein’s closest friend have nominated to position of power is incredible,
Drain the swamp tho…
That’s a pretty good example of trump’s environmental policy.
The last, uhh, 24 years keep reminding me of this line by Yeats:
"The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."
Idiocracy?
Nah a lot worse. President Camacho was a good dude who had his peoples best interests at heart.
The Man in the High Castle comes close… or at least, makes it clear that it’s not as though the Nazis and Japanese occupying America would actually live by the code they dictate for others.
Isn’t that Atlas Shrugged?
Sure, some did. But in those novels the same individuals were actually pretty smart.
That’s the difference.
Transmetropolitan nails this.
Unfortunately for us as a civilization, the series has aged quite well.
Oh man Transmetropolitan, Judge Dredd, and some other deeply satirical stories like Harrison Bergeron have ended up being closer to reality than even the best attempts at dystopia: Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451 (though its critique of what is essentially social media is on point), Minority Report (let’s see how AI in law enforcement goes…), Handmaid’s Tale…
I save a special spot for 1984 because our technology is spying on us, our governments and billionaires are using the media to manufacture consent, and the lies and danger around us make us not trust each other. 1984 did get pretty close, but 1984 was made with the assumption that our elites are competent and willing to work together and that does not seem to be the case actually. That’s our one saving grace and we need to act on it as soon as possible.
There was a Tom Clancy novel, either Sum of All Fears or Red Storm Rising, where the president and cabinet were a bunch of stupid fuckups that kept on making bad decisions taking us closer to World War 3.
