It’s been only two weeks, but with every passing day of President Trump’s second term, Mike Judge’s 2006 masterpiece, “Idiocracy,” becomes a more and more prescient and embarrassingly accurate prediction of what the American government might one day look like.
In Judge’s scathing prophecy, the near-collapse of Western civilization and American greatness happens over the next 500 years as Americans slowly abandon intellectualism, expertise, democracy, the judicial system, and morality, and trade them in for a dystopian life of mind-numbing ignorance, celebrity worship, hyper-commercialization, and seemingly endless masturbation.
To wit, in 2505, the president is a five-time Ultimate Smackdown champion and “porn superstar.” The White House is now adorned with Mudflap Girl gates.
The secretary of energy is a pimply-faced teenager who “won a contest, got to be a cabinet secretary.” The secretary of state is “brought to you by Carl’s Jr.,” and the attorney general is referred to as “Fun bags” by the secretary of state. Meanwhile, the secretary of education is President Camacho’s “kinda stupid” step-brother, who doesn’t seem to know not to look down the barrel of a gun.
It’s funny until you remember it’s not 2505, but 2025, and Judge’s satirical version feels frighteningly all too real.
Trump’s Insane Clown Posse Cabinet is very close to being filled with a cadre of fools and quacks, goons and thugs.
The Senate hearings, meant “in theory” to vet the people who will run our country, were just for show apparently, as Republicans appear poised to usher in a number of people who likely couldn’t pass an FBI background check (or in some cases, a high school science class).
On Tuesday, your next likely secretary of health and human services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., advanced his nomination out of committee and is on to the full Senate, where, according to insiders, “The overall feeling is that [he’ll] be confirmed.”
If it seems like a bad idea to put a quack conspiracy theorist who promotes fake “autism cures,” who likened the Centers for Disease Control to “Nazi death camps,” who believes that COVID was engineered to spare Ashkenazi Jews, whose ill-informed opinions helped encourage Samoa to stop vaccinating their kids — after which 83 died — in charge of the nation’s health, rest assured, it definitely is.
Kennedy joins the probable head of the FBI, Kash Patel, a person with limited law enforcement experience, a history of promoting conspiracy theorists and white nationalists, and an enemies list of “conspirators” in government and the media. “We’re gonna come after you,” he promised in 2023.
If it seems like a bad idea to put a vindictive novice with a history of defending law-breakers, who himself has reportedly dodged the law, in charge of our law enforcement, rest assured, it definitely is.
They’ll join your next likely director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, a former congresswoman with practically no background in intelligence work.
If it seems like a bad idea to put someone who can’t seem to distinguish our enemies from our allies, who’s repeatedly promoted Russian propaganda and defended the Syrian butcher Bashar Assad, who’s been criticized by nearly 100 former national security officials, who refuses to say that someone who stole more than a million classified documents is a traitor, in charge of our intelligence-gathering community, rest assured, it definitely is.
It’s like someone challenged Trump to match the absolute least qualified person to the most inappropriate position. It’s almost comical in its absurdity.
But the joke’s on us — Republican senators, who are the only players with any real power to stop them, have simply decided not to, all so that President Camacho can play at government with his favorite suck-ups.
And now Republicans own it all: the policies, the problems, the people.
So what does the future hold? Is it an America where science is banned and experts are mocked as woke and elitist? Where conspiracies dumb us down to eventually believe that nothing is actually true? Where the levers of democracy are used and abused to reward friends and punish opponents? Where American power is for sale to the biggest sycophants? Where our national security is handed over to TV stars, propagandists, and useful idiots?
It seems like that’s where we’re headed. And with Democrats unable to figure out their next moves and a news media terrified of retribution, there may be no one left to stop the self-destruction.
It’s a sad commentary on the state of American politics, risking it all so that Republican lawmakers can keep their seats — and their dear leader entertained.
But as the saying goes — “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.”