Taking Donald Trump seriously means ‘Idiocracy’ is already here

By David McElroy · December 11, 2011

The concept of the movie, “Idiocracy,” is simple: We’re dumbing down our society so badly — intellectually, culturally and every other way — that people who are stupid today will be considered average (or better) in 500 years. Since everyone is dumb as a post, the entire society is falling apart. It’s a satirical extension of where we are today.

If you want some evidence that we really are moving down the road in that direction, consider that Donald Trump is being taken seriously on the national political stage. This lousy businessman — whose companies have filed for bankruptcy four times so far — believes he matters. Unfortunately, his narcissistic bluster has been enough to make him popular with a certain element of the population for whom the world of “Idiocracy” has already arrived.

Earlier this year, Trump teased us with whether he was going to run for president as a Republican or not. He says he’s still contemplating running next year as an independent. Most recently, though, Trump has been in the news because of his plans to moderate a Republican presidential debate in Iowa on Dec. 27. Doesn’t this make just as much sense as making Lindsey Lohan or Kim Kardashian a moderator?

To their credit, most of the GOP presidential candidates have bailed out of Trump’s show, but Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum have accepted. In an interview with the UK’s Sunday Telegraph this week, Trump was characteristically immodest in claiming to be salvation for millions:

“[Other candidates want Trump’s endorsement because] I represent the millions of Americans who wanted me to run and who are tired of this country getting ripped off by China and OPEC [the Organisation for Petroleum Exporting Countries] and the rest of the world. We’re a laughing stock — run by stupid people. They see me as someone who wouldn’t allow this to happen. The candidates want my endorsement because those millions of Americans listen to me and respect me.”

If you read the positions Trump has taken, you could only support him if you’re schizophrenic or if you’ve already reached the land of “Idiocracy” yourself. His understanding of issues is simplistic and his solutions seem to boil down to the sort of petty bullying that he’s known for on television.

It’s disgusting to live in a world where a potential Trump candidacy could be taken seriously by so many potential voters. (When he was talking about running last spring, he actually led in some polls.) It’s also disgusting to have media organizations and debates sponsors treat him as someone whose opinions and endorsements matter.

As usual, this points to the simple fact that any system that gives power to the majority to make decisions for you (or for me) is immoral and destined to lead to ruin. As society continues to dumb itself down — on “The Road to Idiocracy,” to paraphrase Hayek’s book title — you’re putting yourself into the hands of people who think Donald Trump is someone who matters, people who believe any blowhard who acts confident is worth listening it.

It’s disgusting. It’s indecent. It’s another reason to prepare yourself to escape from the mess we’re heading toward.

Note: This article was published in late 2011. For an updated look at Trump’s 2016 presidential aspirations, see my article called “Donald Trumps’s jingoistic tribalism marks him as a dangerous buffoon,” from Aug. 3, 2015.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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