I have a friend who is a good person overall but really buys into the "real life is becoming Idiocracy" bit. I was frustrated, because I'm not the best real-time arguer so I don't think I did a good job of expressing why the movie is disgusting trash.
I attempted to talk about how it blames people instead of systems, and how it's an awful eugenics narrative. But we quickly got into a rabbit hole about whether intelligence can be passed on genetically or not and if that matters, and other dumb topics that went nowhere.
What's a concise and offline-compatible way of explaining why Idiocracy is bad & decent people should find it gross?
a capitaslist system relies on the ignorance of people and comparing real life to a 1 hour film is itself idiotic. This system in America is mostly self sufficient meaning you gotta work for yourself and work to provide for yourself and your family, the act of community is abscent from the economy since the goal of capitalism isn't for maintaining emotional stability nor does it recognize any emotion which is a massive flaw. Communism and socialism are different since they put the worker first giving people a sense of purpose and a more relaxed way of life. America has always relied on its nationalism and even american liberals still have a nationalist thought process since they still believe that america and the american system works and anything else is moronic. That is why a lot of anti chinese propaganda makes the news because people lap that shit up. It is a nation that exploits emotions, exploits its own people, but provides its people with the idea that they are living in the greatest place on earth which is far from the truth. In the later stages of capitalism is when you see the more "idiotic" narratives that you see more frequently on the news, such as right wingers eating horse paste and other stupid shit you wouldn't believe would happen but does because we literally live in a two party system that acts as a front for this idea of democracy and freedom, giving people an illusion of choice when the elites are literally running everything. Libs are unimformed, the right is severely unimformed, they both think the other is stupid but so long as we got democracy and are freedom people won't blame the system but each other.
Can you expand on "Communism and socialism are different since they put the worker first giving people a sense of purpose"?
What purpose is that and how does it differ from what we have today? What would that look like?
Communism provides everyone with the essentials of living so they don't have to worry about bills and other stupid shit that you worry about on the daily under this current system. Communism puts people first and economy second, they also believe that the worker is key to the success of the country so it gives people more sense of purpose because if you know your hard work is benefiting not just yourself but everyone else then I think this is a better way of giving people the idea that their life matters a lot. My life doesn't matter in capitalism because in america the public services are always in crisis and severely underfunded, they are trying their best to push privatized everything since there is more profit to be made for the few, we are literally just numbers in this system nothing else. Think about the lack of respect people have for workers, the product is literally more valuable than the worker in every sense, you are more disposable since you can be easily replaced at any moment.