posted
I was having a conversation back before the election with some friends of mine. I was complaining about what I saw as the identity politics behind people's support of George Bush and Sarah Palin (This whole thing assumes that they are obviously unsuited to be President, but isn't really about that.)
That is, people who would be terrible Presidents like them because they share many of the attributes that make those people unsuitable for the office. I was ranting about an electorate that sees things like being intellectually curious, highly gifted, etc. as reasons not to vote for someone, who prefers average people over the best that we can offer.
A friend of mine came in with, "But what has electing so-called 'smart' people gotten them?" Her point was that it's not like the people who portray themselves as the elite or the smart ones (whether they are or not) are doing a good job of governing.
We got to talking about the Mr Smith meme. That is, simple but honest man goes to Washington and is amazed by how bizarrely corrupt it is. The movie Dave is a more recent example. The people in government are shown living in an unreality and a "regular" guy comes in and makes things much better.
Honestly, I have a lot of sympathy for the latter idea, though it's got some pretty obvious flaws. I think that both things are going on. I thought they were interesting ideas, anyway.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Keeping in mind that hardly anyone saw Idiocracy in the theaters due to the studio burying it, what does it have to do with Mister Smith? I've seen the latter, but not the former.
Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
So, you're not going to answer why you bring up Idiocracy in the title of the original post? You just chose another film to be "versus" at random? Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
No. I just thought it was obvious. I was setting up two competing explanations for a phenomenon under a title that contrasts two movies. Idiocracy was chosen for the connotations of the title and Mr Smith because it really captures the meme/explanation of the second part.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
I haven't seen Idiocracy but the word itself suggests rule by idiocy - like theocracy is rule by religion, meritocracy is rule by merit, and so forth.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
The premise of Idiocracy is that since the more educated tend to have fewer offspring, society will eventually breed itself stupid. A perfectly average man (and a hooker!) get frozen in a government lab and wake up in such a future, where they are both considered geniuses.
posted
How does it benefit you and stimulate discussion for you to be purposefully obtuse in your own thread?
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
It benefits him by making him feel superior and stimulates discussion that makes him feel superior. Tada.
Posts: 3003 | Registered: Oct 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Sigh. I don't think he was trying to be obtuse.
Let's pretend that Idiocracy was never a movie. What would that word mean all by itself?
It'd mean exactly the message from the movie Idiocracy. Nation ruled by idiots.
Moving on.
Corruption in government shows us that the elite are really just as venal and imperfect as the rest of us. A Mr. Smith isn't a genius, nor an idiot. He's an honest man.
What many of the "elite" have is an inherited knowledge of how government works. The way I like to think of it: if your dad was a governor, you're going to spend your teenage years thinking any idiot can be a governor. It sets the stage for believing you can do such a thing (maybe even you're entitled to do such a thing). Elitism is a sense of entitlement and confidence.
Idiocracy is when that entitlement and confidence are entirely unchecked by requirements for intelligence or achieving positive results.
We shouldn't be concerned with defeating elitism. What we should be concerned with is holding government accountable for the results we want them to achieve. It takes a lot of effort to see past the constant spin, but maybe it can be done. And when we do that we might gain enough insight into how government works to appreciate how un-elite the elite really are.
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
We just had 8 years of "Mr. Smith". many people didn't like having a good, honest man in the whitehouse...
Posts: 571 | Registered: Mar 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
I wouldn't describe George W. Bush, the son of a former president as being an average joe outsider like Mr. Smith.
Mr. Smith in the movie isn't just folksy, he's also a total outsider with no idea how things are "supposed" to be done. The same goes for Dave-- he's never been in contact with politics before his "elevation" to office.
If anything, George W. Bush typifies the opposite of this, having intimate knowledge his whole life how things are "supposed" to be done.
Nor are Dave and Mr. Smith so folksy that they use their folksyness when fighting their battles. Mr. Smith may be the leader of the Boy Scouts (or whatever his job is), but he speaks well and delivers a highly literate speech. The same goes for Dave. He's more folksy than Mr. Smith but even so he too proves he's intelligent and can deliver a literate "non-folksy" speech. They both translate "folksy" ideals into literate leadership.
I do not think that George W. Bush, despite his "folksyness" really counts as a Mr. Smith or Dave character, primarily because of his extensive and even familial background in office but also because I don't think that he necessarily demonstrated the same kind of statesmanship that Dave and Mr. Smith managed to produce. Of course, they're fictional characters.
I don't think that Mr. Smith or Dave exist at all, simply because it is and should be impossible that a totally inexperienced person should enter office. The movies, like much fiction, stand to show an ideal to prove a point.
Also, I think "folksyness" is overrated. It's not bad, provided it can be tempered with ability (this is not a jab at GWB, just a thing). However, I do not think it is so all that great-- I prefer a sense of self in which the leader while proving him or herself worthy of being a leader (intelligence, literacy, leadership) is also demonstrating that he or she is also a person. I think there are numerous ways to be a real, honest person without being folksy.
posted
Lobo, I've hardly ever heard, and never believed that President Bush was not good-as in wanting to fight evil.
I believe he was honest--in that he was not corrupt for $ sake. However it has been shown that he was not honest, either directly or indirectly, with the people in the sense that he told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
What he was missing was not a compassionate heart or a desire to do good. It was the competence and ability to do well, and to surround himself with others of like skill and motive.
Mr. Smith as a politician tries to do good in an honest and open way. Dumb and Dumber would not be good politicians now matter how folksy and good hearted they were. Intelligence does not equate to Elitism.
Posts: 1941 | Registered: Feb 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by El JT de Spang: How does it benefit you and stimulate discussion for you to be purposefully obtuse in your own thread?
Because it pleases me as the elitist monster I am.
Or maybe I actually meant the things that I said, that I really thought that what I meant by it was obvious and then when I said that I used it for the connotations of the title that I meant that the content of the movie didn't have anything about what I was saying.
Puffy's initial post read to me like someone who read the title, didn't read the post, and thought that the thread was about a comparison between the two movies. I honestly thought that reading the post made it obvious how it was being used. Maybe I was wrong about that. So when he asked for more clarification, I gave it (or thought I did). When that clarification didn't get through, I repeated and reemphasized it. I don't see that as obfuscation.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
quote:We just had 8 years of "Mr. Smith". many people didn't like having a good, honest man in the whitehouse...
While I wouldn't characterize George Bush as a real-life Mr. Smith or a particularly honest man, that's sort of the point.
I'm talking about two reasons why a certain segment of the electorate favors obviously unsuitable candidates. In the Mr. Smith setting, there's this idea that the whole political system is needlessly complicated by the corruption and the consensual acceptance of a very unrealistic view of things. All that it takes is for a plain, honest outsider to come in to set things right.
This is strengthened by the public electing people who represent themselves as the "smart", etc. candidates and this not seeming to help people.
I found this idea that my friend introduced to be a pretty intriguing counterpoint to my problems with people preferring candidates who share qualities with them that make people bad Presidents (or Congressmen or whatever), candidates that they think it would be fun to have a beer with. Besides the ideas themselves, it's important to realize that it (for many values of "it") is generally never as simple as it first appears.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[ROFL]](graemlins/rofl.gif)
Good one.
