Storm

In the 2006 movie Idiocracy, a US soldier is put into cryosleep by the military, but due to miscommunications the experiment is abandoned and the soldier gets left behind in this artificial sleep. He ultimately wakes up 500 years later, in an unfortunately very different America than he can remember: this was not the technologically advanced utopia he had hoped for, but instead a society on the brink of falling apart. Due to centuries of the least intelligent people reproducing the most, the average IQ has plummeted and the average citizen cares mostly about consuming and about themselves, with president Camacho being the pinnacle of this dim-wittedness: the country is falling apart, but all he cares about is his appearance to the world and the showing of his power. Are you starting to notice some similarities with today’s world?

 In the past four years, president Donald Trump has done all he can to be number 1 on the casting list for the role of Camacho if an Idiocracy-sequel were ever to be made. From mocking a disabled interviewer live on stage, to repeatedly and shamelessly lying about things that can be factchecked with one simple google search, the list of damaging, amoral, unethical and often childish behaviour is long and hideous. Now, I can hear you wondering: what do we, all the way here in the Netherlands, have to do with this? The answer is simple: regardless of how much Trump would like for the US to be its own isolated entity, his actions do have potentially severe consequences for all of us. Let’s take an example: Trump’s repeated threats to leave international climate agreements (most notably the Paris agreement) and tear down national climate policies are dangerous signs for everyone of us, as the US is one of the largest emitters worldwide.

What’s most frustrating about all of this, is that while we are impacted by some of Trump’s decisions, we cannot impact if he gets to be president and make those decisions for another four years.  In Idiocracy, the soldier (being the smartest person in the world) ultimately saves the country, but as we all know, reality doesn’t always have a “good ending”. In the real world, an “Idiocracy” might persist.

It isn’t all doom and gloom however, as a shimmer of hope has appeared. With Trump’s first term coming to an end, many US citizens have realised that Trump is not the saviour of America they thought him to be, while others have realised that their vote can make a difference. The polls seem in favour of Trump’s main adversary Joe Biden right now, but the battle has definitely not been fought yet: we can all remember the sudden unexpected loss of Hillary Clinton last election. For us here in the Netherlands, all we can do is hope that on November 4th, the people of America will think deeply about what kind of country they want to live in: an Idiocracy, or not.