Essay
On the Genealogy of American Morality
Intellectualism and Anti-Intellectualism’s Tension as the Essence of American Culture
Anti-intellectualism is a potent force in the United States and has always been. Most Americans can feel it—including those most responsible for its potency—though few recognize the sentiment explicitly. This sentiment finds its aesthetic quintessence in the 2006 film Idiocracy, a satirical masterpiece that has become increasingly prophetic yearly.
The movie, which once elicited laughter for its absurd depiction of a future society plagued by rampant stupidity, now—while hopefully still eliciting laughter (as medicine)—is a startlingly accurate mirror image of our current socio-cultural-political landscape.
From the transformation of the political scene into a form of dumbed-down entertainment to the elevation of anti-intellectual figures in positions of power, Idiocracy has transformed from a satirical cautionary tale to a quasi-documentary of our times –our times of the low-brow elite.
But we must know that this is not exclusive to “our times” but is a product of America’s socio-cultural history — this low-brow elite has been a long time coming!
