This trolling and misdirection are not in the movie. Also, both are clearly effective, and a discourse that warps economic impact on US midterms voters within identities, reduces the chance of exposing the bad consequences and risks of power-politics. So this is quite well timed, and the outrageous quotient is I think also well calibrated.
Charles Chaplin understood it, so please y'all catch up ASAP.
The difference being that in the movie Idiocracy the President didn't assume he knew everything and was willing to listen to people who knew more than him.
And yeah, the name predates the Canadian province.
It is already becoming "Planet China", slowly and gradually.
Gradually, he is steering away the public discussion from what matters: the Iran War, inflation, the abusive police state created by ICE, the rise of China and weakening of international standing of US... We're making a lot of noise about what doesn't matter: what's the name of a lake.
It is like when I admonish my 4 year old son about something he did and he replies: "Look over there!".
And you know the funniest part? It has been working for years and will keep working! Remember the "immigrants eat our cats and dogs"?
This low-level debating is exactly what Neil Postman described in "Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business", in 1985. The entertainment industry makes everyone stupid.
On Canadians too. Remember what party was leading the polls before Trump started mean tweets?
The Epstein Files.
This, as its just made up, reminds me a lot of political/nationalist renaming of things like roads which is very common in parts of South Asia.
Totally unserious behavior, and it's ridiculous that Americans and the rest of the world have to put up with this nonsense.
A small number of Republican representatives and senators could end it all today by publicly supporting impeachment.
Honestly can’t believe there’s a few million very smart people in America who have to put up with this. Bridges for Americans worldwide are being burned to the ground and there’s no sign of a new enlightened political age arriving on any horizon. Canadians also don’t seem to understand that this situation is only going to get worse and America can no longer be considered a friend.
The US mechanism seems the strongest of the three, and people have considered this a normal thing in a democracy long enough for this to happen.
I expect the next administration will push through some laws limiting this sort of idiocy.
So you have faith in the average American voter? (Or at least a plurality of them?)
Expensive gas and groceries are pretty unpopular. I guess some chunk of people will find a way to wholly blame Biden or whatever.
> I expect the next administration will push through some laws limiting this sort of idiocy.
The problem is that the bar is now so low that basically anybody will win, by design.
They'll pass some surface level bullshit to treat symptoms, like how lakes can or cannot be renamed. But they'll fail to address any root, systemic issues that allowed this BS to unfold in the first place, paving the way for the other half of the Uniparty to resume power 4-8 years later.
Democracy is illusory.
karussell•1h ago
name:en=Lake Ontario
vs.
official_name:en-US=Lake America
ben_w•30m ago
(Google Translate from "Satan's armpit").
I mean, if temper tantrums by the supreme executive are allowed and all.
abirch•26m ago
ben_w•17m ago
And while he's at it, Georgia could become Trumpia to avoid confusion with the nation of the same name. (Why even do you have a state named after the granddad of the king you fought off?)
But I guess those might accidentally be useful, so of course he's not going to do them. :P