When Reality Imitates Satire

It’s easy to “joke” – especially living as a Republican in places like Saint Paul – that “Mike Judge’s cult classic Idiocracy isn’t a comedy, it’s a documentary”.

But you – we – are not wrong:

And for exactly the reason Judge lampooned…

So why are we supposedly getting dumber?

Previous research has found that women of higher intelligence are having fewer children, meaning women of lower intelligence are driving population growth, according to the study.

Over time, experts say, that would affect the average IQ of a population.

…or “lampooned”, as the case may be.

It’s only funny if you don’t look at the world around you.

12 thoughts on “When Reality Imitates Satire

  1. Social media ain’t helping either. – DanK,

    Expect a drop of 40 points in this century.

  2. Nobody else willing to give the Crabby Old Guy analysis? Here you go:

    Up until about 1960, before reliable birth control, getting pregnant generally resulted in a live baby. Single teenaged Moms couldn’t work, society wasn’t set up for it. The child would have lived in absolute grinding poverty. The girl’s parents might raise their grandchild, assuming were alive and had the means, or else the child went to live with strangers. Not good for the child or the teen.

    Everybody knew the danger but the flesh is weak. To discourage bad results, society had an elaborate system of safeguards, taught from little on up (first comes love, then comes marriage . . .). Chaparone and curfew to restrict opportunity. Statutory rape, fornication and adultry laws to discourage risk taking, bastardy laws to prevent out-of-wedlock children from depriving legitimate children of their inheritance. Waiting periods, posting banns, shotgun wedding and no divorce to encourage sober reflection. The culture discouraged pre-marital and extra-marital sex in every way possible. A marriage license was literally a sex license for you and an inheritance license for your kids. The nuclear family was the fundamental organizational unit of society because it was time-tested and proven as the best vehicle to protect women and children from poverty.

    Listen to the popular songs of the 1960’s. Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older, then we wouldn’t have to wait so long. You know it’s gonna make it so much better when we can say Goodnight and stay together. We could be married; and then we’d be happy.
    A girl pregnant out of wedlock was an embarasment, scorned, shunned. What changed?

    Welfare.
    No fault divorce.
    Non-enforcement of sex laws.
    Abortion-on-demand.
    Murphy Brown (as a symbol of societal approval).

    It’s all possible because America is rich enough to subsidize irresponsible behavior. For now.
    .

  3. I think Greg and DanK are pretty much dead-on. And good points, JD.
    What changed?

    Welfare.
    No fault divorce.
    Non-enforcement of sex laws.
    Abortion-on-demand.
    Murphy Brown (as a symbol of societal approval).

    More proof that feminism has been a fiasco of an experiment.

    I’d also like to mention that that study is based on this:
    Scientists in Europe used visual response times recorded in Western studies from 1889 to 2004.

    The idea is, the faster a person reacts, the smarter you supposedly are.

    The first problem seems to me to be yet another case of correlation-causation confusion. The second is time measurement differences (issues) between 1889 and 2004. Third, there is a definition problem: what is smart? Fourth, samples; from where/whom were they collected? And how was consistency maintained over 100 years? I don’t know; I think this study smells.

    Third point. That Idiocracy couple deserved not to propagate.

  4. Nobody else willing to give the Crabby Old Guy analysis?

    JD, you owe me a new keyboard! This is all covered in coffee!

  5. Well, here is another COG analysis. What goes around, comes around. The Dark Ages begat Renaissance. Stagnation begat Industrial Age. The WWI and II begat Technology Age. They way things ae going right now, we are spiraling down the toilet and things will get much worse before they get better. Based on the timeline, ages turn over every 200 years, give or take. This means we are not due for a correction for another 150 years or so. 3 generations. Our kids and grandkids are screwed.

  6. Night Writer – that’s more fallout from the shift.

    Time was, a girl wanted to sleep with a Bad Boy but was afraid to take the risk of getting pregnant, social outcast, poverty, etc., so she waited for Nice Boy. Not as exciting, but safer.

    Nowadays, a girl can ride the Bad Boys’ pump-and-dump Merry-Go-Round all she likes. If she eventually ends up with a child and the Bad Boy walks away, she gets support from all the Nice Boys who pay their taxes. She has no incentive to avoid sex, no reward for avoiding it.

    At least, for now. As long as the free money holds out. If the Antifa and Democrats don’t destroy the entire system that supports them.

  7. JD, when the Progressive Reprobates destroy the system, they will be having even more kids, to assure the survival of their sub-species. It is all about demographics and outcome is inevitable. You can’t stop the wheel of history. I am afraid it had been set in motion into the downward spiral and so far, I do not see anyone with balls and guts to stop it, nor can it be.

  8. Welfare.
    No fault divorce.
    Non-enforcement of sex laws.
    Abortion-on-demand.
    Murphy Brown (as a symbol of societal approval).

    Let’s add one more to that list: suburbs.

    Not that there is anything wrong with suburbs, but to move to the burbs, you have to move out of someplace else. That place was typically, a close-knit ethnic neighborhood that functioned like a small town, or else you moved out of a small town, like millions did.

    The effect was no one knew who you were that you didn’t want to know who you were – and therefore that soft social control that governed human behavior forever, flew out the window.

    A while back, the great liberal mind, Thomas Frank wrote a book called, “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” In it he wondered why all those religious rural people were voting against their interests by not buying into the new order.

    I wanted to write a book titled, “What’s the Matter with Thomas Frank?” You see, in little towns in Kansas everyone knows everyone else, so they understand the consequences of single motherhood because they know every single mother in town. They understand drugs, because they personally know the addicts. They also know people who lost jobs to China.

    In the cities, in the suburbs and on the right and left coasts, people don’t know people they don’t want to know – but in little towns and the blue-collar neighborhoods of the Midwest, they do.

    It says everything and makes all the difference.

  9. JD makes great points.

    My wife’s best friend, went to college in Colorado, circa 1974. The first time she had sex, she got pregnant. Her parents took her out of college and brought her back to Richfield, then they lined up an adoption. Abortion was never discussed. All the woman knows is that a local, professional couple adopted her child. With all of the TV movies and shows where people are trying to find their birth parents, she has expected a knock on the door for the past 10 years.

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