I’ve been thinking a lot lately about our country’s surreal descent into an Idiocracy. If you haven’t watched the cult favorite movie from 2006; I would highly recommend it. This film hilariously presents a dystopian future that has culminated in only the very idiotic remaining 500 years from now because of trends in place as we speak. This strangely prescient little gem is looking more like a documentary every day.

Did you hear about the man who had to be removed from his flight on January 6th? This was a flight to Maui that was interrupted when the pilot decided to return to Portland because of a situation he deemed to be quite dangerous. To summarize, the dangerous situation involved inappropriate statements on a comment card, some involving Gilligan’s Island! This guy irritated the flight staff by wanting to have his bag under his seat. Nothing major happened with this issue, and this sounds like it was resolved fairly quickly. It does seem to have made the guy a bit angry, and he, being a grade A wisenheimer filled out an airline comment card and gave it to one of the staff. Among other things, it mentioned how terrible it would be if the plane had trouble and crash landed somewhere like Gilligan’s Island. The real fear, for him, would be that the only woman there would be Mrs. Thurston Howell III (Lovey, if you recall). What a nightmare; he thought that cannibals or sharks would be preferable to forced conjugal time with Lovey! The flight attendants were, of course, terrified after reading this manifesto. The frightening diatribe was then provided to the pilots, who in the infinite wisdom that only comes from having little metal wings on your shirt decided that this was serious enough to land. Was this man a goof? Decidedly yes! Did those other passengers deserve the disruption and fright that this impromptu landing caused? Decidedly No!

Are we to believe that this is the new modus operandi for terrorists? Did Mohammad Atta reference Good Times on that fateful day? Does Bin Laden have a preference for Mary Anne or Ginger? Which would look better in a burqa? The level of nonsense in the skies has become difficult to fathom.

This is on the heels of the infamous underwear bomber who looks like he is going to be the precedent to cause us all to fly naked- and soon. If not nude, then for certain, our bodies will be scanned with the devices, many happily provided by the Rapiscan (yes, that’s the real name) company, headed by former DHS secretary Michael Chertoff. It’s all very convenient! We will have these machines at the ready in case of another loaded underoo. I’m not trying to discount the danger from a guy with explosive underwear, but it was managed and caught. To think this will be tried again is probably naïve. It will be something new and of course we’ll have some new too expensive and invasive technology to meet the challenge, probably provided to us by another Washington insider’s company.

We never consider that the best way to alleviate these threats would be to get out of the business of empire building and resource wars. That just isn’t good for the bottom line of the military industrial complex.

An Idiocracy just isn’t so funny when you have to live in it. KL Peine