Donald Trump

Idiocracy Predicted Our World, But Not in the Way You Think

Mike Judge's cult classic turns 20 and remains prescient about how we live today, especially outside of politics.

Nick Gillespie | 8.27.2026 5:10 PM

Share on FacebookShare on XShare on RedditShare by emailPrint friendly versionCopy page URL Add Reason to Google

Media Contact & Reprint Requests

(Illustration: Adani Samat. Photo: Aaron Schwartz - Pool via CNP / MEGA / Newscom/RSSIL/Newscom/20th Century Studios)

September 1 marks the 20th anniversary of the release of Mike Judge's cult classic Idiocracy, a time-travel comedy in which a dimwitted and lazy Army librarian named Joe Bauers wakes up 500 years in the future to find himself the smartest man alive in a world gone horribly wrong. As a voiceover intones at the start of the move, smart people increasingly put off having kids, resulting in a precipitous, uninterrupted, and compounded "dumbing down" of the population. Combined with an emphasis on physical comfort—everyone wears some version of athleisure and then-unknown Crocs for footwear—"the intelligent" became "an endangered species." But Joe eventually saves America by replacing the ubiquitous use of a salty sports drink called Brawndo ("the thirst mutilator!") with water in industrial agriculture.

Despite a tiny budget of around $2.4 million, a rushed production schedule and mixed reviews, the movie, cowritten by Judge and frequent collaborator Etan Cohen, quickly became a shorthand for an America that seemed to be getting dumber and dumber at an accelerating rate, especially in the political arena. By as early as 2008, people on message boards were asking, "Who here thinks we're well on our way to Idiocracy becoming reality?" The November 2008 issue of Reason features a review of the utterly forgotten film Swing Vote titled "Idiocracy Now!", and in 2015 Matt Welch dubbed Donald Trump "the Idiocracy candidate." No explanation in either case was offered, or necessary, a sign of the film's cultural........

© Reason.com