There is a saying that has been repeated so often it risks becoming background noise, but it remains true nonetheless. When someone shows you who they are, believe them. I do believe them. I believe that our culture, our institutions, and many of the people who position themselves as cultural leaders have been showing us exactly who they are for a very long time. I also believe that far too many people are choosing not to see it, not because the signs are subtle, but because acknowledging them would be uncomfortable and would require action instead of passive consumption.
In my opinion, we are drifting toward something deeply unhealthy. The society taking shape around us increasingly resembles a disturbing blend of The Hunger Games and Idiocracy. One presents a world where a ruling class maintains power through spectacle, narrative control, and moral posturing. The other shows what happens when a population gradually abandons education, logic, and competence. Viewed separately, they are fiction. Viewed together, and compared honestly to the world around us, they feel far less imaginary.
This is not a claim of secret meetings or hidden scripts. It is an opinion formed by watching patterns repeat, incentives align, and outcomes deteriorate in the same direction year after year, all while being told that nothing is wrong and that questioning the direction itself is dangerous.
Hollywood and the Culture of Masking
Hollywood sits at the intersection of fame, money, power, and influence, but it is also something more fundamental than that. It is a town built on pretending to be someone else. People are rewarded not for integrity, but for convincing performance. Over time, that distinction matters, because a culture built on performance naturally elevates appearance over substance. In Hollywood, the better you are at hiding “the real you”, the more successful you become.
I have often wondered why Hollywood attracts such a high concentration of people deeply invested in image management and secrecy. To me, the explanation is not mysterious. A place that celebrates illusion is naturally attractive to those who do not want to be examined too closely. Reinvention is praised. Contradiction is ignored. Past behavior is easily rewritten as long as the public-facing persona remains intact.
This does not mean every actor or entertainer is corrupt. It does mean the environment itself rewards concealment rather than transparency, and when concealment is rewarded long enough, it becomes normalized and protected.
Fame, Power, and Moral Insulation
Fame, power, money, and influence are often spoken of as rewards or neutral tools. I do not see them that way. I see them as accelerants. They do not create character, but they amplify and reveal it. When restraints are removed, whatever exists beneath the surface becomes harder to hide.
If someone is grounded and ethical, influence can magnify those traits. If someone is narcissistic, predatory, or unstable, influence magnifies that as well. Power does not corrupt everyone, but it reliably reveals who someone already is. Who they really are.
This is why Hollywood and the broader elite class have evolved into a modern Boys Club. They socialize together, reward each other, and, of course, protect each other. Awards shows and galas are not merely entertainment. They are reinforcement mechanisms that signal belonging, approval, and insulation from consequence. They remind the average person that they are not part of this group, but if they behave, they will get to watch these people as they enjoy the rewards of their status.
When scandals surface, the response is rarely accountability. It is containment. Deflection. Narrative management. Quiet rehabilitation. Expecting a tightly interconnected elite to police itself honestly is not just naive, it is unrealistic.
Narrative Control and the Media Feedback Loop
Hollywood’s influence would be far less dangerous if it were not amplified and reinforced by modern media. Media no longer functions primarily as an information conduit. It functions as a narrative enforcement mechanism. Stories are framed to elicit emotional response rather than encourage independent evaluation and thought, and language is selected to steer perception before facts are even considered.
This creates a powerful feedback loop. Hollywood supplies the moral framing. Media amplifies it. Education reinforces it. Politics codifies it. At each stage, dissent becomes harder, not because it is disproven, but because it is punished socially and professionally. Over time, people stop asking whether something is true and start asking whether it is acceptable to notice.
That is how managed reality takes root. The danger is not a single lie, but a culture trained to distrust its own observations.
Idiocracy and the Collapse of Education
If The Hunger Games shows us how elites rule, Idiocracy shows us what happens to the population. The film depicts a society that collapses not because of invasion or disaster, but because intelligence becomes inconvenient. Education is mocked. Expertise is ignored. Emotion replaces reason, and volume replaces competence.
What makes this comparison uncomfortable is how familiar it now feels.
Nowhere is this more evident than in public education. What was once grounded in the three R’s, reading, writing, and arithmetic, has been fundamentally altered. Those foundational skills have been pushed aside and replaced by ideological priorities that do little to prepare children for real life.
This is not a theoretical concern. The outcomes are measurable and undeniable. Test scores are falling. Literacy rates are collapsing. Students are graduating high school unable to read, write, or perform basic math at functional levels. Good, quality teachers are leaving not because they dislike teaching, but because they are no longer allowed to teach in a way that produces competence, and they are being replaced with an army of dyed haired, septum ringed, radical left-wing activists.
Instead of correcting course, institutions lower standards so failure looks like progress. Children are taught what to be outraged about rather than how to think. This is not compassion. It is neglect dressed up as virtue. It is abuse of the future.
Centralized Control and Intent
This decline did not happen in isolation. For decades, Democrats have pushed for increased federal control over education so Washington can dictate what the entire country is allowed to teach. In my opinion, this is profoundly dangerous. Education should never be controlled top down by bureaucrats who will never meet your child, never see your school, and never be accountable for the outcomes they impose.
Centralization removes accountability. When decisions are made locally, parents know who to confront when things go wrong. When decisions are made in Washington, responsibility is diffused, excuses multiply, and failure becomes systemic.
Common Core was sold as a way to raise standards, but in practice it replaced common sense. Math became confusing instead of clarifying. Reading comprehension was deprioritized. Writing skills were treated as optional. Meanwhile, ideological instruction, like gender studies, critical race theory, social justice and activism have crowded out foundational subjects like math, science, and English.
A system that consistently degrades competence while expanding ideological control is not malfunctioning. It is functioning exactly as designed.
Elitism, Hypocrisy, and Contempt
This same mindset extends beyond education. Cultural and political elites increasingly view themselves as morally and intellectually superior to ordinary Americans. Formal credentials are treated as proof of wisdom, and disagreement is framed as ignorance or malice.
These elites attend lavish galas, wear elaborate costumes, dine on thousand-dollar a plate dinners, and lecture working Americans about equality and sacrifice. They speak endlessly about environmental responsibility while flying private jets which add to the ongoing destruction of the environment. They preach compassion while remaining insulated from the consequences of the policies they promote.
This is not leadership. It is entitlement wrapped in moral language, with an extra-large side of hypocrisy.
Elections, Legitimacy, and Open Contempt for the People
This is why the most recent election mattered so much. When Americans elected Donald Trump, including winning the popular vote, they sent a clear message about the direction they wanted the country to move. America did not dodge a bullet. America moved itself out of the line of fire.
That is what makes the continued obstruction so infuriating. Democrats lost, yet instead of respecting the will of the people, they have done everything possible to block, delay, and undermine the elected administration. This is not defending democracy. It is contempt for it.
When a political party refuses to accept defeat and attempts to impose its agenda anyway, it reveals what it truly believes. It believes the public is wrong. It believes consent is optional. It believes authority flows from itself, not from the people.
Civic Action and the Beast We Are Creating
When I say people need to wake up, I am not calling for chaos or lawlessness. I am calling for civic responsibility. Refusing manipulation. Speaking plainly. Voting. Engaging locally. Demanding accountability.
As a society, we need to recognize something deeply uncomfortable. We are allowing the creation of the very beast that will eventually devour us all. We elevate the wrong people. We excuse behavior we would never tolerate from our neighbors. We trade competence for comfort and truth for entertainment.
That beast does not arrive suddenly. It is built slowly, with applause, indifference, and silence.
The Power Was Never Theirs
Hollywood, media figures, and political elites behave as though their authority is inherent. It is not. It is granted. It exists only because ordinary people continue to watch, listen, comply, and defer.
The irony is that the same people who lecture endlessly about empowerment rely entirely on public participation to maintain their own status. Without attention, they are nothing more than individuals with opinions, typically based on what is popular instead of what they believe.
If we as a society do not become more selective about who we elevate and who we trust, we may eventually discover that the future we laughed at in movies was not fiction at all, but the warning we chose to ignore.
