Reality you can't find in fiction

So many villains in fiction are depicted as intelligent, phew, did we ever get that one wrong

If they were intelligent, we wouldn't even figure out they're villains
Honestly, its always been anti-intellectualism. Sure not all smart people are good people, but in general empathy is a sign of intelligence, while malice and stupidity go hand in hand.

Edit: There's also the fact that the smart tropey villains also often happen to be wealthy, and as we all know being wealthy means someone is smart/s
It may seem like a meme, but Idiocracy did actually nail it. Dumb and aggressive with no attention span.
- Idiocracy was less mean-spirited than reality, though. Sure, people were assholes, but they weren't trying to eradicate trans people or immigrants.
- Go away, baitin
- No they didn't. The president recognized a smart person and put them in charge to fix their problems. Do you see the Trump administration doing that?
Dr Evil is pretty dumb, he only surrounded himself with intelligent people. Still not an equivalent since DT is hiring idiots.

Fun fact: DT can mean alcohol withdrawal and the symptoms resemble Trump. "Severe alcohol withdrawal symptoms such as shaking, confusion, and hallucinations."
- Dr. Evil is a parody of a mastermind Bond villain, which is why he was dumb as a subversion of the trope.
- Dr Evil is pretty dumb, he only surrounded himself with intelligent people
  
  TFW you realize Dr. Evil is wiser than our President Elect.

Alt: duck soup movie poster, in which a grifter con man fails upward to leading a country, makes a mockery of justice, appoints idiots spying for a foreign government, and ends up in a losing war and destruction.

And it came out in 1933.

Something about history rhyming and all that.
- And some song lyrics from the first music number:
  
  The last man nearly ruined this place,
  
  He didn’t know what to do with it
  
  If you think this country’s bad enough now,
  
  Just wait till I get through with it. /
  
  The country’s taxes must be fixed,
  
  And I know what to do with it.
  
  If you think you’re paying too much now,
  
  Just wait till I get through with it. /
  
  I will not stand for anything
  
  That’s crooked or unfair.
  
  I’m strictly on the up and up,
  
  So everyone beware. /
  
  If anyone’s caught taking graft
  
  And I don’t get my share,
  
  We stand ‘em up against the wall…
  
  And pop goes the weasel!
- So we're a decade early. WWIII 2029?

V for Vendetta seems close though

I kind of thought this was the joke. Many many dystopian plots are about governments ran by corporations and filled with foreign spies.
- I figured this was just kind of a blurb by someone who just lacks depth in knowledge of these things
- Yeah same

Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

This movie is eerily accurate despite being scathing satire. There’s more than a hint of truth in it. More like a mountain.
Gotta protect those bodily fluids boiz!

Idiocracy

Idiocracy was just idiots, not an actively malicious group.
- The state is always malicious.

Read more Philip K Dick.

The amount of sexual predators Epstein's closest friend have nominated to position of power is incredible,

Drain the swamp tho…

Gotta drain the swamp to make room for the cesspool.
- Can we instead install a drowning pool? It's usage can be for the "elites" and not the peasants this time.
That's a pretty good example of trump's environmental policy.

kak·i·sto·cra·cy

noun

Government by the least suitable or competent citizens of a state.

Coulrocracy - rule by clowns
- Coprorocracy - rule by shit
Stultiocracy works too
On behalf of all the Welsh people I know would you have a problem with “cac” rather than the Dutch based (?) “kak” in this word?
- "Kak" is from Greek. "Cac" is an alternate spelling coming from the same root via French, as in "cacophony" or

Sure, some did. But in those novels the same individuals were actually pretty smart.

That’s the difference.

I mean, you could replace Russian assets with Japanese elves and that's basically Shadowrun. Ignore the fact there are also literal dragons and ancient gods as part of the conspiracy ring; that's just an aesthetic and has no bearing on how they are basically just regular billionaires.

Idiocracy?

That government had the intelligence to see they needed to listen to someone smarter than them and gave Not Sure the freedom to do it how ever needed, even if it was something as ridiculous as water from the toilet. Brought to you by Carl's Jr.
Nah a lot worse. President Camacho was a good dude who had his peoples best interests at heart.
Not even!!!!! Nobody ever imagined such a horrible scenario

The techbrocalypse is a woefully underexplored dystopian future setting

Because they didn't have to imagine it, as its a pretty standard affair.

Yup, I could point randomly in Congress (or your government of choice) and have a high chance of picking someone that matches one or more of those descriptions.
Non-fiction.

Tom Clancy may yet surprise you

Season 4 of Lexx had all that and aliens.

Nobody got this feeling from altered carbon? Immortal, immoral rich, and everyone else struggling to survive. I mean, it's guilty-pleasure watching, but I am not ashamed.

Dr Strangelove

Handmaidens tale comes close tho

The last, uhh, 24 years keep reminding me of this line by Yeats:

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity."

Transmetropolitan nails this.

Unfortunately for us as a civilization, the series has aged quite well.

My God, how I miss Warren Ellis.
Oh man Transmetropolitan, Judge Dredd, and some other deeply satirical stories like Harrison Bergeron have ended up being closer to reality than even the best attempts at dystopia: Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451 (though its critique of what is essentially social media is on point), Minority Report (let's see how AI in law enforcement goes...), Handmaid's Tale...

I save a special spot for 1984 because our technology is spying on us, our governments and billionaires are using the media to manufacture consent, and the lies and danger around us make us not trust each other. 1984 did get pretty close, but 1984 was made with the assumption that our elites are competent and willing to work together and that does not seem to be the case actually. That's our one saving grace and we need to act on it as soon as possible.
THIS. Where is the Transmetropolitan streaming series? The time has never been more right.
Neither the Beast nor the Smiler are ignorant, conspiracy theorists, or foreign assets though (grifters and sex criminals, most definitely, I'll give you that, especially the Smiler, but most of the City's population seems to fit in those categories too, so in that sense they do represent their electorate).

They're both quite competent and intelligent psychopaths.

Now, if we're talking about the Republican Party Reservation and its associated TV show, or the vat-grown VP...

Wait until you take your first road trip through Ameristan.

Atlas shrugged? I only read half of it.

I watched all 3 atlas shrugged movies. It basically comes to down to "if I can't have it then no one can"

Sprinkled in with CEOs on the factory floor rolling up their sleeves and stopping an accident. A true work of fiction.
I did a report on that book in high school. I got through maybe 15 pages before losing all willpower. Then I read a bunch of summaries and other reviews. I got an A. I think my teacher hadn't read it either.
- The 1000+ pages of Atlas Shrugged are all an excuse for a 48 page Manifesto portrayed as John Galt's speech that occurs in the middle of the book.
  
  If you want to understand what Rand was saying, just skip the book part and go directly to that manifesto. Its still a long slog to get through just that part. The rest of the book is slightly worse than bad teen fanfiction.
- Back when I still had right-wing friends, one of them wouldn't shut up about Atlas Shrugged. So I agreed to read the book with him if he promised to read The Jungle afterwards. We both quit before getting through the first chapter. What a crappy book!

I feel like altered carbon might be on the right path, possibly blade runner as well.

The Man in the High Castle comes close... or at least, makes it clear that it's not as though the Nazis and Japanese occupying America would actually live by the code they dictate for others.

There was a Tom Clancy novel, either Sum of All Fears or Red Storm Rising, where the president and cabinet were a bunch of stupid fuckups that kept on making bad decisions taking us closer to World War 3.