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In the not-too-distant future, after an election year (and not THIS election year)
I suppose we shouldn't have been surprised. After all, we the people made it happen, though I don't think any of us suspected it would ever go as far as it did.
It all started some years back. People on both sides of the political spectrum became so focused on making sure the candidate from the other party didn't get elected, that they started to look for creative ways to bolster their candidate's chances of winning. At first, it was the Presidential elections, but then we realized that Congress was where the real law-making took place. Sure, the President nominated Supreme Court Justices, and could tip the balance of the Court one way or the other, but without the laws in the first place, that was a secondary issue.
We figured out we could skew the odds in an election, by crossing the Party lines during the primaries, and voting for the candidate on the other ticket that we thought was the least electable. As I said, at first, we thought only about the Presidential candidates, but once we were at the polling places, we realized that candidates for Congressional seats were also on the ballot, and we thought, "What the heck. Why not vote for the biggest loser of the bunch?"
At first, it required us to register as voters for the other party, but then we managed to push through ballot measures permitting voting in either primary, regardless of party affiliation. In those first few election years, many of us lived in fear that our friends would somehow learn that we were registered as one of THOSE people, rather than belonging to the admirable party we actually supported. We considered the risk worth it, though, for the greater good of helping to ensure that our Country stayed on the right track.
Sure enough, it worked. We managed to tip the numbers enough, that we got opposition candidates that would have been lucky to win an election to dogcatcher if they ran unopposed. We were rather proud of ourselves, I have to admit.
That is, until it dawned on us that the other party had done the same thing to us, and our party's candidates were the worst of the lot as well. At that point, we felt rather stupid, since we had never considered what might happen if the same dirty trick was used by both sides.
This, then, explains how we ended up where we are today. Once we'd established the pattern, neither side was willing to risk reversing the practice, for fear that the other side would not likewise carry through, and we would end up with a very weak candidate from our party, while they would end up with a well-qualified, strong candidate on their side. We just could not risk the chance that they would get someone competent in office, who could promote their agenda easily against the weak candidates our party had previously elected to Congress. After all, our party did have the best interests of the Country at heart, of course, while their party seemed bent on the total collapse of the Republic and the eradication of individual rights. "Better to have an idiot at the helm, keeping us steered in more or less the right direction, than a genius that would steer us elsewhere," we reasoned.
This last election, though, saw the final incumbents of the old Congress voted out of office, in favor of the incompetents that our devious plan had artificially pushed to the forefront. The transition was complete, and all that remains now is for the current occupant of the Oval Office to appoint equally incompetent justices to the Supreme Court. We now have the Idiocracy that we'd worked so hard for, and it wasn't that far removed from the movie from which we'd taken the term.
What surprised us, though, is that it actually has worked out better so far. Sure, we have two of the three branches of our Government staffed by incompetent boobs, but we discovered something - all we needed to do was stock the Oval Office and the Congressional Chambers with toys, and our elected officials spend so much time amusing themselves with harmless play, that they don't have time to pass troublesome legislation. We're taking care of most decisions at our local levels, and so far, it hasn't proven to be any worse than when we trusted the Federal Government to play tug-of-war with important issues for their own political purposes. We even managed to get the Federal Budget balanced, by promising them ice cream for lunch if they would get it done.
Sure, not everyone is happy, but that was going to be the case no matter what. This way, though, we're not wasting so darn many tax dollars in the process.
We still don't like the other party, but they sure are easier to live with now.
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