The movie, "The Hunger Games", has something for almost everyone. Romance, adventure, action, beauty, and characters that are captivating. It is without a doubt entertaining.
As a dystopian vision of the future, it is also, for many, a warning, but it can be a warning of different things for different people.
It could be a warning about the dangers of reality based entertainment that, taken to its extreme, values entertainment over human life.
It could be a warning about the future given policies that are leading us in the wrong direction; the bottom of a slippery slope. But defining the current policies that might cause this kind of dystopian future is fraught with hazzards.
The Right (Republicans, Tea Party, Libertarians) might see the movie as the end result of government power run amok; a government that has sucked the people dry to fuel it's insatiable desire for power and control. The result could be an impoverished and desperate populace, disarmed, with a central government, the "Capitol", that is extravagant even as the people are starving. Think Louis XIV. A government that abrogates the rights of people as part of a strategy of centralizing power.
The recent scandal of the GSA (Government Services Administration) spending nearly a million dollars for a lavish meeting in Las Vegas typifies the kind of abuse of power and the people's money. Some see the President's trips abroad, his lavish parties (which are normal for a president, but...), and any expenses for vacation, secret service protection for his family or even campaign trips supported by government money as evidence that the government seeks to enrich itself while impoverishing the nation.
The Left (Progressives, Democrats, liberals) might see the outcome of wealth disparity in the extreme where corporations dictate policy and huge concentrations of money are promoted by a fusion of government and corporations. With a Right Wing agenda run amok, workers would compete for jobs that don't provide enough money to prevent hunger (no minimum or living wage), protections from dangers at work are eliminated (OSHA, EPA, etc.), and taxes are paid by everyone except corporations and the extremely wealthy (elimination of capital gains tax, elimination of corporate taxes). Poverty would be criminalized (arrest the homeless, arrest the protesters, squatters, drug test the poor) and an arrest record would exclude one from voting. Eventually, only land owners (not renters) would be allowed to vote, and only the wealthy would own land. There would be no welfare, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, unemployment insurance, and if people starve, "it's their own fault."
The Ryan Plan is a step to the right. Mitt Romney typifies the wealth disparity and lack of comprehension or understanding of poverty. "I don't worry about the poor; they have a safety net" which he would eliminate. Every Republican budget gives much to corporations and takes much from the poor and middle class. Every Republican controlled state seeks to reduce the number of people voting, particularly the young, the poor, minorities and the elderly.
History gives examples of dystopia fostered by government policies. Here are three:
The "gilded age" of industrial hegemony created "company towns" and ghettos for workers that struggled even with jobs to feed their families. Work was dangerous and even deadly for the workers while the "capitalists" enjoyed luxuries that had only been experienced by royalty in the past. Laborers and even child laborers were disposable assets, and there were plenty of poor that would take the chance of death or injury in order to feed their families. Striking laborers were severely punished by either hired goons or police.
The Communist revolution centralized government and equalized income for the masses - thus creating mass poverty. A few powerful people (the Apparatchik) maintained lifestyles of luxury and privilege protected by the Soviet military and police organizations that were themselves more privileged than the poorest citizens. Wealth disparity was a result of government power rather than commerce.
Nazi Germany put increasing powers within the government purview, and the results are documented well in the book "They Thought They Were Free": http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html
"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head."
There has never really been a perfect balance in history, but many would point to the 1950s or another post WWII decade as close to ideal (excluding the McCarthy era). The trends, when objectively analyzed, have been moving towards the right generally. There may be a "pendulum", but the swings to the left have been minor and insubstantial while the swings to the right have been structural and measurable.
Criminal records are rarely expunged, and their availability creates a new class of individuals that are treated with suspicion. Recent Supreme Court rulings have eroded the 4th and 5th Amendment rights, and penalties for crimes have been escalating. Voting rights are being restricted regularly in States that have recently seen Republican control. Gerrymandering is another way to make votes not have equal importance. In Michigan, local democratic control of government has been cancelled in several cities by the governor exercising an "emergency manager" option. That states Republican legislature has also denied the Democrats the option of voting to not implement "immediate effect", thus violating their own constitution. And a Republican appeals court is poised to support the Republicans' right to claim a 2/3 majority without counting the votes they clearly don't have for "immediate effect."
The one thing that has kept us from slipping down one slope or the other has been the vote. When we lose that, we can expect the slide down that slippery slope to begin in earnest. One way or another.
