Dune reveals once again people don't know how to read.

The release of the second part of Villeneuve's Dune has led to some speculation about whether and when we will get a movie for Dune Messiah (and possibly stories beyond that).

However, this brings up the question of why we even have Dune Messiah in the first place. By itself, Dune was a perfect story that did everything it needed to do.

Dune told a story that showed how power attracts the corruptible, and even those who are not corrupt when thrust into a position of power still can't do good even if they want to. The forces that create a leader, what we always see with populism, may worship a god-king, but they are a force that exists beyond the cult leader. Let's be honest, Donald Trump has only three ideas in his head—1. He needs to be praised at all times 2. Power is good 3. Non-whites are bad—but around him has grown a fascist party that will use him, just as he uses them for his self-glorification, to destroy democracy. It wasn't Trump's intent to start with, and he's evil for being okay with it, but he didn't set out to burn the world down. He just wanted to be racist and be worshipped for being an ugly, fat, mentally challenged person who has been found by a jury to have committed sexual assault (notice I didn't say he's a rapist because he hasn't been convicted of that crime, only found responsible for such an act in a civil trial…just like OJ was never convicted of murder but found responsible in a civil trial…so Trump is no more a rapist than OJ is a murderer)…but I digress.

The book was about how popular leaders are because even if they don't want to cause problems, their existence feeds a destructive movement…in this case, Muad'Dib's Jihad which will end up killing over 60 billions people. The book's point was that we should never look to heroes to solve our problems because hero worship always leads to the whirlwind that will destroy everything in its path, even if that isn't the hero's intention. Paul could see the future, and he couldn't stop it—no other figurehead, even the best-intentioned ones, had a better chance.

The only way to dispel such a movement is for the hero to die. (Watch MAGA. It won't be Trump losing in November that ends MAGA. The end of MAGA will only be his death…at which point the many factions of this abomination of a movement will eat each other as they all try to get on top.)

But was this the message anyone who read the first book got? Not entirely.

Readers thought Paul was a hero to be praised. Idiots responded that Paul represented the "white savior" trope… even though he is anything but a savior. Sixty billion people die in his Jihad. There is nothing heroic about what he did, and he would be the first character to point that out as he tried to avoid it for the entirety of the first book.

So, since people didn't get the first book, Frank Herbert had to write a second book that is honestly a bit of a downer because it's just a string of scenes where Paul is talking about the destruction he created and could stop, culminating with the death of his wife, and ending the madness in his name by walking into the desert to die. All the other books stem from unresolved plot points at the end of Dune Messiah…but had people gotten the original point, Dune could have just stood on its own.

This raises a bigger problem in how people read: People often don't read what is written; they read what they want.

Here are just a few examples.

Milton Friedman wrote an article where he talks about how companies shouldn't concern themselves with ephemeral cultural clashes of the moment but focus only on long-term profits (and he twice in the article directly talks about long-term outlooks and three times condemns short-term thinking). What happens? Idiotic businessmen read only the words "only care about profits" and proceed to engage in nothing but short-term thinking and left-of-center intellectuals rather than condemn the businessmen for being idiots and pointing out that they were going against what Friedman say: "Damn Friedman, who is putting short-term profits above anything else."

Before the latest round of right-wing banning of books for vile reasons,…left-of-center idiots wanted to ban Huckleberry Finn and To Kill A Mockingbird, books that outright condemn racism. Why? Both books use a word starting with "N," even though, in both cases, the use is to show the evil of those who use such words.

F. Scott Fitzgerald thought he was clear that we should dislike Gatsby…but everyone seems to love him.

Fight Club is making fun of all the incels who love it.

Machiavelli, tongue in cheek, wrote a book about how terrible tyrants could be and why you shouldn't let them be in charge…everyone took it as a call for tyrants.

And the list goes on.

People need to improve at discerning the meaning.

Now, what can we do about this? Well, the obvious Dune answer might be that we to start instituting the Gom Jabbar test on more people, but this seems inefficient at best to implement—and let's be honest, ignoring the weird part where Villeneuve added Feyd passing the test (which he should not have been able to) that is a lot of dead bodies to deal with as I doubt most people could pass it (certainly not a single Trump voter). So, while it would get the job done, it's probably not something we can do. A shame.

The problem is that, at best, the only option is to have a better education, which, regrettably, will only fix part of it because years of teaching have taught me that you can only teach the person who wants to learn. But for those who want to learn, I recommend the habit of questioning your premise, seeing if anyone agrees with you, looking for evidence of your point, looking for what would count as counter-evidence, and actively looking for that.

But until then, I am afraid we will just have to deal with idiots who only go looking for what they want and ignore what the author is saying and try to respond with concrete details to prove that they did not read what the work was saying.