Harrison Bergeron was intended as a satirical warning; it's been adopted as a how-to-manual

“Critical Looks oppression”. While I personally can plead not-guilty of this latest invented transgression, it’s disturbing nonetheless.

Although it was first published in 1961, Kurt Vonnegut’s short story “Harrison Bergeron” gained widespread popularity within my generation when it was included in his 1968 collection, “Welcome to the Monkey House”. Many of us understood it to be an ominous foretelling of where we were headed, but some of us: that portion who were headed into the unproductive parasitical class of academia, politics and “the arts” adopted its dystopian premise as a goal.

Fifty-three years on, it’s fully embedded in our culture.

For those younger readers who have been exposed to this rot in school without knowing its origin, Wikipedia provides a plot summary:

In the year 2081, the 211th, 212th, and 213th amendments to the Constitution dictate that all Americans are fully equal and not allowed to be smarter, better-looking, or more physically able than anyone else. The Handicapper General's agents enforce the equality laws, forcing citizens to wear "handicaps": masks for those who are too beautiful, loud radios that disrupt thoughts inside the ears of intelligent people, and heavy weights for the strong or athletic.