9:58am outside Apple Store entrance to Valley Fair Mall on March 12, 2011

When we saw this queue of Silicon Valleyites lining up to order the Ipad2, we couldn’t help but think of the famous 1951 science fiction story called The Marching Morons, written by Cyril Kornbluth.

It’s set in the future, when population control among elite people and excessive breeding among the less smart has created an imbalance: the population is now 3 million elites — and 5 million morons.

The elites work like crazy to keep the morons happy and finally, the main character (a marketing guy) uses his knowledge of lemming migration and moronic stupidity to come up with a scheme to send the morons to their death.

Meanwhile, the elites emotionally sedate the morons by giving them more and more consumer products (like the Ipad) telling them “buy these” and you’ll be happy.”

You can read the story (or Google the entire plot), and it will be clear why we took one look at the line and said “marching morons!”