A quest for eugenic superiority continues

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Eugenics by any other name smells the same. It actually has a lot in common with today’s just-plain racism. AND HERE WE ARE BACK WITH DONALD, with his racist white nationalism and his mistaken vain concept that he is some sort of exemplary genius. But look at sons Donald Jr. and Eric as an example of what he has spawned tp rule a world teeming with what he calls “losers.”

Almost a century ago, In the opening address of the Second International Congress of Eugenics in 1923, Henry F. Osborn, president of the host American Museum of Natural History, said: “. . . We are engaged in a serious struggle to maintain our historic republican institutions through barring the entrance of those unfit to share in the duties and responsibilities of our well-founded government . . . In the matter of racial virtues, my opinion is that from biological principles there is little promise in the melting pot theory. Put three races together (Caucasian, Mongoloid and Negroid) and you are likely to unite the vices of all three as virtues . . . For the world’s work give me a pure-blooded . . . ascertain through observation and experimentation what each race is fitted to accomplish . . .The right of the state to safeguard the character and integrity of the race or races on which its future depends is, to my mind . . . incontestable . . .”

Such ideas were not fringe but were widely held and taught in universities. While eugenics is basically the science of improving a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics, it’s going on today with scientists fiddling about with amending DNA. In its early 20th-century hey-day many countries adopted eugenic policies, intended to improve the quality of their populations' genetic stock. Such programs included both “positive” measures, such as encouraging individuals deemed particularly "fit" to reproduce, and negative measures, such as marriage prohibitions and forced sterilization of people deemed unfit for reproduction.

Hitler murdered six million Jews with a view toward putting in a place a white Germanic/Nordic aryan race.

In the decades following World War II, with the institution of human rights, many countries gradually began to abandon eugenics policies, although some Western countries, the United States, Canada, and Sweden among them, continued to carry out forced sterilizations. A major criticism of eugenics policies is that, regardless of whether negative or positive policies are used, they are susceptible to abuse because the genetic selection criteria are determined by whichever group has political power at the time.

WHICH BRINGS US BACK TO DONALD and his racism, border wall, deportations, his general white supremacy that is the handmaiden of basic eugenics. Donald is practicing eugenics via his nationalistic racial-exclusion policies.

Here’s a handy, lengthy article on the subject: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2757926/ Wikipedia also gives a detailed outline of the subject.

MEANWHILE, what’s the state of the nation and the world? Investigative newspapers, including the Associated Press in general, such sources as the Bloomberg Media Group, etc. tell the story diligently and effectively—and with an accuracy not found in the vain and inane tweets of Donald Trump, the ravings of a Sean Hannity or the blathering of Fox & Friends.

“With climate change, Iceland’s preparing for a world without ice”—headline, Seattle Times, Aug. 12. Global warming is affecting the Arctic at twice the rate of the rest of the world. As the glaciers melt, so does Iceland’s economy.

Headline (Bloomberg, Aug. 10)—“Trump delay casts doubt on first major U.S. offshore wind farm.” The story begins: “The Trump administration cast the fate of the nation’s first major offshore wind farm into doubt by extending an environmental review for the $2.8 billion Vineyard Wind project off Massachusetts.” Consider Trump’s eagerness to drill for oil offshore and in the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve, and read the story at: https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/federal-delay-casts-doubt-first-191544602.html

And consider a bevy of headlines in The Seattle Times Aug. 13:

—“Administration weakens Endangered Species Act.” New rules will allow the Trump administration to reduce the amount of habitat set aside for wildlife. The changes were undertaken as part of Donald’s mandate to scale back government regulations on corporations, including the oil and gas industry, that wants to drill on protected land.

—“Trump policy favors wealthier immigrants for green cards.”

—“Police say racist posters found at synagogues” (South Seattle).

—And more rape and ruination reported Aug 13, Trump’s despoliation of Appalachia: https://www.yahoo.com/news/secret-billions-from-china-radioactive-waste-and-poisoned-water-trump-plan-appalachia-200330402.html

—Aug. 14—Getting shot by police is a leading cause of death for black men in the U. S.”