I just finished reading a long review essay about Dagmar Herzog’s recently published book on sterilization and eugenics in Germany, The Question of Unworthy Life: Eugenics and Germany’s 20th Century. Since I wrote a miniscule survey of the same ideas in America’s 20th century as background for a claim that those perfectionist ideas are returning to center stage in America today, I was interested to find how recently the practice of sterilizing mentally disabled people remained alive as a legal possibility in Germany. [My article is at Just to be clear – Sierra County Citizen.] Today, with medical advances in knowledge and practice, with the ability to change the genetic make-up of fetuses, the perfectionist idea driving eugenics is much more complicated, especially as politically compounded in the abortion arguments.
But let’s be simple minded about this. What if the MAGA idea that we can rid the society of undesirables, druggies, alcoholics, imbeciles, sexual predators, genetic illnesses, the criminal “elements,” the unproductive, the feeble-minded, foreigners, etc., were correct. What would that mean?
Well, for one thing, if you believe in God and in perfectionism, you are believing in a God that miscreated the world. In fact, if you believe in God and believe in perfecting American genes, you are not just pitting your judgment against His but think that you can do better than He did.
Of course, you might respond that God created the imperfect world to allow humans to perfect it, but then you would be saying that God created the world purposely for humans to murder each other.
If you don’t belief in God and you think we can create a race of nice folks, then, you must believe in human knowledge and ability, or what we call science. But science has for 100 years been telling us that the idea doesn’t work, that those attributes we want erased are not all inherited, that value is not natural but socially created by group-think. Or, as someone has said, the proposer of sterilization, eugenics, or fetal manipulation clearly thinks that he or she is in the elite destined to judge others who are not in that elite.
Of course, if you don’t believe in God and also don’t believe in human knowledge and ability but believe you can perfect the race, then you are just an opinionated, feeble-minded nut, with a very large ego.
If the perfectionists were right, clearly the liberal movement in the late 20th century was wrong. Furthermore, the liberals’ successful campaign to bury perfectionism, or at least to push it out of mainstream consciousness, has had fatal consequences. If the liberals had failed — if the eugenic movement were genetically correct and if they had succeeded with their policies — we would not now have a country of feeble-minded and violent people, happily supporting a group of feeble-minded and violent people play-acting the government.
[I like this feeble-minded business-speak from Secretary of Interior Doug Burgum when speaking about tripling some national park entrance fees for non-residents as part of the America first policy: “Starting in 2026, United States residents will be able to purchase an annual interagency for just $80.” As if the annual pass hasn’t cost $80 ever since 2017. By the way, don’t forget to carry your passport when you go to a national park, now that park rangers are part of ICE.]
Clearly, the liberals brought on their own demise. Now they don’t know what to do except to go back, just like MAGA. But there is no going back, ever. We think we live in a spatial world because when we look at reality we see distance and location. We look to the right and to the left, and we know where we are spatially relative to everything we see. What we don’t realize is that reality is only time, movement and change, appearance and disappearance. There is no going back. And, there is no “what if.”
I subscribe and donate to this online newpaper because I thought it was for local issues and not just someone’s personal platform for whatever they decide to write.
I thought this post was about the ideas and concerns of local people. We in Sierra County think about, are concerned with, and relate to all kinds of issues larger than the locality. Doesn’t that make these issues local? Furthermore, the ideas and thoughts that circulate locally are just like the language we speak here, the money we spend, the groceries and gas we buy. They all come from non-local sources, but that doesn’t make rising prices at Bullock’s or Walmart any less a local issue. As a colony of the bigger world, everything we do here, including thinking, derives from the outside. In that sense, real localism begins by acknowledging our dependency.
Your publication should stick to investigative reporting. I don’t need to read a lot of general blather. there should be a Content Alert mailing list for investigative reporting articles, such as Kathleen Sloan writes, which I would like to be on, and another list for personal opinions of other random people such as this author, and I would like to be removed from that list. News covers actual events, and does not consist of solely opinions on general topics. Thanks.
Please create one mailing list for Content Alerts that deal with actual local events and put me on that list. Make another mailing list for Content Alerts for people that have time to read rambling opinions not dealing with concrete local issues. Make sure I am not on that list.
We will, of course, consider your request, but can you give a reason to do what you want? At the present time, all articles are prominently labeled as NEWS, ANALYSIS, PERSPECTIVE, etc. The authors of the articles are also plainly shown. You do not have to read things you do not want to read. What, then, is the problem that you want us to address?
This website intends to promote public discussion. That means not only the presentation of facts but the presentation of argumentation (rather than name-calling or dismissal). It means the use of reasoning in order to interpret those facts in order to form an opinion. The public discussion we seek to promote is the process whereby publicly, socially, and politically useful opinion is formed. We do not think that useful opinions are simple ughs, grunts, and a thumbs up or down sign of personal approval or disapproval. Opinions, especially, conflicting opinions, serve the public only in the form of public discussion, through a process of articulation. That is the reason why news, local or international, has meaning.
You have commented several times on this article without once engaging in its subject, its facts, its reasoning, or its conclusion (i.e., its opinion or perspective). You have said that it is not of local interest without saying why or based on what evidence. I have explained why I think the article is about concerns that are indeed local. You have not responded to that explanation. Since these comments are public discussion, would you, please, use this public forum to articulate your objection and to answer? Why should we do what you want, since we already give readers fair notice of what they are about to read?