I probably should have better underlined this: I think a big part of the problem here is that a lot of people using the term just literally don't know what eugenics is. They just saw other people using it and thought it had power.
Americans are just obsessed with fairness. It's in our founding documents. People being created equal is a nice ideal, but we all know it's not true. At some point your ideals run into reality.
The Pandora's box which has opened is micro-leftism. The discovery that if you focus on micro, nearly invisible, almost spiritual manifestations of left wing principles and ideas, it becomes possible to hold them while also being privileged above most of the planet. They think a dash Theory, combined with a belief that conceptual ideas must inevitably run their course like a disease has given them moral x-ray vision to detect tiny cancerous racist specks soon to be out of control fascism.
Jan 18, 2022·edited Jan 18, 2022Liked by Freddie deBoer
The Social Security Administration offices have been locked to the public for going on two years now without interruption, barring a select type of "dire need" meetings. The lack of nuance some Twitter users have is staggering; I'd love to hear them tell me how my wishes to "return to normal" so my homeless, disabled clients can easily access their disability benefits is actually eugenics, really. Or is it that only disabled people on Twitter count, while the homeless people with schizophrenia and combat-related amputations don't?
The left's emphasis on words over argument was probably the first thing that pushed me away from identity politics. I still consider myself a radical, but I think that the use of "mystical words" simultaneously presents itself as very conceptual and abstract while flattening out any discussion into a nuance-free dead zone. For me, this started with the broadening of the term "violence" to include any sort of harm, which even 20 year-old me found to be an intellectually flimsy trump card and a really alarming sort of groupthink. As soon as you label expressing any questioning or sufficiently unethusiastic view as inherently VIOLENT, you've crushed people's ability to question and learn from your side; you're just asking them to obey, or else they're doing you immoral, painful harm for which they should be ashamed. I don't want to be on a side that approaches deeply important issues that with that mentality!
I think the government can and should do more for us, and that it's good to demand that they do so. But there's this weird left/liberal tendency to act like the government can solve absolutely any problem it wants and that when it fails to do so, it must be out of spite--and the most actively bigoted, villainous kind of spite. It's like an inverse of Hanlon's razor ("Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"). "People whose health is vulnerable are more likely to die," which is true basically by definition, becomes "the government let the most vulnerable people die" becomes "the government wants the most vulnerable people to die."
This post reminds me how much influence _ The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness_ (1912) had on the eugenics movement. These ideas have been in our intellectual air for a long time. And it is weird that people are thinking they are new.
I wonder if people realize that nature is the worst eugenicist. When a foetus is severely malformed or otherwise unlikely to be viable, the result is, very often, a miscarriage.
At a more human level, pregnant women regularly undergo ultrasound, amniocentesis and other tests to identify foetuses with problems, and generally abort these. Should this be considered part of eugenics? Who cares? More to the point, should these practices be limited? My answer is a firm no.
For me, the all-time overblown eugenics take was this guy accusing an episode of The Mandalorian for promoting eugenics. All because of a plot line where the bad guys wanted Baby Yoda's Force-sensitive blood. I shit you not. https://www.patreon.com/posts/44130879
It does seem like eugenics has developed a second popular meaning of: overlooking or not foregrounding the specific impact of something on a more vulnerable population when this impact is leading to greater death among that population. Intention, end game and guiding attitude toward the vulnerable population is no longer essential to the definition. But this definition also equates individual statements characterizing or justifying a particular policy, with any increased death following in the wake of that policy (even when little or no causal link).
Sometimes I see a similar dynamic with the term "white supremacy": embedded structural injustice is substituted for a particular extremist movement and associated racist agenda, and then failure to call out this embedded structural injustice signifies enabling of white supremacy, where enabling equals collusion with and enactment of white supremacy. There is analytic slippage among different modes and degrees of relationship to the tragic outcome.
I probably should have better underlined this: I think a big part of the problem here is that a lot of people using the term just literally don't know what eugenics is. They just saw other people using it and thought it had power.
Oh Christ, Ana Mardoll. This isn't the first time I've seen her come up in an article that listed a bunch of inane tweets.
Eugenics is when different shit happens to different people.
Americans are just obsessed with fairness. It's in our founding documents. People being created equal is a nice ideal, but we all know it's not true. At some point your ideals run into reality.
The Pandora's box which has opened is micro-leftism. The discovery that if you focus on micro, nearly invisible, almost spiritual manifestations of left wing principles and ideas, it becomes possible to hold them while also being privileged above most of the planet. They think a dash Theory, combined with a belief that conceptual ideas must inevitably run their course like a disease has given them moral x-ray vision to detect tiny cancerous racist specks soon to be out of control fascism.
The Social Security Administration offices have been locked to the public for going on two years now without interruption, barring a select type of "dire need" meetings. The lack of nuance some Twitter users have is staggering; I'd love to hear them tell me how my wishes to "return to normal" so my homeless, disabled clients can easily access their disability benefits is actually eugenics, really. Or is it that only disabled people on Twitter count, while the homeless people with schizophrenia and combat-related amputations don't?
The left's emphasis on words over argument was probably the first thing that pushed me away from identity politics. I still consider myself a radical, but I think that the use of "mystical words" simultaneously presents itself as very conceptual and abstract while flattening out any discussion into a nuance-free dead zone. For me, this started with the broadening of the term "violence" to include any sort of harm, which even 20 year-old me found to be an intellectually flimsy trump card and a really alarming sort of groupthink. As soon as you label expressing any questioning or sufficiently unethusiastic view as inherently VIOLENT, you've crushed people's ability to question and learn from your side; you're just asking them to obey, or else they're doing you immoral, painful harm for which they should be ashamed. I don't want to be on a side that approaches deeply important issues that with that mentality!
I think the government can and should do more for us, and that it's good to demand that they do so. But there's this weird left/liberal tendency to act like the government can solve absolutely any problem it wants and that when it fails to do so, it must be out of spite--and the most actively bigoted, villainous kind of spite. It's like an inverse of Hanlon's razor ("Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"). "People whose health is vulnerable are more likely to die," which is true basically by definition, becomes "the government let the most vulnerable people die" becomes "the government wants the most vulnerable people to die."
This post reminds me how much influence _ The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness_ (1912) had on the eugenics movement. These ideas have been in our intellectual air for a long time. And it is weird that people are thinking they are new.
twitter really does infantilize those who use it
Reading the string of tweets……reinforces my decision to stop looking at Twitter. I can feel my brain cells dying….
Thanks Freddie. Once again you've nailed it.
I wonder if people realize that nature is the worst eugenicist. When a foetus is severely malformed or otherwise unlikely to be viable, the result is, very often, a miscarriage.
At a more human level, pregnant women regularly undergo ultrasound, amniocentesis and other tests to identify foetuses with problems, and generally abort these. Should this be considered part of eugenics? Who cares? More to the point, should these practices be limited? My answer is a firm no.
My dad used to make us repeat back to him “life’s not fair and this is not a democracy.” He was a good dad.
Anybody else noticed an uptick in the number of people claiming they’re being erased, ignored, or thought of as “invisible” by the CDC et al?
My brain always hurts when people say dieting is eugenics (or genocide) because they’re trying to “eliminate fat people.”
I’m no fan of the weight loss industry, but that’s not what those words mean!!
For me, the all-time overblown eugenics take was this guy accusing an episode of The Mandalorian for promoting eugenics. All because of a plot line where the bad guys wanted Baby Yoda's Force-sensitive blood. I shit you not. https://www.patreon.com/posts/44130879
It does seem like eugenics has developed a second popular meaning of: overlooking or not foregrounding the specific impact of something on a more vulnerable population when this impact is leading to greater death among that population. Intention, end game and guiding attitude toward the vulnerable population is no longer essential to the definition. But this definition also equates individual statements characterizing or justifying a particular policy, with any increased death following in the wake of that policy (even when little or no causal link).
Sometimes I see a similar dynamic with the term "white supremacy": embedded structural injustice is substituted for a particular extremist movement and associated racist agenda, and then failure to call out this embedded structural injustice signifies enabling of white supremacy, where enabling equals collusion with and enactment of white supremacy. There is analytic slippage among different modes and degrees of relationship to the tragic outcome.