Maga's era of 'soft eugenics': let the weak get sick, help the clever breed

[Nevilledog]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/may/04/maga-soft-eugenics?CMP=share_btn_url

No paywall link
https://archive.li/kIl04

English polymath Francis Galton formulated the concept of eugenics in 1883. Inspired by animal breeding, Galton encouraged people with “desirable” traits to procreate while discouraging or preventing those with “undesirable” traits from doing the same. As social and intellectual qualities were hereditarily “fixed”, he thought some groups were naturally superior. Galton constructed a racial hierarchy, with white Europeans at the top.

Eugenics has since played out in varying, always tragic ways. Attempted genocides and forced sterilization are first to mind, though the 20th century brought about the concept of soft eugenics: non-coercive methods of reducing certain conditions through individual choice and medical advice.
Popularized in Nancy Stepan’s 1991 book, The Hour of Eugenics, “soft” eugenics is accomplished by indirect, environmental, and educational interventions while “hard” eugenics is marked by direct biological interventions (such as sterilization). The term has since been expanded in discussions of genetic technologies, prenatal screenings, and physical fitness.

Enter Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US secretary of health, who regularly laments over the “back then” of his youth when he says that diabetes and autism was almost unheard of and obesity rates were far lower. (In his campaign videos he would often do this over vintage footage of white bodies splayed on a beach.) Kennedy champions living harmoniously with nature, free from the burdens of “poisonous” food additives, fertilizers, cooking oils and the most toxic chemistry of all: vaccines.

Kennedy’s myopic emphasis on personal responsibility as the main driver of health means he’s at best indifferent, and at worst welcoming, of the idea that those that don’t heed his counsel might die.

*snip*

[B.See]

1. K&R

[Bernardo de La Paz]

2. Families who need a $5000 baby bonus are not generally the most clever if they are that impoverished

$5,000 doesn't make much of a dent in the cost of creating and raising a new child.