A Geek History of Time - Episode 235 - Why Eugenics Should Make Us Feel Bad About Liking Idiocracy Part IV

Episode Date: October 28, 2023

I'm saying that we were getting to the movies. Yeah, and I'm only going to get into a few of them. Because there were way too many for me to really be interested in telling you this clone version or this clone version in the early studio system. It's a good metric to know in a story art. Where should I be? Or there's beast. I should step over here.

Uh, yeah. At some point, at some point, I'm going to have to sit down with you like and force you, like pump you full of coffee and be like, no, okay, look. And are swiftly and brutally put down by the minute men who use bayonets to get their point across. Well done there. I'm good, Aimean. And I'm also glad that I got your name right this time.

I apologize for that one TikTok video. Men of this generation wound up serving a whole lot of them as a percentage of the population because of the war, because of a whole lot of other stuff. Oh yeah. And actually in his case it was pre-war, but, but you know, I was joking. Did he seriously join the American Navy? He did. Fuck it. 1.5-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1- This is a deep fight. When we connect, it's a real world.

Many of us play a lot during our history and age to turn around in California at the sixth grade level. And in just the last few days, I had a little bit of a hobbyist milestone, I guess, hobbyist parent milestone, in that my son and I finished building our first model together. And there are some qualifications there because my son is five years old. And the model in question was one that was a little bit, more advanced than one would expect a five year old to work on. But he helped me. And he was there as part of the process. And we took the time to complete a model that my very good friend, Alex, gave to me actually several

years ago that had sat in a box, unconstructed, until now. And so I have a Gundam model, now that I'm holding up to show to Damian, that is now in a spot, or was, till I took it down to show it off, was in a spot or was till I took it down to show it off, was in a spot on the shelf here in my office. And so yeah, got to spend some time doing that with him. And so he saw like how the clippers worked and sticking stuff together. And when I'd get a subassembly stuck together and have him stick the sub assemblies together. And it was pretty cool. So working my way up to when he's a few years older, having him put together his first 40k models, and then the cycle will continue. The cycle of plastic addiction will be passed on to the next generation So that's what I have going on. How about you? Well, I'm Damien Harmony. I am a

US history teacher at the high school level up here in northern California and I you know, I play several D&D games at off-sequence from each other So it's kind of like I'm only usually giving up one night every couple weeks because that's how adults play. Although on occasion I end up with like two games in the same week. Yeah, totally fine. No problem. My partner and I absolutely encourage each other to go have fun

without each other. Yeah. And also, you know, I'm encouraging her kids to play. and they're having a lot of fun and my kids are playing and Meet in the game and I found a couple things to be true number one in two of my games that I'm a player and I have affected the same accent and it's And it's a really shitty Irish accent.

And it's, you know, just, well, no, there, there, there, I'll be, I'll be in the one game, I'll be a bard and I'll be, his name is Tyra and you see. And in the other game, I am a cleric and his name is Lorcan. And it's the same fucking voice, but there's such wildly different characters.

Yeah, I have a lot of fun with it. In both games, other people have taken on accent without realizing it. Because I'm that forceful with it, I guess. Yeah, well, yeah. And in one of the games, one of the players, it kind of takes on a German kind of accent, which then blends with the games, one of the players kind of takes on a German kind of accent, which then blends with the Irish and he doesn't do it on purpose. And then the M kind of does a weird pigeon accent. So that's been fun. But what if this is viral like, oh, it is. It is.

Yeah, once one person in the table starts doing it. Yeah. So then on top of that, and there's only certain accents that spread like that. And I think because the lyricality of a bad Irish accent. Yeah. It's not a good Irish accent. And I couldn't tell you what part of the aisle it's from because nobody in Ireland talks with that accent. No. That being said, the thing that has actually interestingly spread tonight was in a group text conversation with one of the groups. One of the players just starts doing puns and going and going and I'm bouncing back and forth with them. You know, of course I

see somebody doing it. I'm like, oh, of course we're gonna encourage you, right? Well, yeah. And then he ends it with, yeah, I've been doing the nighttime routine with my kids and I got to get them into the shower and stuff. I have no idea why I just started doing puns though. And I was like, I can't say I have a problem with it. Carry on. So, yeah, which is good because that group is not the group because one of my characters, his, we've been allowed to write our own, what do you call it? Extraons. I deal with it.

Oh, yeah, OK. OK. Well, in the character where he's a bard, he is addicted to making puns. It's just written into the character. But it's not that game in which somebody started punning. So it's kind of nice. Just to find something.

There you go. So. Well, and speaking of nice just to. Oh, okay. Well, there you go. So. And speaking of puns, I spoke with a friend of the show, Professor Gabriel Cruz. Oh, yeah. And he said that he is angry that our podcast on the history of puns has made him in any way sympathetic to people who make puns.

So I'm out here doing the work. Yeah. On your statement about, you know, accents in game, there are two occasions on which I have consciously affected the accent for a character in that, in that character, and that has lasted for a new significant period of time. Sure. And in one of those games, I was playing a barbarian and the species of that character, I talked to the DM of that game and I said, I want to play a barbarian. I want to be a Yeager monster from Girl Genius from the webcomic girl genius. And all of the Yeager Monster dialogue in the web comic is written in a bad, bad Eastern European, like unrecognized, like where in Eastern European I played when you and I first met. Yeah, yes. Yeah.

That's fun. Like, for example, you know, Yeager monsters within Yeager monster culture, your rank and importance and how much of a badass you are indicated by the hat you wear. Okay. And so a compliment you might pay to another Yeager monster would be say, thoughts on nice hat. You know, any plan for your lose you hat is a bad idea, right? And you wind up

sounding like a professor Von Drake from the Disney cartoons, like, you know, you are an escape scientist as part of Operation Paperclip. Like that kind of, you know, caricature. And I wanted to play in that one for, I don't know how many sessions. And nothing happened there. I had a lot of fun with it.

Everybody else who got the joke that, oh yeah, you're a Yeager monster. It was like, well, you know, his deadline is a half-work, but he doesn't look like a half-work. He's like hairier and he's got this, that thing going on. So I had a lot of fun with that. Cool. That character went up, wound up getting killed by an unfortunate critical hit after a few sessions. In another game, a political character as a, as a, as a sc Scott. And, and a tried really hard just to make the accent as,

as light and as, you know, not, not be too overpowering and just keep it, you know, it's just, it was this background, right? You get all your, all your accents from Disney ducks? Well, a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, in this case, I was actually trying to sound like David Tennant when he's when he's not not affecting an accent in a role. But I wound up, I wound up, you know, doing it with with this kind of, you know, not not a really hard, you know, accent or anything, but it was noticeable. Well, in mid-session after like about, I don't know, eight or nine sessions of the game, I I dropped out of character to say something to somebody else and I literally had another player look at me. She looked at me across the table and she said, Oh my God, is that what your real voice

sounds like? I said, yes, she said, please don't take this the wrong way, but that makes my heart hurt. Like, how the hell can I not take this the wrong way, but that makes my heart hurt Like how the hell can I not take that the wrong way? So yeah, anyway total down sequitur and I just ate up. I don't know how many minutes of our time, but yeah Anything to delay Getting into Most were you Jenny's been talking about. Yeah. Yeah. Because oh my God, we've now gotten into the 30s. And oh, now we're going into the 50s. I'm just

shipping. Oh, we're just we're doing we're just doing a time jump. Okay. Because you genics clearly had its day in the sun as an experiment as a governmental policy, and a aggressive one, whereby they expanded throughout Europe and tried to enact it. And we're unfortunately very good at carrying it out. Yeah. Now, after World War II, Eugenics was tarnished by the clear connection to that new government in Germany that Charles was writing about. In the US, eugenicists were, of course, unfazed because they're American eugenicists. And they continued to pour money, time, articles, efforts, lobbying into the effort to increase eugenics policies and forced sterilization. They were still pushing that button hard.

increase eugenics policies and forced sterilization. They were still pushing that button hard. All right. One could even say that there were more desperate to get their aims accomplished, given what history had dumped in their laps. It shifted, however, to an argument about intelligence and fitness in the night after the 1940s. And it was less overtly about head shape, Aryanness and inherited criminality. So we replace criminality with intelligence. Okay, but it's all still there, but yeah. It is. The dog, the dog whistle has changed very slightly in timber, but the goal posts have moved.

Yeah, but it's still the same points. Now a lot of this is because of just how murderous eugenics policies have been in Germany and Germany and how it was impossible to separate them from the racism that led to the Holocaust. Right. Intelligence rather than racial superiority plays better after World War II.

After all, the GI Bill. Right. Now we're letting black and brown people into the colleges. Can we're letting first generation Americans into the colleges? So let's talk about ways to kind of select that out. But at that point in history, I don't think African, I don't think black, I was going to say African American, but black, I don't think African, I don't think black, I was gonna say African American, but black, I don't think black veterans were, were yet qualified for the GI bill. No, but they were getting access to,

they had greater access to monies and therefore greater access to public accommodations. And it was harder and harder to segregate across the board. Now you had to get in with it. So culture, well, yeah. And you could, I mean, again, this isn't a one for one swap out. Plenty of places, it's still played just fine.

One could still point to standardized tests and drop out rates and drug and alcohol dependency rates and literacy rates and stuff like that without having to say black or any other group that you want to target, right? But also Italians and Irish folk were white enough now. Like you you do start to see that. Culture rather than biology becomes the banner for eugenicists. There were still plenty of people to advocate for eugenics even for the same eventual goal, but now it's a slightly different path to get to that goal. Keeping people from breeding because their living conditions were bad, because they grew up with crime, because they were poor, that's the new path. It's not Lamarckian genetics so much as it is, these

people have had it hard enough. Let's help them to not have as many children in these conditions. So this way you can still argue for forced sterilization. Now it's not genetic based, right? Now prior to World War II, there's a man named William Shockley, who had worked in Bell Labs in New Jersey on solid state physics and vacuum tubes. After he got his first patent for an electron multiplier, he ended up moving to Manhattan and working on radar technology and anti-Somorin technology during World War II. Because of how smart he was

and how his efforts went towards saving US lives, the War Department commissioned a report from Shockley in July of 1945 about casualty projections if an invasion of the Japanese mainland was to happen. Right. And we've talked about this before. Uh-huh. Famously, Shockley's conclusion was, quote,

if this study shows that the behavior of nations in all historical cases comparable to Japan's, has in fact been invariably consistent with the behavior of the troops of in battle, then it means that the Japanese dead and ineffective at the time of the defeat will exceed the corresponding number for the Germans. In other words, we shall probably have to kill at least five to 10 million Japanese. This might cost us between 1.7 and 4 million casualties, including 400 to 800,000 killed. Last part that matters the most to Americans right last part that matters as far as giving groves the green light to drop atomic bombs. Yes. So that is Shockley's conclusion. Now when the war ended William Shockley focused on developing transistor technology. Transistor technology and while there's a lot of interesting intrigue that goes into that story the part that matters for this particular Podcast is that he's a brilliant electronics and physics guy who ended up going to California in 1953

He starts at Caltech And then ends up in Mountain View in 1956 because Palo Alto was where his mother lived and she was old in 1956 because Palo Alto was where his mother lived and she was old. Okay. As a result, William Shockley's reputation allowed him to recruit the best of the best to his new lab and company, which was the seeding of the ground

for Silicon Valley being what it became. Okay. It's all because his mom's, his mom was old and lived in Palo Alto. Okay. Anyway, as it turns out, William Shockley was brilliant with science and electronics, but a total fucking prick to his employees. And some of this, why does this not surprise me like at all? Right. Well, some of this has to do with the way that he got frozen out of getting credit for work on transistors back at Bell Labs.

They basically jumped from his shoulders, and he's like, well, how come you guys are getting that credit? I designed the thing. Why is my name not in it? And the result of this was that eight of his most brilliant scientists that he hired quit and set up something called Fair Child Semiconductor Labs, which ultimately doomed Shockley's company to dying.

And I think it got bought up with by Fair Child eventually. But again, William Shockley was brilliant. It was known that he was brilliant. And he was in California. Okay. And after his company folded, William Shockley joined on with Stanford University. You may have heard of them.

Yeah. While one of the top professors of engineering and applied sciences there, he gained more and more notoriety for a field in which he had zero expertise, eugenics. He is the poster child of transferred expertise. Yeah. And he sets a tone for a whole bunch of tech bros to do the same thing nowadays. His brilliance in science led him to thinking that his amateur interest in genetics made

him an expert on human intelligence, on race science, and so on. And he described this work as the most important work that he could do for humanity and his career. Because of course he did. Yep. Because when you zoom out far enough, sure, you can, yeah, okay. Yeah. It's this becomes the main hook upon which William Shockley hangs his eugenic hat And it's this aspect of it called discgenic reproduction Dysgenic yeah, wow so according to Shockley If a higher neck, yep if a higher rate of reproduction amongst what he considered measurably less intelligent people, if that went higher, there would be a commensurate drop in the average intelligence,

which would lead to a decline of civilization overall. So if more dumb people fuck and have kids, that's gonna dumb down our species and our civilization. I want you to remember Shockley's claim here on Dyschanics. Yeah, yeah. Now William Shockley also, in addition to being a brilliant, physics guy and electronic skies, shit that I could never possibly have to understand, he also advocated for rigid segregation between black people and white people.

Because of course he did. Mm-hmm. Because of course he did. This might be due to the fact that when he grew up, we did think about what doors were closed to black people entirely, right? Yeah. He may have just had some of the most minimal exposure to black people of any academic at the time.

Or sadly, it actually might have just been typical for for academics at his time. I didn't find the research going either way. Yeah, yeah, it could be. Yeah. Now, what would a brilliant academic who has some really weird views on eugenics and shit like that do with himself in the 1960s. Of course, hit the punditry circuit. He does this. He becomes the TX. So it culminates in 1974. So we're going to go all the way to 74 now on a debate where William F. Buckley is moderating. So there's because of course he has, of course, there's a debate between shock Lee and psychiatrist Francis Luella Wellesing.

Her name is listed in a bunch of different ways because she took on a married name and then she dropped it. So but the most common and consistent one I found was Francis Luella-Welsing. Now, Francis Luella-Welsing was a black woman who was a physician and an associate professor out of Harvard in the 1960s. Think about the rarefied air she's in, right? It'd be a black woman who was a physician

and an associate professor at Harvard. In 1970, Wellesang had developed the Crest Theory because her last name at one point was Crest, the Crest Theory of Color Confrontation. And I don't want to do her ideas at disservice here, but the shortest version I found online that still keeps the tone of what she discussed, because I read a lot of it, was that white people genocided the fuck out of everyone else because white people were psychologically obsessed with their genetic inferiority and their own genetic survival, because white people are the goddamn mutants. This lack of melanin, which only occurs in like very narrow bands of latitude, right, originally.

This lack of melanin led to white people using violence to enact a system that would keep them alive in a global apartheid and thus a creation of a white supremacist world. So the only way that they could survive was to become the top of an artificial world that they created where their lack of melanin was actually prized and protected. Okay. Okay. Because that system was so infused into everything, it became the norm and it led to communities of people of color self-destructing as a way of fitting into the white racist and supremacist power structure. Now, I must emphasize that she's saying this in the 1970s. Yeah. Quote. Racism in parentheses white supremacy is the local and global power system dynamic structured and maintained by those who classify themselves as white, whether consciously or subconsciously

determined. This system consists of patterns of perception, logic, symbol formation, thought, speech, action, and emotional response, as conducted simultaneously in all areas of people activity, economics, education, entertainment, labor, law, politics, religion, sex, and war. The ultimate purpose of the system is to ensure white genetic survival and prevent white genetic annihilation on Earth, a planet in which the overwhelming majority of people are classified as non-white, black, brown, red, and yellow, by white-skinned people. All of the non-white people are genetically dominant in terms of skin coloration compared to the genetic recessive white-skinned people. And, quote,

Okay. There's a lot there. There's there, yeah. She's a doctor and a psychologist or psychiatrist. And she's also transferring expertise. But she's speaking as a black woman who has done a lot of research as a physician. So I would give her more credence into human systems because of the psychiatry, down to sociologic stuff that she's talking about, and into epigenetics. I would give her more credence than I would give an electronics professor.

Yes, an electronics professor or a specialist on VD. Right. You know, just to randomly pick something. And this is like what year are we talking about? Well, so she wrote that in 1970. The debate that they have on TV is 1974. Okay. It's kind of a fun one to watch. I'm sure.

I'm sure. Yeah. I got to say what I find interesting there is that ties directly into the rhetoric, the lack of a better word, and I'm not using that word in order to try to downplay her discredit what she's saying, but that's the word that comes to mind of Malcolm X and the nation of Islam. There is a separatism in the... Elijah Muhammad preached and Malcolm X early on when he was a proponent of Elijah Muhammad. Very proponent of Elijah Muhammad, in his very famous interview with Alex Haley,

he said, look at the nutritional value of brown bread versus white bread, you know, which one is more fulfilling. If we, if we, you know, make coffee lighter, we make it weaker, There's a very similar kind of energy there. And what she has to say about the insecurity underlying building systems of white supremacy. Yes. And upholding said systems. Yes. And working to maintain and uphold said systems is 110% like I'm not I'm not gonna I'm not gonna I'm not gonna take any of that down fairly indisputable.

It's it's pretty yeah like it's it's pretty clear that it's fear and fragile is literally fear of a black planet you know, but you're right. I mean, you know, she's got a lot of meat on that boat. Yeah, there's a whole lot there. Yeah. Um, and I think it's remarkable that, um, she was even given a platform. Like if, if you look at what the media environment was at the time. Well, it's so that she wrote this in 70 and in 74, she's on TV. She's debating with him. It's actually, it's fairly indicative of what they would have on. Think of anything on the Dick Kovets show.

Okay. All right. Yeah. Dick Kovet show. Okay. All right. Yeah. Dick Kavali would debate with cool in the gang. Okay. Yeah. You know, there was a high degree of black separatism that was, that will get people watching and and punditry started to turn into not just we're going to have to inform people, but like Gore Vidal and Buckley turned it into, oh, you hear what he said, you know? Yeah, yeah, that's true. So that's true.

All right, okay. But yeah, I mean, what you said about a lot of meat on that bone. Yeah. She also had some things to say about homosexuality that, uh, do not age well, but they're along the same vein, essentially, about, okay, masculinity to people. And so she talked about homosexuality as being an outgrowth of that. You remember, it's still, I think at that point, it's still in the DSM. Um, yeah, but it's not. It's

what it recently taken out. So, yeah. And, and and there's a lot a lot of ink that has been spilled about Homosexuality and and the black experience and yeah, like there's there's a lot that I'm not qualified to talk about other than to I'm passing that she did in fact have a lot of homophobic things that she said Okay later on she has clarified them as well though. So, okay. You know, time capsules or time capsules. Yes. So, uh, in 1974, Shockley, the physicist, debated with Wellesing, uh, who I think at the time was called Wellesing, it might have been her last name is Cress at that time, but again, what's been most consistent. He debated with the physician about race and he said, so shockingly the physicist said to the physician, quote,

my research leads me inescapably to the opinion that the major cause of the American Negroes intellectual and social deficits is hereditary and racially genetic in origin, and thus not remediable to a major degree by practical improvements in the environment. Well, fuck that guy. Yeah, a little bit. Just saying, dude, he then went on to advocate for voluntary sterilization. We've grown. Yeah.

Why paying people to do it? Hopefully, though, so at least he's okay. You would get $1,000 for every point below 100 on the IQ test. I honestly don't know. I honestly, yeah, no, you know what, you know what I do? That makes it worse. Yeah, that makes it worse. Yeah. That's, yeah, okay. I'm just going to say I don't know if that makes it better. No, you know what? No, I can, I can come to an answer on that. Yeah. That makes it worse. That's. And he was insisting that he wasn't racist. Because this isn't about race.

It just happens to be that I said that thing about black people a second ago, but it's, it's, but it's about IQ. It's all about, it's all about IQ. And that is a, a standard measure, not an anyway racist. Oh, but it's so fucking racist. Yeah, yeah. I mean, like questions on the IQ test are, you know, use, use terminology. I mean, certainly at that time, I don't know if they still do, but like notably, they use terminology for me yachting for God's sake. I mean, it's

proven time and again, by experts who are way smarter than the two of us combined. Yeah. That yes, this shit is racist. Deeply, deeply and incorrigibly racist. Um, would you like to hear his reasons for why he's not racist? Oh, oh, do tell. Well, because white people aren't the smartest people in the world. That's the Hebrews and the Orientals. Oh, shit. Oh, gone. Now, I paraphrased, but that is the

shit that he was saying. See, I'm not racist because I think this I'm going to have these two names that are racist to other groups. Yeah. Oh, God, did he actually say, did he actually say Oriental? he, of course, he did. So he did say orientals. He did not. I did not find anything where he said specifically Hebrews, but he did mention Jews being intellectually superior, which congratulations. All it took was God awful history. And you went from being naturally feeble-minded to intellectually superior to intellectually well because because because this is the 1970s now and we've had since the 1920s for the protocols of the elders of Zion and that whole fucking conspiracy theory line of bullshit to be, to be,

to be passed around. Yep. And, and to, to filter into the background of everybody's, you know, preconceived notions. And if they're going to be the masterminds who are running everything behind the scenes, obviously they have to be intellectually superior. Yes. Fucking. Ah. Now, uh, shot. So many shitty people in 1982. shitty people. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. In 1982, Shockley ran for US Senate from California.

In a clown car of what the fuck? California, in a clown car of what the fuck? Um, because he was a single issue guy. You want to know what is it? You genics? Yeah, stopping this genic reproduction. You're fucking kidding me. Nope. He ran. Yeah. He ran for Senate. Yes, in in in the latter days of the 20th century, uh-huh on on stopping certain groups of people from reproducing, uh-huh, like never mind. So this is 70 what again, this was 82 80. Oh, you want to know not on the economy, not on the environment, not on disgenic, disgenic, that's, that's the biggest, that's the, you know, not the cold war. Not, not nuclear proliferation.

Not, not, I don't know who's opponents were. I'm going to find out whether I want to or not. Yeah, most of this is the the Democratic ticket, but some of it's on the other side too. Yeah. Um, let's see. Uh, Gore Vidal, Maureen Reagan, John G. Schmitz, the Republican representative from Orange County and John Bridge Society member, Barry Goldwater, Jr. Tom Metzger, the founder of the White Aryan Resistance and notable skinhead neo-nazi, Jerry Brown and the post recall election 2002. And it was. It was. It was.

It's not. Let's not lie. Yeah. This was. Yeah. So overall. So. Yeah. Sure. Okay. Um. This was yeah So overall Sure, okay

The 82 yeah, and I This this shows you how insulated I was from things as as a 70 year old. I I don't remember any of that What what percentage of the I know I'm gonna regret asking this question, what percentage of the vote did he get in the end? I don't remember the actual percentage he got. I know that he was in one without a majority. Yeah. Well, in a field of that many competitors.

Yeah. I'm trying to remember I remember I saw the raw numbers and I think he got somewhere like 2,500. Okay, let's see. I'm looking up the results as we speak, which I hate doing. I like the figures there. Let's see. Just so you know, Jerry Brown got 1.3 million, he got 50.67% of the vote in the primary. Right. Yeah. And let's see. Yeah, so that's that's the primary. Okay, here's the Pete Wilson ends up winning against J Brown. Pete Wilson does get 51% of the vote in the general election. Okay. I apologize. Oh, here we go. That's right. He ran as a Republican. William Shockley got 0.37% of the vote, which was 1-100th of Pete Wilson's 37% in the primary. So William Shockley got 8300 votes essentially. Interestingly enough, that's roughly the same number of people as we noted in the prayer

episode. That's roughly the same number of people who were forced to be sterilized by the state of Virginia. Odd, how these parallels come up in history. He got 8300 people to vote for him to go to Congress. Yes. On this. Yeah.

Not gun control or anti-gun control. Right. Not. Yeah. So many shitty people. All right. Okay. Now overall from 1909 to 1960s, a low estimate of around 64,000 people in the United States were forcibly sterilized through legal means. There is no way to measure how many this happened to extra legally. Now after the Holocaust, the connection between eugenics, state-sponsored

cost a connection between eugenics, state-sponsored, force-forceable sterilization, and Nazi murder regime was inescapable. And yet, from the 1960s, the mid-60s through the late 70s, forced sterilizations went from over 64,000 to over 80,000. What the fuck? The focus of eugenics had to shift, and so too did their targeted populations. In the first half of the 20th century, the targets for forced sterilization had been people deemed mentally incompetent or morally incorrigible. Both populations were institutionalized by the state and either care facilities or prisons. The second half from 65 through the mid 90s saw a targeted increase specifically amongst poor black indigenous and Latina women who are often unwed mothers. In the 1970s, somewhere between 25 and 45% of indigenous women aged 14 to 40 were sterilized

against their will. It was used as a tool of coercion in states where these groups were were fighting for equal civil rights. It was nicknamed the Mississippi Appendectomy. Yeah, to have it colloquial, colloquial, to that level, it was recorded up through the 1990s. And I'll discuss more of that on the end of the show, but I'm honestly all of this has been a setup to tell you about a Movie that has been a bit of an underground tongue-in-cheek delight that came out in 2006 directed and written by Mike judge idiot

Mm-hmm. So the plot Yeah, a painfully average schmo working for the military ends up in a 500 year hibernation stasis along with a prostitute. It is notable that this prostitute is a woman of color. It's Luke Wilson and oh god, Maya Rudolph had her name right on tip. They awakened 500 years later and the world has changed and gotten dumber to the point where these two are the most reasonable and intelligent people on the planet. He ends up fixing the world by being smart enough to use water on crops, becoming president, marrying the prostitute, and going on to father three children, the world's smartest

kids. Meanwhile, his Virgil in the Stantes in Inferno goes on to have 32 children with eight different women. So that's the basic plot. Now to the production, Mike Judge was the originator of Beavis and Butthead and King of the Hill prior to this movie. And he had gotten a physics degree in 1985 from UC San Diego. Go. Whatever. Aztecs. Or you see UC San Diego. Go. Tritons. Tritons. Yeah. Now he quit that life after a few years and he got into animation right at the perfect time. MTV was looking for a more animated content and his shit was just off beat enough and liquid television featured frog baseball,

a brief short featuring, he was in butt head for the first time. Right. Yep. And that debuted them since so many people were smoking pot and clothes in the 1990s and watching MTV. This was the best possible timing. Hot and clothes. Yeah.

I find I find. I find it's part and interesting. Okay, that's a bit of a very such a 90s thing. Well, yeah, yes. So disagree. Close and Doc Martins like. Yeah, that's the smell of my childhood. So he came up with the original idea for idiocracy in 1996, which he

called at that time, 3,001. Now, as the new millennium was dawning, he ended up writing a movie about his experiences in the square world using the Y2K bug. As the central plot point, we know this movie to be office space. It's off beat. It's actually one of Jennifer Aniston's first comedy roles after she started friends and it's actually a pretty clever movie and it took off giving my judge the cred necessary to push for idiocracy, which was he according to his own account inspired partly by a visit to Disneyland. In an interview, he said he saw two mothers with kids and strollers fighting and cursing at each other in front of his family and everyone else Okay Now because Mike judge continued to roll 20s in his life He was able to point to the cult following that office space had gained

Especially the revenue that had been generated in the DVD market, which was just getting off the ground in the early 2000s generated in the DVD market, which was just getting off the ground in the early 2000s. As a result, my judge was able to push 20th Century Fox Studios to back the film, despite they're saying, okay, we'll back it, but it's not going to have a very wide release. And they deliberately refused to screen it for critics. And I think it's, yeah. And I think it's actually specifically that aspect of Movies in the early 2000s the DVD market that made this movie okay for people to watch Because you watch it alone

It plugs at your intuition and it feeds into your prejudices that you wouldn't dare share out loud in public or you might not even recognize that you have and The buzz around it then was selective. You would promote it to people in your friends and family groups that you also think would sympathize with these ideas. And they would asymptotic audiences to the messages that the film had. And while it was campy and it was funny and it poked fun at corporations, which was its own kind of funny thing, because a lot of corporations signed on, they're like, yeah, and then it just like, you know, Starbucks is giving out hand jobs. Starbucks is like, yeah, we don't want it. And it's like two late already in there. Yeah. Carl's Jr. Yeah. Oh my god. Yeah.

It had plenty of great lines. And the movie was at its very core, a love letter to eugenics. I don't think there's that much in Mike Judges specific background to make him prone to eugenics. It's not like he's the Dilbert author. But I did find it interesting that he ended up writing a eugenics movie as a man with a degree in physics. It just rhymes with shock Lee. Yeah, it kind of does. And more broadly, it rhymes with Gady and Burbank. I have this expertise in science. Yeah, so I'm going take that expertise in science. I'm gonna, you know, what occurs to me based on the, you know, I got the idea because I saw this thing happening. Right.

There is a very deep seated level of, not just, I mean, we've already, we've already gotten into how this becomes a white supremacist thing. Like, we've already talked about that at depression. But there is a very, very powerful classist, Oh my God, look at the trailer trash. Like the people in idiotocracy who come in for the most mockery are not people of color. But they are anybody below a certain socio-economic level.

Yeah. And these are people who are interlopers at Disney Land. Yeah. You know, what are they doing with us? Like, what the hell are these people? Yeah. You know, the level of, oh my God, the Holi Palloy. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So the movie. All right. Going. No, let's. I'll, I'll, I'll come back or do it. Sure. Yeah. So the movie opens with the thesis statement, a three and a half minute explanation of how we got so dumb starting in the 21st century. Yeah. comes out in 20 or 6, right? quote, human evolution was at a turning point natural selection, the process by which the strongest, the smartest, the fastest reproduced in greater numbers than the rest, a process by which a process which had once favored the noblest traits of man.

And then it cuts to a shot of Einstein smoking a pipe, Beethoven, Charles Darwin's portrait. Now began to favor different traits cut to Joey Butterfouco, China, post WWE, celebrity boxing, most science fiction of the day predicted a future that was more civilized and more intelligent. Cut to a 1950s color drawing of the future, a white guy in a tunic floating a ball of light, hovercrafts, futuristic vehicles, lots of white people in clouds and technology, a monorail. But as time went on, things seemed to be heading in the opposite direction. A dumbing down cut to literally an amusement

park. How did this happen? Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduce the most and left the intelligent to become an endangered species. And and then and I remember this vividly, oh, I'm going to go into detail is to the next part. Okay. All right. Then I know that I won't belabor it. Yeah. to that part. Okay, all right. Then I won't belabor it. Yeah. But it's going to sound a lot like the calcac. Oh, ain't it. Yeah. But what struck me as you were as you were describing that. And I had forgotten it. The bit about science fiction of the time had predicted. science fiction of the time had predicted and the 1950s images of science fiction utopia. There is that I immediately thought of Gibson and the Gern Gibson writing his master's thesis about hard science fiction as as fascist literature. And I'm like, wow, this all is kind of okay.

Well, and ties up neatly together, don't it? All of this reminds me of like the talks that we had on cyber cyberpunk. Yeah, that's it's it's well, yes, it is yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's it's it's a part of the genre that I think many writers in the genre would look at and go Yeah, I suppose technically it's our stuff, but fuck that guy who like you know judge in the room God Yeah, what what you can't get him out of the carpet, you know, it's gonna be a bitch Yeah, it's that because you know the the Wow, yeah, all the elements are there. Yeah, it's that because, you know, the, the, wow, yeah, all the elements are there. Yeah. Well, a lot of them are, it's where we're not, but you tell me, just ain't going to

fucking happen is silentlyization. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It is the flavor punk. What, um, what old town road is to country? It's 100% that thing and purest are like, but no.

But no. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, but okay. All right. Yeah.

No. Yeah, it just goes to show that even even the the best genres have have black sheep in their in their family. So absolutely. Okay. Well, you can use, I mean, blazing saddles as a Western. Yeah. You can use this, the genre to subvert itself, you know. Yeah. All right. There you. Yeah. Okay. Now, then it cuts to the thing you're talking about, the case study of Trevor and Carol versus Clevon. I mean, first off,

the whiteness of those fucking names Trevor and Carol. And sure enough, Trevor and Carol and sure enough Trevor and Carol want children Trevor's IQ is listed specifically at 138 carols is at 141 both talk about how important a decision it is to have children and why they're waiting then it cuts to Clevon and Trish who already have four children and one of those children's probably around seven years old already, Clevon Jr. and she's shit. I'm pregnant again. They're also white, but decidedly not middle class. Leavon's IQ is also listed at 84 and he complains about having too many damned kids. He also accidentally lets out that he's got a child with Brittany as well. And that starts a fight between him and Trish. It then cuts back to Trevor and Carol five years later. Still don't have kids. And then it cuts

back to Clevon and his child spinning donuts on a motorbike as his neighbor Brittany with whom he's had another child is arguing with his wife Trish, who is ignoring two children on her stoop, and the one of them is holding an assault rifle so that she can continue to fight with Brittany with Clevon trying to loudly keep the peace. Now by this point, both Brittany and Trish look pregnant again, and Clevon has made one more child with Brittany. Cut back to Trevor and Carol, who are now struggling with fertility five years later. And it's straining their relationship. And then cut back to Clevon's family, but his son,

Clevon Jr., who has an IQ of 78, and who is a football star, is now loudly declaring that he's going to fuck all three of the cheerleaders that he's hugging after a football game. Also, Clevon seems to have stepped out on both Brittany and Trish to make a baby with Mackenzie while also making two more children with Trish. And the family tree grows. Clevon Jr. has one child with Kayla, one with Caitlyn and one with Rebecca and one with Gabriela. And yeah, all the names are absolutely coded. On the Clevon side, the following children's names are given Trevor Arianna Tyler faith Brianna cleat us with an eye Arianna Tyrone

Kylie Dylan Kayley with two ease Destiny Mason and Diego Then you cut to cleavon senior five years later and he's gotten into an accident on a jet ski wherein he smashed his nuts irreparably. But thanks to stem cell research and the new surgery techniques used quote, the doctor says quote, Clevon should regain full reproductive function. End quote. And as a result of this, he goes on to have Courtney Antonio and Jack with Brandy, Seth with Brittany, and Hannah and Noah with Kayla, the girl that Clevon Jr. had already had destiny with five years earlier.

So he's sleeping with one of the gals that his son had slept with. Meanwhile, he's also gone on to have Jacob, Jennifer and Alexis with Trish and Clevon Jr. has gone on to have Brandon Sydney with Gabriela and Kate with Kayla. Then you cut to five years later. So I think we're at the 20-year mark. And Trevor died of a heart attack trying to rub out some sperms for in vitro fertilization. Luckily, Carol has some eggs frozen and is just waiting for Mr. Wright and she looks so sad and desperate. And Clevon now has produced Luis and Vanessa with McKenzie too, as well as Sydney and Faith with Trisha,

Aaron and Jack with Brandy, and then it cuts to a truck that is just a rockin' and the Cleveland family tree explodes sideways and downward and always possible with too many names to count over the next 60 years It's a film I like how much yes Yes And then we get to the movie yeah, yeah, that's that's not even that's not even the plot of our film right

I just want to point out that yeah judge judge pointedly mm-hmm makes the, the liberals, the, the middle to upper middle class, you know, smarties. Yep. According to IQ scales, which again, we've already, yeah, we've already established the bullshit. Oh, we're comparing apples to apples. Absolutely. We've already established the bullshed. So we're comparing apples to apples. Yeah, absolutely. Apples to apples. He puts both of them in the 131.44 category,

which is moderately gifted, acknowledged as moderately gifted, according to, you know, psychologists to use this stuff. And Cleveland starts out at 80, 89, 85, 85, that is the bottom end of average intelligence according to this, to this system. And then his son is in the borderline mental disability category. Yep. That's not how that works. Right.

Like, you and I both have the, okay, we're going to teach you just enough psychology. So you have an understanding of, like, you know, this will help you, supposedly, this will help you learn how to teach. Mm-hmm. So let's, you know, so what you and I already know about cognitive development and if that's, we're already in bullshitville. Yes. Like that's that, that is not how that

works. But if you remember your punnett squares, if you remember peas being wrinkled or smooth, if you remember brown eyes and blue eyes, if you remember all that kind of shit, this intuitively seems correct. Yeah. So, yeah, it's so much like the Caltech study that it's shameful. And then we get to the movie. Yeah. And then we start the plot of the movie, which just gets worse from there. So you get the most painfully average and apathetic soldier played by Luke Wilson, Joe Bowers.

That's right. Average Joe. Yep. He's named as remarkably average by scientists who are studying him. He sits at the exact top of every single bell curve in their presentation and the woman that they've chosen for this experiment and the experiment is hibernation essentially like freeze your best soldiers until you need them right. So in vitro but without the breeding the reading, right? Yeah. Um, so they're like, let's test it on average people first, right? Yeah. So I mean, expendability much. So, uh,

he's at the top, but then they also get to see what it's like on women and they can't find a woman who's that average. So they find it prostitute. Um, and there are several pictures with her Pimp and it's very black exploitation. It's very immensely. Yeah. Dolomite and a white scientist square who's using the N word without the hard R several times. Now that's where Rose. Yeah, that scientist. And of course, that's funny in 2006, you see, because there he is using that word. I mean, Vince McMahon used it once to the same exact effect actually.

He said, my and and walked by Booker T and Booker T is like, tell me I did not just hear him say that. It was played for laughs. And it's 2006. Yeah. So of course, that scientist got busted for running a prostitution ring on the base, which caused the whole base to be closed out of shame, which I'm pretty sure that's not how it works considering how many of that operates. Yes. That point still exists. And they had several cadets running prostitution rings out of the nearby hotel years and years ago. ago. But it got closed out of shame. The project got forgotten about after they had been

hibernated in their pods. And scientists, instead of looking for ways to improve humanity, continuing, continued focusing on how to conquer hair loss and prolong the erections. Now this is pretty funny shot across the bow. Yeah. Meanwhile, the population exploded and intelligence continued to decline until humanity was incapable of solving even its most basic problems.

And quote, yeah. Now because of this, it leads to the great garbage avalanche of whatever fucking year it becomes. Yeah. And Joe's coffin is in that garbage avalanche and it slides all the way down to the apartment of Dax Shepherd's character, Frito Pendejo, where Dax Shepherd's character, Frito Pendejo, is watching a huge television and sitting on a very well-apportioned lazy boy complete with a tube for drinking whatever it is he's drinking a toilet and really good speakers and he's getting ready to watch out my balls right on the violence channel when Joe comes

out of his pod. Now the show is surrounded by flashing advertisements all over the screen as Pendeo watches the preview of the riveting show. And I'm pretty sure he's eating nacho cheese with his fingers or some sort of marshmallow cream. Yeah, it's yeah, it's something yeah, disgusting. Yeah. And Luke Wilson's character Joe starts talking and Pendejo is like shut up on watching TV and eventually assaults Joe throwing him out of the house, um, ignoring that his house has been smashed open by a garbage pile because he's busy watching TV. And then we get to follow Joe taking in the new world, right? Some brands retain their similarities and others have devolved.

For instance, Fudruckers is hosting a child's birthday party, but it's now called Buttfuckers. Yep. Quote, the English language had deteriorated into a hybrid of Hillbilly, Valley Girl, inner city slang, and various grunts. So, okay, let's pause it right there. Yep, or just half a second List those one one more time hillbilly. Yeah valley girl. Yeah inner city slang Yeah, and various and various grunts, right? Okay, so so and again we come back to the Classism and now and now we're getting racist. Yeah. Which is further compounded by the fact that as Joe is walking down the street, the denizens that he gets attacked by or chased off by are typically out of shape

and people of color. Yes. Yeah. Being overweight is equated with being dumb consistently Consistently to get to the hospital with that. Yeah. Yeah And Sorry, I'm remembering the hospital scene and and Much much like in blazing saddles, the you want some bane scene. Right. You put this one in your mouth,

you put this one under your arm, you just take this one up your butt. Right. No wait. Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle. Right. Like, you know, the movie, the movie is awful, but that's still funny.

It's the whole thing, like true. Yeah. And right now I'm feeling intensely shamed about finding a part of this movie funny. But like that was, that was like gross out comedy gold. Right there. There's plenty of that that was funny. You know, I'm not so wrong, but it was all funny.

Not really wrong. Yeah. But yeah, the, the the the immense smugness Mm-hmm like, you know, speaking as a graduate of a UC school Like dude, our shit stinks just like everybody else's like I want to I want to talk to judge about like You you understand that you aren't somehow, like there is no moral value associated with having the kind of education that you got.

Like, that's not actually a thing. That is not actually virtue. I feel like somebody needs to tell you this because the fuck, yeah. All right. Yeah, and again, it's dystgenic. The long people dated. Yeah, consistently for over a long period.

500 years. Yeah, yeah. And you know period of 500 years. Yeah. Yeah. And the thing is, if this was a Malthusian thing, like if it was just too many people were having too many children for this many, and you're making a dystopian movie about make room, make room, soil and green, you know, whatever, you know, if you're adapting the sheep look up or something like that, then okay,

but that's not what we're talking about here. It's, it is, the emphasis is very clearly on these are the wrong kind of people. Right. And it's been allowed to breed for generations. And this is what you get. Yeah. So Joe goes to the hospital and the receptionist, another person of color, hits the icon button to have the automated system tell him where to go after being confused by what he's saying. Yeah. She never speaks to him. She goes back to being numbly distracted.

And it kind of the system that she's using kind of looks like what McDonald's cash registers were looking like at one point in the 90s. Yeah. Which I still maintain is actually a pretty good system because now you don't have to worry about language barriers and it allows people access to the economy. Yeah.

He goes for a drink, Joe goes for a drink of water and we unlock the Brando subplot, right? Yeah. But what I found interesting was that the doctor, he spoke to about it, was a person of color, seems to be Polynesian coated, was also fat, and didn't know why he'd want to drink water, quote, like in the toilet, and then the doctor goes away

giggling at the idea of a man drinking from the toilet. The doctor does this is a doctor. And eventually Joe gets to meet with a doctor who's smoking what appears to be a split and uses the word essay to refer to Joe. He's a white guy and the doctor tells him his quote, shits all retarded because it's 2006 and that was that was common word in the zeitgeist. Yeah. It's something edgy people used, but I found it on episodes of ER as as 2005. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, your shits fucked up. It's okay though. My my first wife was started. She's a pilot now.

Right. Yeah, that whole exchange. Mm hmm. Dan Cook was the number one comic in the nation by a lot of metrics in 2006. If nothing else, he was on everyone's radar. Uh, he did on platinum in 2003 and would double platinum in 2005 on SN, it was on SNL. He recorded his first HBO special in 2005. He also, oh no, no, the doctor also uses the word Fag repeatedly. And it comes

out that Joe is unscanable, which sends Joe running because the doctor freaks out about it. Yeah. Um, because everybody has a, uh, notes can. Yeah, everybody has a, uh, a barcode. Now, and back on the street, Joe is surrounded by people of colored and people of color and billboards. Um, the number one movie in the country was a movie called Ask. Now, eventually, uh, Joe happens upon a mom who gets gasped by a Carl's Jr. Kiosk for vandalism. She is deemed an unfit mother and her children are remanded to the custody of Carl's Jr. Then the police show up and find Joe and arrest him for not paying his hospital bill

or for having no tattoo. The narrator then uses the R word to describe the state of justice turns out his lawyer is Frito Pendejo. Yep. So again, there's just some echoes that are noticeable here. Somebody whose children have been taken away from her, Amanda, and whatever. The lawyer is a guy who is not going to represent you well. His prosecutor placed to the crowd entirely and his lawyer, Frito, turns on Joe to also play to the crowd and get him declared guilty. Meanwhile, the prostitute, named Rita, is looking for her

pimpe, scared to death of him. She was 4-1-1 to find him, and it turns out that, oh God, I forget. I didn't write down his name. Do you remember her Pimp's name? Oh, no, I don't remember. Okay, well, it turns out there are now 9,726 listings for people of his name. And then she gets approached by a young man of color

whom she scams into paying her without providing insects. Even the computers are stupid in this world. Mistaking Joe for being named not sure. Yes. And he has to take an IQ test to get into prison. And he sees people who are way dumber than he is and he's starting to notice. And again, the representation here is very diverse. So when it's stupid people, it's very diverse. Lots of people of color in this dystopian, everyone is dumb, critical, criminal future. Yes. And then Joe escapes

prison by simply telling them that he's supposed to get out that day. Okay. Now, when Joe comes back to Pindejo's apartment, he finds himself watching, or he finds Bendejo watching the masturbation network, which again, what was one of the number one causes of institutionalized Irish people in California in the 1800s. Yeah. So, Joe tries to explain time travel to Bendejo who struggles to keep up with basic math. They make their way to Costco, which is staffed and filled with people of color. And within the Costco, where tons and tons of sex worker based businesses,

but from here, Joe gets arrested and brought to the White House, which is staffed by really stupid people. Yeah, the president himself is a black man named Dwayne Camacho. Now, real quick, it's 2006. There have been no black presidents in the United States yet. It is a probe that this is how we know we're in the future. But also, this movie is about, look how bad it's gotten. Mm, yeah.

Now, Dwayne Camacho is also a professional wrestler, which again, looking down on the vulgar arts, who doesn't know much of anything other than how to be a professional wrestler, complete with giving promos, having an entrance, automatic weapon use, and singing like a preacher. When he meets Joe, he literally feels Joe's head and comments on its size. I expected your head to be bigger. Yeah, okay. That's some incredible shit right there. Yeah.

Yeah. That's some total for an electrical shit there and there. Yeah. So while Kamacho is giving his speech about how shit's fucked up and it's been fucked up for a while, but I've got a plan. He gets interrupted, of course, by South Carolina. The problem is that essentially, shit's fucked up. Crops aren't growing and the president has given Joe about a week to get it sorted out and fixed because he doesn't understand the time lines or how that. because he doesn't understand the timeline or how that. Yeah. Of course, any and all discussion that Joe tries to get them motivated and moving is met with the dumbest beavers and butthead comments from the cabinet. He becomes the

secretary of the interior. I believe the secretary of education won the job in a contest. Yep. When Joe discovers that the crops are being watered by Brondo, because the corporation bought the FDA and FCC, meaning that everything that took water actually was being forced to take Brondo. And this is the part that satire, but it almost immediately falls back to people being super dumb. And then in a tender moment, Joe asks, how the world ever

get like this? And they have an uninformed discussion about Einstein building the atomic bomb because he realized how dumb everyone around him was. The next day, Brondo's stock drops to zero, laying off literally half the country, and so an angry and dumb mob shows up to the White House, and again, largely led by people of color wanting Joe to die. Now, the news station again, good satire is Fox. And it has a topless beef cake and a woman who is both thicker and more modestly dressed than what we see nowadays on Fox.

dress than what we see nowadays on Fox. Their main reporter, or Micah Davis reported on Joe's trial and sentencing to death by monster truck, colloquially known as rehabilitation. And when Joe's facing his fate, he tells Rita to go back in time to tell people to go read stuff. Now he will go librarian, but there you go, right? And when it's time for his rehabilitation, the announcer is announcing a very cheap kind of voice. That's actually Mike judge. Really? Yeah, which is its own layer of problems. Yeah. Anyway, it's a race against time. We'll read a get to inform everyone that the water plan worked before Joe gets executed. Of course, the biggest monster truck everywhere is too big to fit into the arena, meeting that Joe could stand a chance. He winds up defeating

both of his executioners, but the third one comes back at the end and has a flame thrower. But luckily, they get a camera out to the crops to show that a week of water has been good for crops and Joe gets pardoned by the president. The movie ends with Joe getting elected president and he started culture back up again. They had three children, the smartest people in the world, and Pendejo took eight wives and made 32 kids, 32 of the dumbest kids ever. And that's the end of the movie. Yeah. Now, the movie didn't do much in theaters at all,

but in the DVD market, it made more than 20 times its box office, $9 million in DVD sales. And again, I think that's how it flies under the radar for quite a while with how eugenicsist it is. People shared it with those they love, people like I said, like before, people who share the same prejudices and are thus validated and go on challenge. Everyone thinks it was shared with them because they're on the smart side of things, not on the dumb side of things. And people make glib jokes, which I myself am guilty of having made of it wasn't supposed to be a documentary.

Uh, the movie plays on our prejudices toward other idiots who'd play the lottery while confirming that we are special and good enough and smart enough to actually win the lottery. Yeah. Or people who speed but get mad when someone else passes them by. I don't think the movie does that on purpose. I think my judge is falling over backward via intuition into propping up eugenics the same way that most of us do. He's more than coffee-yield. He thinks he's exceptional and most of us are dumb, just like the rest of us do. He's a special snowflakeake just like everybody else. Exactly. Yeah. I have evidence to back this up. Presently 73% of Americans think they're above average drivers. By comparison, 66% of Europeans think that they're just average drivers. Okay.

65% of Americans think they're smarter than average. I couldn't find a similar study of Europeans to continue this comparison, unfortunately. But a recent study showed that 17% of Americans actually think that they could be to chimpanzee in an unarmed fight to the death. Those, those people don't know, don't, don't understand about muscle attachment points and, and just actually how fucking terrifying, full grown chimpanzee actually is. Like part of that, I'm, here's the thing, I'm not going to say that that's so much exceptionalism as it's just that they don't, they don't know chimpanzees. They have a set of assumptions about what a chimpanzee is.

Like, no, I, I mean, I get where you're going with that, but I don't know if that's necessarily the same energy. The number of Brits who think that they could defeat a chimpanzee is far less than 17%. Yeah, okay. I can, I can see that. 14% of Americans think that they could be to kangaroo, which means that more people think that they could be to chimp to death with their bare hands over a kangaroo. I think there's a bias against. Yeah, you know, yeah. Yeah, 6% of people think they could beat a grizzly bear in unarmed combat. See, those 6% are either, here's the deal,

I think of that 6% 2% of that 6% so so hold off 4% 2% are our zoomers who are taking the piss who are trolling okay okay the other 4% are our narcissists they're psychotic they don't they don't they just they're a grizzly bear is up to eight feet tall and over 800 pounds. Yeah, no, I know. Yeah, I mean, I mean, six percent of Americans are like, no, I fucking take it. I could I could I could do that. And that didn't surprise me.

What surprised me was that 2% more than that. So 8% thought they could defeat an elephant or a lion. More people thought they can handle. Hand to hand on that. I will beat a lion to death. I don't think I understood the question. I think I Now here's the thing.

It's not a major. Obviously, it's not a majority. It is single digits. Yeah. But everyone knows that we can picture the kind of person who thinks that they could be to grizzly or an elephant or a lion or a wolf or a gorilla. And it's no that far a jump from thinking of that person and thinking that they're more likely to breed than us who recognize when we're overmatched by nature's all stars of murder. And it's not that far leap from there to thinking that the world would be better off if stupid people didn't breed. And congratulations, we're now the target audience for people who said idiocracy isn't supposed

to be a documentary myself included. Yeah. A defining feature of American culture has always been a sense of exceptionality and exceptionalism. And a result of that feature is that when we look up and down the line at who's on the good side and who's on the bad side, we always see ourselves on the good side. And that nature, that baked in cultural feature is so easily weaponized that we are entertained by movies that say without saying, movies that unsudderly nudged us toward the idea that inferior shouldn't fuck and have kids. It's why society didn't burn down the Mississippi government buildings and hospitals when it came to light that Fannie Lou Hamer was sterilized in 1961 against her will and knowing

consent when she went in to get rid of a uterine tumor. She was a civil rights worker who yeah, and she went in for a uterine tumor and she had a Mississippi up in deck to me in 61 against her will and against her knowing consent. And nobody burnt that building to the ground. After all, the whole reason for forced sterilization against someone's will in Mississippi was based on there being an uneducated poor person and isn't that the humane thing to do for a poor black woman who's fighting for civil rights? After all, she might not have adopted her four daughters to whom were her deceased daughters if that were the case.

And it's certainly why people didn't rise up to do all that I said plus add salt to the land when her daughter Dorothy died at 22 because the hospital refused to admit her due to her mother's civil rights activism at that time. So much neck punching. Mm-hmm. Because the other side of exceptional, the other side of exceptionalism is finding ways that others aren't. The reason I would never get in a car accident at that busy intersection is because I know better than to speed through there, unlike those idiots. And this one time I did speed through there,

but I had a good reason, unlike those other morons. And the reason that I don't get beaten down by the police is because I don't break the law in a way in front of them, etc. And the reason that I don't get beaten down by the police is because I don't break the law in a way in front of them, etc. And the reason that I'm not living poor is because I waited for the right time to have children. If only others had done what I've done. And the problem with society is that there's no accountability for our choices, you see. Carol did the right thing and she has no kids to carry on her legacy, but Clevon didn't and he's got dozens of progeny who are out there Fucking up the gene pool by putting their unworthy genes into the system And if I keep thinking that way I can never have to worry about the actual policies that we put into place because the unfair ones won't hit me

And the fair ones just show how exceptional I am In a world of juke's I sure am glad I'm a Davenport And the fair ones just show how exceptional I am. In a world of juke's, I sure am glad I'm a Davenport. Ideography proves it. I need another beat. Drink up. Yeah. Yeah. So there you go. The part that bothers me the most about the movie

is at the time in 2006. I did not, I did not interrogate any of that. No, no. Like I swallot. Yeah. And and wow. Just, I mean, it wasn't until recently that people didn't start re-looking at that movie. Yeah, that's true. And again, I said things like it's not supposed to be as late as 2019. Yeah. But, oh my God. Yeah, it's, and again, maybe even as late as 2022. I mean, if I'm being honest, it's entirely likely. Yeah. Yeah.

But it's a version of pattern on the wallpaper. Yeah. Because, well, you know, I mean, I'm not coming from a place of wanting to deprive anybody of their rights. Like I'm not, I'm not, like that's not, that's not, that's not, that's not, that's not, that's not, that's not, that's not, that's not, I mean, like, you know, we, like, no, we, you see how bad, like how easy that is. We can't, yeah. It's so, it is, well, yeah.

It's, there is this, there is this, there's this stripe, this streak, it'd be a better term, in evangelical theology, that wants to blame the devil. Once wants to put the devil in everything in the world. Like, you know, and it's frankly, it gets it gets Manicchi and it's like, you know, the devil is like this anti-god figure. And he's everywhere in the material world is inherently evil and like, I mean, you know, it leans in that direction really hard. And of course, for those unfamiliar mannequinism was defined by the Catholic Church

as a heresy in the early church, because the devil is not equal to God in Orthodox Christianity. But there is this whole streak within evangelicalism that puts this out there. And what is impossible for us to escape is our own natural intellectual laziness. And that is the devil natural intellectual laziness.

And that is the devil that I think we need to look out for. If that makes sense. Yeah, just like that. Like we, you know, because there is something to be said for, you need to be suspicious of the easy answer. You need to be suspicious of the easy answer. You need to be suspicious of the easy way out. You need to be suspicious of the, well, you know, it's not really that big a deal. Like solutions to complex problems

are never ever anything other than a grift. Yeah, and a grift and a really bad idea. Right. You know, and the seductiveness that gets attributed to the devil in his wilds, it's not necessarily anything sinister like that. It's just the fact that for evolutionary reasons, shortcuts are something we groove on psychologically. And if we can think up an easier way to do something, or if our brain can find an easier

way to connect to ideas, that's what we're gonna do. Mm-hmm. And that's a big part of the problem with this kind of idea. Yep. Because the number of times you've pointed to, you know, I don't agree with anything these people are saying, but I can see where it's intuitive. Uh-huh.

Because we can observe dog breeding, we can observe citrus trees, right? You know, and like pardon me, sorry about that, but when when you know, geneticists actually point out, okay, no, let's, let's look at the length of the genome of this other thing you're talking about and let's look at the length of the genome of this other thing you're talking about. And let's look at the length of the genome of a human being. Well, there's, there's so much more. Well, yeah, but, but just, just aside from not everything is genetic, there's, there's, there's, look at the complexity of the system you're talking about.

Yep. And anybody with a background in, in genetics is going to say, genes, you can have a gene for something, but if that gene isn't like influenced by the environment in order to be expressed, it doesn't matter. You know, and there are so many like chaos there, we get into chaos there when we start having to talk about this stuff because you can't predict what's going to happen

Well, and see even if let's I you know my favorite tactic and in any kind of argument is yeah everything you said is true Even if there is a dumb gene and it activates yeah 80% of the population. Okay Explain to me how that means they shouldn't have kids. Yeah and it activates 80% of the population. Okay. Explain to me how that means they shouldn't have kids. Yeah. Like, yeah. Go ahead and make your case. There's a, like, go ahead and make your case. Go ahead and make your case.

Yeah. Ono from, there is, there is a paradigmatic idea or a paradigmatic difference that unless you are a Jeremy Bentham, shit, utilitarian, right. Unless you're looking at a utilitarian standpoint, okay, no, the highest good is that which creates the greatest good for the greatest number, right? Utilitarianism. Unless you are 100% dedicated to that, to the detriment of individual human dignity. Right. This is this is this whole all of this that we've been talking about is a bad fucking idea.

And I've I've said it repeatedly over the course of time we've been talking about this. If you zoom out far enough, you can justify lots of shit. Right. And and most of the appeals to these kinds of thinking, including the utilitarian aspect, are appeals to intuition. It is appeal to your particular prejudice. And there are a lot of them. And, you know, I have a friend who's a comedian who says that he never says I'm not racist.

He says I struggle with racism. Okay. And it's a really good way to put it. I struggle with, I, I will agree. I also struggle with racism. I also struggle with like, elitism. Oh, but I have put in a lot of work. It is big time. Yeah. Um, but it is so easy for me to find common cause with, how Jesus Christ, I hope they don't have children. Like, you know, it's intuitively easy.

It is so almost knee jerk easy, because I, somewhere deep down, I think that I am exceptional, and that they are not, you know, again, if you're exceptional, you're looking for ways that other people aren't. Yeah. And I mean, like, there's nothing about the eugenicist argument that doesn't disgust me.

There's also nothing about the eugenicist argument that feels wrong on a visceral level. Yeah. It. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like it all intuitively makes way too much sense. You can, yeah. It's wrong. It's morally wrong.

Morally and ethically. Yeah. It's inhumane. It's monstrous. It's, yeah. It's evil. Like it is. But it's intuitively very seductive for me. Yeah, well, it might not be for other people

There might be plenty of people who are listening to this or like wow, Damien and you're a prick You know and yeah fair assessment Like you know, it's not okay. I fully admit that you know, it's It's well the thing is what what you said, what you said, what you said a couple of minutes ago is, is I think for anybody who is, who is approaching it from the point of view of, of seeing themselves as one of the educated, one of the, I'm one of the smart ones. Right. It's an easy answer. Right. You know, if we, if, you know, to, to just about any,

any social problem you want to come up with, you know, overpopulation, poverty, you name it. Like what happens? I've talked lessons on overpopulation that I'm just like looking back at now going oh shit yeah wow yeah like you know um and and when when you look you know uh there is there is a non-zero overlap between you know environmentalists and people who who fall into the trap of believing this stuff.

You know, there are... There's... Yeah, eco-fascism and there's a whole sub splinter faction within environmentalism. I don't remember where they're called dark green or whatever, who basically advocate for no, the human population needs to shrink dramatically. And whatever we got to do to make that happen is the best thing for the planet,

which is like on the one hand, I understand again, I understand the chain of logic that leads to it, and that's monstrous. Like, you know, and, and, and again, these, these are not, uh, traditional, you know, right wing authoritarian fascists, they're coming at it from a progressive left wing direction, but they're still winding up in the same kind of place. Because supremacy is supremacy, regardless of, yes, regardless. Yeah, regardless of the politics behind it. And, you know, and again, this all comes down to it's, it's an easy answer to a problem that is very thorny and is going to be very hard to solve and will require hard work and, and, and creativity

and a lot of other, and a lot of other stuff. Well, okay, nobody, but the easy answer is this thing, you know, and we want easy answers. You know, we crave them. Yes, we do. And it's exhausting to have to fight against the easy answer. But, you know, coming at it from a Catholic point of view, it's like, well, I can take the easy answer or I can keep my soul intact. So yeah, I mean, you know, again, if the if the problem is complex and the solution is simple, be aware. And if the solution is couched in your own exceptionability, run. Yeah, like it's not, I haven't seen it be constructive yet. Don't get me wrong, Sac State is a wonderful college.

Yeah. Yeah. I have friends who teach at the high schools and the middle schools named after these people They have done great work and thank goodness for the monies that those guys dedicated to that Bummer that they also dedicated the monies toward all those other horrible things Word toward all this white supremacy and other horrible shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's also baked into I mean What was the PE curriculum from the 1920s forward? It was square dancing. Yeah, like it's all it all connects, you know, and yeah, it's

you know, I'm not I don't think that there's a unified field theory to most things in history because history is complex. It's a series of made up by people who are reacting to decisions made up by people who are reacting to decisions made up by people who are reacting to decisions made up in on and on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a Fleetwood Max song, you know, writ large. Nice, nice. But at the same time, the supremacy does seem to be a really common through thread that weaves its way through all the things. And not because I'm looking for the pattern in the wallpaper. But yeah, it's anything.

But it shows up. It's up in Swedish pop. Like you remember. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and and weirdly, and I haven't I haven't done anything about this because the research would be kind of tedious, but weirdly it winds up showing up in in the background of of Japanese media too, which you wouldn't expect it to because you know, I like people, but like... I mean, if you look at the Japanese, Imperial zeitgeist in the past 20s, 30s.

Yeah, and we've treated the Koreans after 1905 and... And I can't see it. But, you know, just to the level of ubiquity. Right. Like, you know, so, yeah. There you go. Yeah. All right.

It's cool. So, yeah. So, I just finished this beer and now before I go to bed, I feel like I need another one, but that's probably a bad idea. Well, instead of that, let's talk about what you're gonna recommend to people. What am I gonna recommend to people? I'm not going to make a recommendation right now,

other than go find something, go find something affirming, go find something, go find something warm and cuddly and fuzzy that makes you happy. If you got Netflix, there's a wonderful series called like Art in Nature or something to that effect. Okay. It's not even a documentary. It's just people going to really cool places with drones and filming it in really good definition stuff. My kids and I watch a bunch of swans in Japan for like 10 minutes and we were mesmerized.

That sounds really meditative. It was nice. You know, you watched a crab crawling up a tree into heady. Oh, that's good. Like five minutes. Yeah, it was right. So, so there you go. Go watch our nature. Whatever. There we go. Alright, so yeah, and that's kind of you giving me a recommendation to give, but I'll take it at this point because yeah, I'm actually going to, I'm going to drive the nail home and recommend the accuracy. Now that now that you have four episodes of background treat it like those highlights pictures where you're like, oh, where's the wooden spoon?

Oh, where's the skateboard? Oh, where's the, they'll find it. Okay, there you go. Yeah, turn it into turn it into an active like interrogate the film as you're watching it. Okay, that's, that's, you know what? That's, that's, uh, redemptive. I think so. I think it's destructive. Yeah, there you go. Like, that's okay to be able to, it's okay to find shit funny. Yeah. You know, the whole bit about asking a movie is pretty goddamn funny. Um, the fact that, you know, Clevon, uh, uh, fucks his son's girlfriend is funny on several levels. Yeah.

And, and, uh, oh, yeah, Costco. I got my law degree there. Right. Or I don't think we have time for a hand job, you know, those things are funny. Those are all very, very funny. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but all folks sucks. Yeah. It's also, you know, yeah. So. All right. Can you be found? I cannot. Okay. I'm on threads at the harmony. All right. Cool. And we are still for the time being on Twitter. At Geek History time, we can be found at woobah, woobah, woobah. Geek History oftime.com. And you are listening to us. So you have either found us on our website or on the Apple Podcast app, Stitcher or Spotify. Wherever you've found us, please, please give

Damian the five stars he deserves for putting himself through all of the emotionally arduous research. He did here. And if I didn't say it already, make sure you subscribe. And where is there any place you can be found? You know, you already mentioned. Yeah, stick to threads. The harmony and the harmony. All right. Yeah. Okay.

Well, for a geek history of time. All right. Yeah. Okay. Well, for a geek history of time, I'm Damien Harmony. And I'm at Blalock. And until next time. Oh, my balls!