16 Comments

I just want to point out that these misogynist eugenics boosters don't even want all the white women to be able to reproduce. A not insignificant number of the people sterilized by the state (and in many cases not nearly as long ago as you'd think) were white women with perceived unsavory traits; like promiscuity, feeble-mindedness, or other very much subjective "psychiatric flaws". In state hospitals for the developmentally impaired disabled and/or "insane" it was routine through at least the 1970's to sterilize these women without ever informing them or getting consent. As you can imagine this made sexually abusing them a lot less complicated. Thiel just amazes me with his sheer hypocrisy. The man is really quite literally often choosing to support totalitarian outcomes that he personally wouldn't withstand save for the fact that it's his money promoting them. What I can't believe is his belief that these sorts of structures could be put into place and not eventually come back for him. Does he really think they wouldn't? Of course they will, it's almost like he wants to torture the whole world out of some bizarre self-hatred based on shame. I really really really wish he'd just gone to therapy

Expand full comment

Sigh, I have a relative like Vance, super conservative, married to an actual immigrant from India (from a really wealthy family there and more conservative than he is). So he goes on and on about how he's not anti immigrant while parroting the usual "they're all criminals" routine. Apparently the southern border has some criminality virus surrounding it that flying into Dulles doesn't.

Expand full comment

As the proud father of three great grown kids, I admit to having a bias toward adults choosing to have kids. There are plenty of good reasons why people choose not to have kids, but there are some disappointing reasons too. Reasons like too much student loan debt, can’t afford childcare, or can’t afford a house. I’m not saying that these are invalid reasons, but as a society, universal public pre-K, denser zoning, and a higher minimum wage to name a few, seem like better ways to encourage people to have more kids than not letting childless people vote.

Expand full comment

Biden wanted to do a big investment in childcare; GOP killed it. (and of course they also killed the expanded child tax credit.)

Expand full comment

When I met my ex she was thinking about having a child for which Iwas very excited. It never happened so I am childless. Nevertheless, I had many satisfying years as a teacher: To me, all my students were my children.

Expand full comment

Being childless is quite often not a choice. So hearing Shady Vance saying my childlessness should bar me from voting is just as insulting as being denied voting rights because I’m female or because I have green eyes.

I happily pay property taxes to support schools and playgrounds and kids sports. Maybe Shady needs to take over my payments.

Expand full comment

As a member of the class biologically saddled with the physical work of gestation, I really wish men were capable of getting their heads around the idea that every single one of those children had to be pushed out by a woman, and the expectation that we will wind up being further shackled with grossly disproportionate caring work rearing said offspring for the twenty-odd years necessary to germinate a mature adult human, at the expense of all of my dreams and hopes and aspirations for my own life -

and then dump on top of that grim expectation the *trivialization* of that reality and yeah, it really should not come as any surprise that the instant that men had to get women's buy-in to have kids, women don't want to.

Expand full comment

And, more importantly, can't be made to.

Expand full comment

Thank you, Noah. It's truly abhorrent that anyone with ideas like this can attain political power. I am at a loss to understand how this hateful view of women will have ANY support. But, of course a convicted felon, rapist, fraudster is the nominee of a "major" political party, so what do you expect? Sad, and very dangerous times, indeed.

Expand full comment

The esteemed orange kitty in the picture seems to be thinking "Vance's ideology stinks worse than a week-old, unscooped litterbox."

Expand full comment

::Effective Altruism guru Nick Bostrom, for example, has fulminated about his concerns that less “intellectually talented individuals” (this is a racist dogwhistle for “Black people” ) might outbreed more intelligent individuals (like supposedly, Bostrum and his white buddies.)::

I know where I've heard this before—in the 1950s, C.M. Kornbluth wrote a pair of stories, "The Little Black Bag" and "The Marching Morons", about a future where intelligent people deciding not to breed resulted in a world with a vast majority of "morons*", people lacking any intelligence higher than low animal cunning. The few intelligent people left spent their lives trying to keep the world running and convince the morons to stop breeding so much—until an amoral real estate agent from the present (1950s) is thawed out of cryogenic sleep, discovers what's wrong with the world, and comes up with a plan to encourage the moron majority to migrate to Venus via a series of massive rocket ships...which will fly into outer space then drop in to the ocean, killing everybody inside.

You may recognize this story—Mike Judge borrowed heavily from it for his movie IDIOCRACY.

While a lot of us laugh at IDIOCRACY and nod knowingly, sure that it parallels the kinds of people who support Donald Trump? If you take it far enough, you end up supporting Eugenics, with the "smart people" breeding more and discouraging births among the morons. It's kind of ironic how many Right Wingers support it, given how much they rely heavily on a moron power base....

____

* "Moron" is a loaded term, originally embraced by the Eugenics movement, " to describe a person with a mental age in adulthood of between 7 and 10 on the Binet (IQ test) scale." (Wikipedia) I use it because Kornbluth did in his stories, recognizing it's now mainly used as a slur against somebody you perceive as stupider than you are.

Expand full comment

the far right looooves Idiocracy.

Expand full comment

So do a lot of people on the Left.

Isn't it GREAT that we can all come together in laughing at people we consider stupider than WE are? Let's all hug around the campfire and sing "Kumbaya"....

Expand full comment

It only matters to MAGAS that Vance’s wife is Indian. She knows what he is. Why she’s ok with it is beyond me. Speculation: she’s just as hungry for the power/prestige as her husband.

Expand full comment

I think, like him, she's very conservative.

Expand full comment

It seems like the only thing JD believes in is punishing all women who refuse to be good mommies. That and the power of contouring.

And that joining up with the U.S. Marines, an angry Catholic god, and obscene amounts of cash can ensure that he’ll never feel like a scared, confused, powerless little kid again.

Expand full comment