Sunday, May 19, 2024

Racehorse Genes


Credit the discovery to Michael D'Antonio.  He conducted a series of interviews with Donald J. Trump in 2014, of whom Donald Trump Jr. told the biographer "Like him, I’m a big believer in racehorse theory. He’s an incredibly accomplished guy, my mother’s incredibly accomplished, she’s an Olympian, so I’d like to believe genetically I’m predisposed to better-than-average."

Donald Trump in 2016 reportedly stated

I always said that winning is somewhat, maybe, innate. Maybe it’s just something you have; you have the winning gene. Frankly it would be wonderful if you could develop it, but I’m not so sure you can. You know I’m proud to have that German blood, there’s no question about it. Great stuff.

In  October of 2020 the Los Angeles Times noted

President Trump has alarmed Jewish leaders and others with remarks that appeared to endorse “racehorse theory” — the idea that selective breeding can improve a country’s performance, which American eugenicists and German Nazis used in the last century to buttress their goals of racial purity.

“You have good genes, you know that, right?” Trump told a mostly white crowd of supporters in Bemidji, Minn., on Sept. 18. “You have good genes. A lot of it is about the genes, isn’t it? Don’t you believe? The racehorse theory. You think we’re so different? You have good genes in Minnesota.”

Rabbi Mark Diamond, a senior lecturer on Jewish studies at Loyola Marymount University, was stunned.

“To hear these remarks said at a rally in an election campaign for the presidency is beyond reprehensible,” said Diamond, the former executive vice president of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California.

“This is at the heart of Nazi ideology… This has brought so much tragedy and destruction to the Jewish people and to others. It’s actually hard to believe in 2020 we have to revisit these very dangerous theories.”

Surprise! We have to revisit them now, four years later.

In January:


 Now, four months later, he's at it again:

 


This is not a case of simple bias. It is not "hate speech," however the aggrieved party in any particular instance at any particular time chooses to define it. 

Some would legitimately call it "white supremacy." However, it is even better understood as good ol' racism, a term grossly abused to include hostility, bigotry, discrimination, or whatever offends. As it is properly and defined narrowly, racism is

a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human racial groups determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to dominate others or that a particular racial group is inferior to the others. 

Authentic racism is almost never expressed these days, and is not commonly believed because of the tremendous- and growing- accomplishments in the USA of minority groups. It defies the reality of observation to conclude that a race, or members of a race, are superior because of selective breeding. But Donald Trump's commitment to the inherent superiority of one race to another was exhibited when last December 19, he contended that illegal immigrants are "destroying the blood of our country, they're destroying the fabric of our country." 

If he had maintained merely that the damage is to the fabric of our country, we could debate it, especially because "fabric" does not refer to genes or innate characteristics." But "blood of our country" makes all so obvious.

Whether racism, white supremacy, or Nazi ideology, it's a philosophy which the media seems unable to confront and explain plainly. However, there is less than a half year to the presidential election and the media is obviously unwilling to acknowledge that one of the two major political parties is completely under the sway, and in the grip of, a creature more debased than could have been imagined.


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