I feel the need to periodically remind people that Idiocracy is a eugenics movie.
One of the things that eugenicists believe is that it is bad for society when the “wrong people” breed.
The entire premise of the movie is that “stupid people” kept having kids while “smart people” didn’t have kids, and it ruined society because stupid genes propagated while smart genes died out. This is eugenics propaganda.
I know people will read this and their response will be “actually it’s satire” but the movie isn’t satirizing eugenics. It’s satirizing anti-intellectualism, and consumerism, and it proposes eugenics as a solution.
When eugenics was first conceived, it was used as a way to justify inequality. The idea was that people who held privilege were able to do so because they were smarter and genetically superior to lazy and stupid people who don’t have privilege. Obviously this is bad and wrong, but it is also the core lesson of Idiocracy.
The movie literally ends with the main character becoming president and having “the smartest children in the world.” Because he and his wife have smarter genes than everyone else. The proposed solution for the things that Idiocracy is satirizing is for the smart people to have children that can be in charge of the world.
I know it’s fun to use this movie to dunk on anti-intellectualism and the MAGA movement, but we need to stop. When you quote and reference this movie you are spreading eugenics propaganda.
This is such an important addition. It’s wild how often people accidentally stumble their way into eugenics, and it’s vitally important that people are educated and aware of eugenics and the problems with it.
And also, intelligence largely isn’t genetic! It’s mainly factors like nutrition and education that determine how intelligent someone is. That sort of biological determinism bullshit is a key component of a lot of racist and classist beliefs, and is used to justify social Darwinism, a pseudoscientific belief that certain groups (mostly class/racial groups) are better than others and therefore “deserve” to be treated worse and kept on the bottom of hierarchy.
Always remember: royalty the world over has been trying to breed intelligence and competence for thousands of years. If that were how it worked, they would have succeeded by now.
Suppose one were to genuinely believe that the Idiocracy theory: that smart people have smart kids and dumb people have dumb kids. The efforts of a small handful of people or families can’t really give us the kind of broad data we’d need to test this, so let’s look at a bigger scope.
Now let’s suppose we have a society set up in such a way that the smartest kids, the scholars and intellectuals, are separated from the rest of society. They go into their own institutions and sub-societies held apart from the rest of the world, and they are heavily discouraged from ever getting married or having kids. And this system continues for several hundred years, across multiple countries.
One ought to conclude, therefore, that this society is selectively breeding against intelligence; and that even if there were individuals who buck the trend, the overall cumulative effect would be a downward trend on the intelligence of the overall populace. Logical, right? Because the dumb people are having kids and the smart people aren’t. Certainly, such a society would never be able, after several centuries of this, to produce any kind of noted intellectuals, engineers, or natural philosophers of any repute.
Anyway the society was feudal Europe under Catholicism. This is a fun thing you can tell a white supremacist if you’re ever unfortunate enough to get stuck in a conversation with them for some reason
Elephants call out to each other using individual names that they invent for their fellow pachyderms, a study said on Monday.
While dolphins and parrots have been observed addressing each other by mimicking the sound of others from their species, elephants are the first non-human animals known to use names that do not involve imitation, the researchers suggested.
For the new study, a team of international researchers used an artificial intelligence algorithm to analyse the calls of two wild herds of African savannah elephants in Kenya.
The research “not only shows that elephants use specific vocalisations for each individual, but that they recognise and react to a call addressed to them while ignoring those addressed to others,” lead study author Michael Pardo said.
“This indicates that elephants can determine whether a call was intended for them just by hearing the call, even when out of its original context,” the behavioural ecologist at Colorado State University said in a statement.
i was going to respond to a bad post on my dash and debating “this is genuinely bad and harmful” vs “getting into fights online makes me a worse, less compassionate person” and then i remembered i have actual responsibilities and obligations unrelated to posting so:
the idea that men, or people perceived as men, should accept being preemptively treated as sexual predators (and it’s an act of oppression for them to resist), is gender essentialism. when it’s targeted towards trans people and/or used to paper over the fact that trans people are overwhelmingly more likely to be the victims of sexual violence than cis people, it’s transphobia. this is pretty basic stuff and it’s embarrassing to see fellow trans people perpetuating this kind of rhetoric.
It also extends into intersexism. I’m not a man and never have been, but I have a beard and pass as a man easily. I am treated like a predator by half the women in my classroom every day. Defaulting to “men are predators” will harm trans people yes, but also intersex people who aren’t trans and aren’t men. I don’t have to deal with being treated like a predator because people are obsessed with bioessentialism.
because women being sexually assaulted as a rite of passage is not suppose to cause fear. we fear every man because we do not know which men are predators, because there’s no way of knowing. the cause of that fear is men so they should suck it up or stop sexually assaulting women and children for fun. also we will fear everyone who identifies as a man.
I’m a cis woman that developed a body that is read as male naturally as a young child. I was medically raped by a female OBGYN at age 15 who set out to punish me for my body. I was forced on hormones against my will as a child that made me very sick.
You’re telling me I deserve to be seen as a predator by women because my body developed in a way you decide to read as male? You’re telling me that neither the rape and assault I experienced at the hands of a female OBGYN, nor any other sexual assault ive experienced as a little girl or a woman, matter more than your delusional fear of all people you decide are men?
My first rapist as a child was a blonde woman with a medical license. And because I am a woman with a beard, worthless oozing infections like you believe I deserve this treatment. Interesting. Feminist. Valid and real.
reminder this pride month that disabled people in the US on SSI and SSDI do not have the same marriage equality as people not on SSI and SSDI. its called the marriage penalty.
by getting married, a disabled person can lose their income, benefits, and health insurance.
if a disabled person marries an able bodied person, and combined their assets are $3000 or over they will lose all benefits, including medicaid (health insurance).
if a disabled person marries a disabled person, their assistance is lowered 25%.
we don’t have marriage equality until all disabled marriages are equal.
Jewish children cannot even be raped for being Jewish without people going “but is this really antisemitism?? Is antisemitism even a thing? 🤔 We’re not sure! We’re leaning towards no. Anyway. Let’s talk about Israel, which is totally relevant to this French child getting gang raped—“
Meanwhile, here’s an article about the same incident by CNN, which features this dose of reality:
Are you fucking kidding me?? This is such irresponsible journalism.
If you’re having trouble understanding why, just imagine for a moment:
“Transphobia refers to hatred of trans people, but there is no universally agreed upon definition of what exactly it entails or how it relates to criticism of the pharmaceutical industry. The transgender lobby regularly accuses its opponents of transphobia, while its critics say it uses the term to silence parents with concerns about social contagion and children being encouraged to seek sex changes at a young age.
The explosion in numbers of children and teens seeking access to experimental social and medical treatments to alter their gendered appearance — from young children asking to dress like the opposite sex to teenagers seeking surgical breast implants or removals — has reignited debate over whether or concern over these radical interventions is transphobia.”
— And imagine this appearing appended to an article about a 12-year-old trans kid suffering corrective rape at school by three classmates shouting transphobic slurs and misgendering terminology.
Is this a perfect analogy? No.*
Is it close, particularly in terms of the retreat to a faux neutral tone in order to make the disgusting bigotry go down easier and sound like journalism rather than delegitimizing of violence against a vulnerable minority?
As a trans Jew, yeah. This is what this shit sounds like to us. It’s not better or more acceptable.
(*I am fully aware that not only would this not be at all a stretch to imagine occurring to trans people also, but in fact that is precisely the point: I would not be at all surprised if major mainstream news outlets handled a story about sexual violence to a trans child like this. The main difference I’m pointing out here is how upset the left would be. You and I both know that the reaction from the left would be like night and day.
And in b4 anyone tries to say “yes BUT Israel is committing war crimes and the "trans lobby” isn’t — neither was this actual, non-hypothetical 12-year-old Jewish girl living in France.)
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the people fomenting antisemitism disrupt real peace work, discredit the people they are supposedly advocating for, and ultimately, they have blood on their hands.
Shooting Jews eating food in Montreal does not, in fact, help aid the people of Gaza. You just hate Jews.
“American style gentrified culturally appropriated Arabic food that is so full of fillers you cannot even taste the falafel. It has nothing to do with a real falafel sandwich,” said a reviewer two weeks ago. “Falafel sandwiches should be basic. But it’s perhaps what they usually do, whenever they culturally appropriate food. Just make it into a Big Mac version of that food.”
i hope everyone can see the blatant antisemitism in this review (from a person who’s probably never even been to this restaurant). also from what i can tell, the owner yoni amir is probably of sephardi or mizrahi heritage. i don’t know for sure, and either way its a fucked up thing to say, but i think it’s important to mention that so much rhetoric about “israelis stealing arabic cuisine” is deeply anti-mizrahi/sephardi because israeli culture is incredibly influenced by jews who were ethnically cleansed from swana. of course they eat the foods that were eaten there. of course they brought those foods with them. no they are not fucking stealing the foods they’ve been making for hundreds of years. it’s literally just more “jews come from nowhere and all they do is leech off of whatever culture is around them” and it’s wildly antisemitic.
..Is the reviewer complaining about the tosafot/salads and hummus and other things that… traditionally go with falafel…
Remember when xenophobic people were targeting or boycotting Chinese restaurants in the us because of the pandemic?
That did nothing to make any progress for vaccines. This did nothing to impact the government in china. This only impacted the the people who simply wanted to share their passion of their cuisine. Hatred stalls progress.
Shooting Jewish owned businesses and attacking the culinary traditions of Israel does not in fact bring peace to the levant.
I have had falafel from Egyptians, Lebanese, Israelis, Turks, and I learned how to make falafel from a Greek. It’s a common food throughout the region no one is appropriating anything.
People share recipes with neighbors, use what resources they have, and trade ideas when it comes to culinary traditions; it’s one of the most beautiful aspects of humanity. Attacking people for simply sharing their culinary traditions is an attack on that beauty.
Other important points from the notes:
1. Apparently the owner is a 2SS peace activist (not that it actually matters,
2. This is what happens when you compile boycott lists of Jews; you may THINK it’s a peaceful protest strategy but it leads to actual violence and stochastic terrorism committed against us.
3. Why are you punishing Israelis who LEAVE Israel to move to the diaspora? Isn’t that what you theoretically want them to do? Or are we finally admitting that you just actually want them dead now?
4. What does boycotting his restaurant do for anyone anyway? Please list out the concrete ways in which this random Israeli guy living and having a restaurant in Canada is fueling the war or harming Palestinians in any way.
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