The genetic elite — ie them — were breeding too little, and would be swamped by … a flood of ‘morons’ (the charming eugenic term for people of low intelligence).

Give the elite a break. The term “Trump voter” hadn’t been invented yet. Democracy depends on a politically astute electorate. A lot of things go into creating and maintaining that base. Genetics is one of them. Public eugenics does not work; the power necessary to make the choices is too corrupting. And the whole idea of “superiority” is rightly offensive. But one can believe both that we are becoming too fucking stupid to govern ourselves and that a public eugenics program is not the answer. Don’t you want your kids to find mates with good genes? Maybe someone smart enough to wear a goddam mask during a pandemic?

COVID-19 started out hitting the unsuspecting, but it is now largely culling morons. I don’t wish illness on anyone, and some people are being tragically infected through no fault of their own. But we are reaching the stage where the percentage of COVID cases attributable to stupidity is almost certainly rising. Herman Cain went to Trump’s Tulsa rally and sat too close to too many people without masks. Privately, he may have been a wonderful man beloved of family and friends. But he is dead because he was a Trump voter. (I recently saw a news story about a guy who was “recovering” from a nasty case of COVID. He said he thought COVID was a hoax. The report did not say whom this moron voted for in 2016. Anyone care to guess?)

We are awash in morons. I don’t know what to do about it, but getting all huffy about the term certainly is both elitist and moronic.