Marcus Ranum discusses an outrageous article on racist abuses of genetics.
It’s really depressing if you study the history of how Darwin’s great idea was immediately grabbed and warped into social darwinism (racism), and scientific racism (racism) with a sprinkling of pop psychology and garbage social science thrown in, to create a witches’ brew of wrongness that is still with us, to this day: [politico]
“You’ve never seen him sick. You’ve never seen him without energy,” Brenden Dilley, a self-described “MAGA life coach,” told his viewers on his radio show Friday. “[He’s] not walking around with weak-ass, p—- f—— genetics. He ain’t got those liberal genes. These are, like, god-tier genetics; top 1-percentile genetics.”
That’s a nearly perfect summary of the stupidity and ignorance of scientific racism. I’m not going to try, but I’m pretty sure one could write a book, or a goodly thick pamphlet, just digging into what’s wrong about that chucklefuck’s stated beliefs.
You could, but it would be exhausting and would have to start with teaching biology from scratch. Just the idea that there is something called “god-tier genetics” or “top 1-percentile genetics” has me reeling at the depth of the misconceptions in this guy’s head. There’s no such thing, he has no idea of what genes Trump has, and he probably couldn’t even explain what a “gene” was if you pinned him down on it, or what makes for “god gene” vs a “mere mortal gene”.
That Politico article, by the way, is just horrible lazy “journalism” — it quotes MAGA twit after MAGA twit, reporting their idiot takes without taking any time to point out that they’re all wrong, anti-scientific, and based on nothing but ignorance and fantasy. Brendan Dilley is a high school graduate (at least he got that far) and is now a “MAGA life coach” and “works in the world of commercial real estate development” and has now had his dumbass ideas about genetics promoted far and wide without any pushback from Politico. This is one of the ways we got into this situation, journalistic outlets dumping bad ideas on the media without any critical thought…and further, specifically seeking out the very worst ideas to publish for their entertainment value.
Where’s the evaluation of their sources? Where’s the statement that Brendan Dilley is an unqualified buffoon who is wrong about genetics? At the very least, where’s the “he said she said” journalism, the lowest form of reporting, in which they balance the bullshit with comments from real geneticists who know what they’re talking about? Politico can’t even do that. Journalism has a responsibility to inform in addition to dumbly reporting the opinions of fools.
I don’t think it’s genetics that responsible for all that… “energy.”
One problem is, everyone thinks they understand Darwin, and evolution.
In reality, if the same silly buggers made statements about something like brain surgery, most readers would suspect they were full of BS.
I’d recommend you save yourself the trouble. Right Wing Watch has been keeping on top of Dilley’s more notable rants — he basically admitted that he makes shit up to make Trump look good and to destroy Democrats. He’s invested in staying on script.
I am amused that someone who considers themselves a ‘coach’ is preaching genetics. Uh, coaching is unlikely to change genetics….
I had a friend who graduated high school functionally illiterate, learned to read as an adult. He was in sports, which might have something to do with them taking liberty with the diplomas there. Don’t know.
Yeah, I’m gonna check back in a month. Because that’s how long it took Covid to take out Herman Cain.
Great American Satan: I’ve got tremendous respect for anyone who learns to read as an adult. It must have taken a lot of courage for your friend to admit he didn’t know how to read. I wish him all the joys of literacy!
and to stay in business they must turn a profit which is unfortunately increasingly more difficult these days
which makes it more difficult for us to stay informed . Leading to where we are now.
in this age of the proliferation of information the prominence of ignorance does not seem to be diminishing very fast.
uncle frogy
I am not in a good mood these days, and when I read that my mind immediately flashed (gleefully) on an image of him pinned to a display board like a butterfly specimen, with new pins added for every wrong answer to that question.