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Khan Noonien Singh, COVID, and Adam Cohen’s 2016 work, Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck.
Eugenics: the practice or advocacy of controlled selective breeding of human populations (as by sterilization) to improve the population's genetic composition.
My first impression of the word will forever be associated with the original Star Trek episode Space Seed, which I probably first saw when I was 11 or 12. Dad was stationed near Wurzburg, Germany and we would watch the show dubbed in German.
In the episode, the Enterprise rescues the SS Botany Bay, which has been adrift in space for three centuries, only to discover that Khan Noonien Singh, who is a product of late 20th century genetic engineering is aboard. The script mentions the word twice. The first is on the bridge just after Spock is able to ascertain the ship’s name:
SPOCK: Hull surface is pitted with meteor scars. However, scanners make out a name. SS Botany Bay.
KIRK: Then you can check the registry.
SPOCK: No such vessel listed. Records of that period are fragmentary, however. The mid-1990s was the era of your last so-called World War.
MCCOY: The Eugenics Wars.
SPOCK: Of course. Your attempt to improve the race through selective breeding.
MCCOY: Now, wait a minute. Not our attempt, Mister Spock. A group of ambitious scientists. I'm sure you know the type. Devoted to logic, completely unemotional.
Shortly after, on board the derelict, Spock elaborates on the Eugenics Wars:
KIRK: Kirk out. Seventy two alive. A group of people dating back to the 1990s. A discovery of some importance, Mister Spock. There are a great many unanswered questions about those years.
SPOCK: A strange, violent period in your history. I find no record what so ever of an SS Botany Bay. Captain, the DY-100 class vessel was designed for interplanetary travel only. With simple nuclear-powered engines, star travel was considered impractical at that time. It was ten thousand to one against their making it to another star system. And why no record of the trip?
KIRK: Botany Bay. That was the name of a penal colony on shores of Australia, wasn't it? If they took that name for their vessel
SPOCK: If you're suggesting this was a penal deportation vessel, you've arrived at a totally illogical conclusion.
KIRK: Oh?
SPOCK: Your Earth was on the verge of a dark ages. Whole populations were being bombed out of existence. A group of criminals could have been dealt with far more efficiently than wasting one of their most advanced spaceships.
KIRK: Yes. So much for my theory. I'm still waiting to hear yours.
After bringing Kahn to sick bay aboard the Enterprise, Kirk make the second use of the term:
MCCOY: He'll live.
KIRK: My compliments.
MCCOY: No, I'm good, but not that good. There's something inside this man that refuses to accept death. Look at that. Even as he is now, his heart valve action has twice the power of yours and mine. Lung efficiency is fifty percent better.
(McGivers enters)
KIRK: An improved breed of human. That's what the Eugenics War was all about.
MCCOY: I'd estimate he could lift us both with one arm. It will be interesting to see if his brain matches his body.
MARLA: Doctor, will he live?
MCCOY: It appears he will, Lieutenant. (leaves)
After a full recovery from suspended animation, Kahn’s ambition leads him to attempt to hijack the Enterprise. Of course, Kirk manages to outfight him in the engineering spaces and win his ship back. However, Khan’s punishment is to be put to exile on Ceti Alpha 5 to make his own way. The character later returns in the movie The Wrath of Kahn, reprised by Ricardo Montalbán, and the rebooted franchise movie Into Darkness, with Kahn played by Benedict Cumberbatch.
As an adult, I would connect the concept and meaning of the term with the atrocities of Nazi Germany, especially after visiting the Anne Frank House on an overnight mission to Amsterdam on January 19, 1993. However, the word did not really enter my consciousness again until I moved to Raleigh, NC in the summer of 2008. Near the corner of N McDowell St (Hwy 401) and W Jones St is North Carolina historical marker H-116, which simply reads,
EUGENICS BOARD
State action led to the sterilization by choice or coercion of over 7,600 people, 1933-1973. Met after 1939 one block E.
I never thought of the subject much other than every time I drove passed that sign. Then came the spring of 2020 and the COVID scamdemic. As I chased down the rabbit holes, the word eugenics kept making appearance. All in association with the key players and terms at the center of it all – Bill Gates, depopulation, Planned Parenthood, abortion, vaccines, ethics, Fauci, Fauci’s wife, Jeffery Epstein, Klaus Schwab, George Soros, etc.
Cohen’s work is an excellent overview of the key players involved in both the American eugenics movement of the early part of the last century in general, but also of those swept up in the central Supreme Court case of the issue, Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927).
He devotes two full chapters, condensed biographies, of each figure. These include:
Carrie Buck, who found herself at the mercy of a system that was supposed to protect her but failed miserably. Albert Priddy, who, as superintendent of Virginia’s Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded, was a staunch, even enthusiastic, supporter of eugenics and truly one of the driving personalities behind the entire affair. Harry Laughlin, who, more than anyone else, was responsible for mass eugenic sterilization programs in the United States. Aubrey Strode, who had every chance to put a stop to it all, yet willingly wrote the Virginia sterilization legislation that he ultimately argued before the Supreme Court. And Oliver Wendell Holmes, who most associate as a pillar of legal thought and who wrote the majority opinion.
However, as often the case, when we pull back the layers of historical obfuscation, we find that the reality of a person’s character is far removed from the myth. Such is the case with Holmes, who we find to be a rather miserable excuse for a human – arrogant, conceited, and pompous. All of which are glaringly evident in his terse penning of the court’s majority opinion, which leans on our now all too familiar and problematic case Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U. S. 11 and includes the infamous phase,
Three generations of imbeciles are enough.
Cohen weaves the tale of men obsessed with their own self-importance, convinced that they are of better “stock,” intelligence, and entitled to run the world. He shows the connections to eugenics to both Darwin and Hitler, how the Nazis used Buck v Bell in rationalizing their actions, and a host of other obscure yet important details. In the end, we find out that all their made-up excuses for performing a state sponsored, directed, and enforced sterilization on Carrie were ill conceived, poorly researched, with details spun to support their agenda, and ultimately just plain selfish.
The author’s closing paragraph reminded me very much of the closing scene of A Few Good Men. Sadly, none who were associated with Carrie Buck proved to be.
Anyone interested in the historical underpinnings to the mindset and motivations of those driving the agenda behind the COVID scamdemic and the “Great Reset” will appreciate Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck.
Namaste, thanks for reading and keep fighting the tyranny folks!
Mark
October 14, 2021
Credit & Gratitude
Many thanks to @Surikanna over on Gab for the book recommendation!
Thanks, Mark, for the book review and your own thoughts, memories, and research on eugenics. Very interesting —how you wove it all together! Well done! I enjoyed reading this.