February 15 2025

Surprise gifts are THE BEST!! Thank you @eralomusic for the early birthday gifts! 💜💜💜 I appreciate you, and am cheering you on from Reno. 💖💖💖

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I’ll be sharing snippets of my UNR classes during the semester.

This is from my Disability Ethics class. We read the essay, “The Nazis’ First Victims Were the Disabled”.

Quote from the essay, “Too often the lives of those of us who live with disabilities are not valued, and feared.”

We recently watched the video “War on the Weak: Eugenics in America” the role of the US and eugenics in Nazi Germany was discussed.

These are my raw notes from watching the video:

The president was behind it. Liberals behind it. Conservatives behind it. Catholic Church behind it. Degeneracy an inheritable trait. ??? Eugenics was because America didn’t want to make social changes. There was an American Breeders Association?? Damn! Carnegie Institution helped fund the Eugenics Record Office. It was in place for 34 years! Administered eugenics laws nationwide, including immigration and marriage restrictions, and forced sterilization of criminals, race segregation, and other undesirables. And integrated it into popular culture, made race hygiene household words. Popular 20’s literature often mentioned eugenics. The fairs gave awards for the fittest families, purest pedigrees. Gross!

Euthanasia became a part of the movement internationally, but not so much here in America. In 1907 in Indiana was the first jurisdiction to force sterilization of citizens it deemed unfit. Connecticut followed. By 1924, 3000 socially inadequate people had been sterilized. Feeble minded and sexual promiscuity were reasons to sterilize. Based on flimsy evidence. “Three generations of imbecile are enough” Oliver Wendell Holmes (Buck v Bell – and it has not been overruled). HAS NOT BEEN OVERRULED

Nazi Germany borrowed eugenics from America and upped it. German scientists had affinity for US eugenics laws. Germany modeled their eugenics after Americas. This was a prelude to the holocaust. Mentally ill of Germany were first to be exterminated.

This was my response on the quiz regarding our reading and the video:

I did not know that Nazi Germany borrowed the idea from America. I am utterly disgusted. Even more so in our current political climate. I find myself moving through this material wondering what the heck is going on. We are looping back to vile things that should have been left behind.Eugenics came to be because America did not want to invest in social programs (sounding eerily like our current climate). It was supported by both political parties as a way to only allow people with certain characteristics to procreate. It also included forced sterilization of criminals and undesirables; which included women who were deemed feeble minded and promiscuousm (by flimsy evidence).