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[–] 7 points 5 months ago (4 children)

Whu?

There is literally no eugenics in Idiocracy.

Eugenics = forced attempts to modify the genome since at least the times of ancient Greece via infanticide, murdering or sterilizing 'low quality' groups, paying desired groups to have more children, to modern literal selective breeding via government body mandates in Nazi eugenics etc.

New eugenics / 'liberal eugenics' = informed choice via technology eg scanning for downs syndrome in embryos and allowing parents the informed choice of termination, genome editing, etc. Which we are clearly not talking about within context, but also is not present or suggested in Idiocracy.

What doesn't fit into any definition of eugenics is telling people "hey if only the dumb people keep breeding, that will not end well".

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  • [–] -5 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    The belief that intelligence is a heritable trait is a core tenet of eugenics, and is the very basis of the setting of Idiocracy. In the film, corporate capture and the gutting of the US government via bread and circus tactics didn't create a "stupid" society; stupid people overbreeding caused a societal drop in intelligence, which then created the issues. The film gets cause and effect backwards, if only to adhere to the eugenicist pretext.

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