I read a  meme on Facebook sharing if you let a racist have power, eventually the sentiment of a nation becomes compliant to racism as well.

The meme stated the Third Reich – the comparison is between Nazi Germany in the 1930s and the current Trump administation – didn’t happen overnight, and allowing Trump to remain  in office will lead to no good in America, learn from history, history repeats, etc.

The final line of the meme implores folks to “Read a book, for fuck’s sake.”

Good idea. And here is my reply.

Read of the American eugenics programs predating the Third Reich and how the Nazi Party adopted our eugenics programs and ideals.

Read of those prominent Americans and American entities of political and financial stature, such as President Teddy Roosevelt and the Carnegie Foundation, who openly and vocally supported eugenics and eugenics research.

Read how the Carnegie Foundation continued funding German eugenics “research” right up until the final few months in 1939 when WWII began.

Read in popular period books such as Vitalogy – encpsulated/paraphrased – about upper class Americans and their fear “degenerates” and the “feeble-minded” were breeding faster than “worthy” beings, muddying the gene pool (and that in the early 20th century nobody really understood what a gene is).

Read how a “degenerate” or “feeble-minded” individual was never precisely defined, and that eugenics was a social program under the guise of a scientific program. Immigrants and those with mental illness, and Jews, were a drain. Social not scientific.

Read how a “degenerate” often was a Jew, someone with a mental illness (including “hysteria” better known as PMS nowadays), and someone who joined a labor union.

Read how many “degenerates” and “feeble-minded ” were forcefully sterilized (usually by castration or hysterectomy) and how several federal Supreme Courts justices upheld this as constitutional.

Read how many forced sterilizations were carried out in California, the most robust, forward thinking state in our republic in terms of ebbing the tide of a muddied gene pool.

Read how eugenics was taught as science in our schools.

And recall, all of this occurred decades prior to Nazi Germany.

If we have anyone to blame for our current political mess, if using the logic Nazi Germany is an apt analogy for Trump and his administration, follow the logic back to first principle: We did this to ourselves.

There was a quote from I believe Hemingway, paraphrased, “Even Jesus himself would support eugenics.”

Just sayin’. Read many books, primary sources the best bet.

It’s amusing how after the war, there were no vocal American eugenitists, and history books conveniently omit any American or American entity was ever involved in eugenics and eugenics research.