Why do those in favor of "weeding out the gene pool," or those who believe that "stupid people shouldn't be allowed to breed," never race to the front of the line to be sterilized? The advocates of weeding the gene pool get upset when I tell them we should begin the weeding with them. "No, no, no, we mean the stupid people," they say. "So do I," I say. Again, not a pleasant reaction from them.
Was it something I said?
We toss around the idea that the human species would be better off without some groups of human beings in the same way a father and son might toss around a baseball in the backyard. "Hey, kid," the father says as he tosses the ball to his son. "Did you see that YouTube thing where the guy in India or Ethiopia or somewhere—it's all the same place—was standing on top of the train and grabbed aholt of the power line? Just like pissing on the third rail on the subway." "Yeah," the boy says, catching the ball and throwing it back in a single motion. "A big arc flash and the dumbass caught fire. Folded like a bad suit and started smoking. After he smoldered for a while he flamed up, kind of like a charcoal grill." The father catches the ball. "To me that's just weeding out the gene pool," he says.
Fiction? I wish. The ball tossing, metaphorically speaking, and the video of the man on the train, literally, are real. Every employee in our company saw the video either yesterday or this morning, in a mandatory electrical safety training class. I overheard the ball tossing this morning, not between a father and son, but between two of my co-workers. The "weeding out the gene pool" line is verbatim.
Let's leave behind the mixed metaphor for a moment (one weeds gardens, skims pools): We watched a man die a nasty death! Thousands of volts of potential energy pushed an electrical charge through his body to the ground. His heart quivered, his muscles seized, and he cooked through from the inside. He was not simply weeded out.
Sometimes, though, weeding (skimming?) the gene pool is not enough. I know a fellow who fantasizes about some sort of catastrophe that leaves only about 10,000 humans alive. He survives, of course. Without all those other people to screw things up, he will be much happier than he is now. He is saddened only by the notion that no one will be around to feed the animals who have been locked up in zoos; the animals will thus starve to death. There's no reason to make a big deal about the six billion humans who were killed.
Quips that some of us shouldn't breed, and fantasies in which we hope most of us will die, stand against the Christian vision of humanity: God creates every man, woman, and child in His image. God loves humanity; He came down from heaven and became fully human in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. The God-man then ate with, healed, and forgave those who should have been weeded out—the lepers, the poor, the whores, the tax collectors. He loved those whom everyone else would happily have gotten rid of.
Not once did he say their genes didn't belong in the pool.