Bound West Three Years Ago

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Eugenics 101 more than a centennial earlier, now that we’ve Eugenics.2.o under Anti-Presidency President Trump. Visiting Yellowstone brought back all the memories about how many presidents, let alone social movement leaders from Teddy Roosevelt to Oliver Wendall Holmes (Buck v. Bell, “Three generations of imbeciles is enough” in 1927 and Margaret Sanger of Planned Parent (sterilize the poor immigrants) to Charlotte Perkins Gilman short story – Yellow Wall Paper pitting progressive to radical white women against women of all colors.

Buying and reading “Alice Roosevelt Longgworth, from White House Princess to Washington Power Broker” by Stacy Cordery got me thinking about how her bitterness was reserved not for eugenics but her father on a personal level. Surprise, surprise TR and his New Nationalism were reminiscent of the Anti-Presidency President Trump. Trump’s new nationalism is a bit scarier. While his neglect of Alice reveals his sexism, misogyny and “tough” love which is really code for hating all those who are weak – and not privileged (i.e. SLAMs, SCAMs and SLIMs) Indeed Mary Trump gives evidence of her Uncle Donald’s perversity since in the way he treated his mom, who broke bones all the times, spent alot of it in a hospital bed in their house and in hospitals shows where all his ugly neos and isms come from. Teddy, at least, got his own body in shape. Is this better, I wonder?

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About Ruth O'Brien

Professor Ruth O'Brien, The Graduate Center, The City University of New York (CUNY) & Honorary Unaffiliated Academic Book Series Editor for The Public Square, Princeton University Press & Heretical Thought, Oxford University Press, USA Last book: Out of Many, One: Obama & the Third American Political Tradition (U of Chicago 2013). Nickname: Professorette by Rush Limbaugh (see http://www.gc.cuny.edu/Faculty/Core-Bios/Ruth-O-Brien)