A recent column from the Editorial Advisory Board of Forum Communications Company, of which the Pioneer is a subsidiary, gives me pause.
The board said all the right things. They are committed to “holding public officials accountable” and promise to “seek the truth” in upcoming election coverage. That’s good to hear because it didn’t happen the last time around.
The president of the United States visited Bemidji in September 2020. Those of us who had suffered through our county board’s vote to prohibit refugee settlement knew why he was here: we were his kind of people.
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So when Donald Trump took the podium that day, it was no surprise that he led by bashing Minnesota’s Somalis. Most of us are familiar with Trump’s sentiments regarding African immigrants — and conversely, his adoration for the Nordic.
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The former president elaborated: late in his speech. Reading from a script, he thanked the ”strong” and “tough” men and women who had pioneered Minnesota. But then he went off-script again: “You have good genes. You know that, right?” Trump said. “You have good genes. A lot of it’s about the genes, isn’t it?”
A lot of what is "about the genes?"
Trump continued: “The racehorse theory. You think we’re so different? You have good genes in Minnesota.”
Echoing the eugenicists of an earlier era, the president had just referenced “good genes” four times, but The Pioneer and the FCC chose to ignore it.
You can bet the Proud Boys, a hate group, didn’t miss it. Trump speaks their language.
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But what about this racehorse theory?
With a little research, the Pioneer would have discovered that biographer Michael d’Antonio reported in 2015 that the Trump family, Donald Trump included, has a “very deep” attraction to
eugenics, including the “racehorse theory of human development . . . they believe that there are superior people and that if you put together the genes of a superior woman and a superior man, you get superior offspring.”
The superior people reside in northern and western Europe. At least in Trump’s mind. That’s why we must keep the undesirables out — build a wall, enact a Muslim ban — just as we had done in 1890 and 1924 supported by the pseudoscience of eugenics.
These are complicated issues. Our paper should have been helping us to better understand them. Instead, we got nothing, and members of our community went to the Jan. 6 rally believing that Trump was not a racist.
