For decades, many of us who are sci-fi fans have seen increasing fictional speculation, in books and movies, depicting the use of drugs, cyber augmentations, gene swaps and body sculpting to artificially increase human strength and senses beyond those of even the strongest and most acute. These enhancements are applied, most often, to create a force of “super soldiers” endowed with preternatural battle advantages and utilized by wannabe terrestrial dictators to conquer an entire planet. In many of these stories, the “enhanced” are kidnapped and changed, involuntarily.
Virtually every story, however, is cast as a cautionary tale, as the emotions we refer to as “human”, like compassion, sympathy, love and caring for others, increasingly fade away as the basic human is replaced, piece by piece.
These stories are about to become increasingly relevant in a few weeks as we witness one of the first steps that could bring that dystopian world view closer to reality.
Last year, a swimmer named Kristian Gklomeev set a new world record in 50-meter free-style swimming. Only it didn’t count. The cheering crowd were doctors and photographers, present to document how one swimmer, using performance-enhancing drugs, could beat a world record set by a regular, un-enhanced human.
Given this information, investors Peter Thiel and Donald Trump, Jr. are using their partnership in an entity called the 1789 corporation to sponsor an entire set of games just for athletes who use performance-enhancing drugs. Thiel, you may remember, is a multi-billionaire German/American who founded the data analysis company, Palantir Technologies (a major contractor with our defense department). He is also a man who self-identifies as an Ayn Rand libertarian working for a “liquid democracy”, which values individual freedom over democratic safeguards, and, like his ex-partner, Elon Musk, favors authoritarianism. He is a major donor to conservative politicians all the way to the top and was patron and godfather to JD Vance, bringing that empty and controllable suit all the way from his Mr. Nothing days, to Veep.
To move the super-soldier scenario forward, the first Enhanced Games will take place in Las Vegas between May 21st and 24th of this year. In these games, performance enhancing drugs of all kinds are welcome and the goal is to set new world records (which would not be officially recognized) in sports like swimming and track. The overarching purpose, however, is not sports, but to test how well these chemicals work to create a superior human being. Might the eventual goal be the development of an enhanced group of individuals to be used to power authoritarianism?
You may think this is too dark, too unlikely a stretch. But think about it. Witness the worship and the growing thirst among uber-wealthy supporters of a strong-man-dictatorship for greater and greater power. To achieve these goals, powerful tools must be put in the service of governance in order to suppress and dominate.
These stories rarely turn out well. The enhanced, losing their humanity, often learn from their masters and turn on them, or, ignoring the physical costs of these enhancements, (performance drugs are not governed by the laws that require side effects to be listed), turn into a truly non-human pack.
I am certain that we can prevent this sickness by systematically removing from power those who favor it. Of course, the insanely wealthy will always pay to develop their fantasies of power, but they only have billions of dollars. We have billions of…well…us.
Semper Vigilantes et Uniti.
Science Takes A Holiday
In the 1934 film Death Takes A Holiday, Death decides to take a three day vacation from all that grim reaping to try to learn just why people fear him so deeply. In what may be seen as a current version, the geniuses in our Health and Human Services Department and Environmental Protection Agency have decided that Science should take some time off. How are these things connected, you ask? I maintain that this hiatus is actually increasing the work of the grim reaper.
Take, for example, the decision of the Environmental “Protection” Agency (EPA) to weaken the limits on ethyl oxides emitted by manufacturing facilities. Studies (remember when we had those?) of this pollutant show that long term exposure to it and similar chemicals has been linked to a growing number of cases of leukemia, breast cancer and lymphomas.
The result? The damage done by insanely appointing Robert Kennedy Junior to run the Health and Human Services Agency is matched, in this case, by the appointment of Lee Zeldin, a loyal Republican Congress Member from New York, to lead the EPA (and so he has, though, at the moment, the rumor is that he is being considered for the Attorney General position left open by the sacking of Pam Bondi).
Zeldin hadn’t been at the EPA for more than two minutes before he presented what he termed “the largest de-regulatory announcement in US history”. It seemed as though he might be in a race with Kennedy to see just how many Americans he could sicken by degrading the health protections put in place to keep toxic chemicals from poisoning our air, fauna and groundwater.
In both cases, those appointed to keep America healthy are, themselves, the raison d’etre for vast increases in preventable childhood diseases, cancers caused by exposure to unfettered pollution and the dismantling of the very centers of expertise that are needed now to help us regain our health.
Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter once said, “Old age and sickness bring out the essential characteristics of a man.” In these cases, the cold-hearted actions of two men who cause sickness in others leave no doubt about their essential characteristics. Time for them to take a holiday and leave us to heal from their callousness.
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