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When I began Schwartzreport my purpose was to produce an entirely fact-based daily publication in favor of the earth, the inter-connectedness and interdependence of all life, democracy, equality for all, liberty, and things that are life-affirming. Also, to warn my readers about actions, events, and trends that threaten those values. Our country now stands at a crossroads, indeed, the world stands at a crossroads where those values are very much at risk and it is up to each of us who care about wellbeing to do what we can to defend those principles. I want to thank all of you who have contributed to SR, particularly those of you who have scheduled an ongoing monthly contribution. It makes a big difference and is much appreciated. It is one thing to put in the hours each day and to do the work for free, but another to have to cover the rising out-of-pocket costs. For those of you who haven’t done so, but read SR regularly, I ask that you consider supporting it.

— Stephan

SCHWARTZ REPORT PODCAST

Schwartz Report Episode 52: Secrets of Happiness

The Oncoming Challenge of Homo Superior

Stephan:  The Homo Superior Trend is one I have been following and writing about for more than a decade. Here is my latest thinking on it.

In 2006, in the second issue of the second year of this journal I wrote an essay, Homo Superior, and said, “What could be more natural than wanting a healthy beautiful baby? Has there ever been a time in history when parents, even in the midst of disasters and despair, did not wish to be delivered of a healthy child? And who wouldn’t want to have a son or daughter who was as smart as Einstein, as athletic as Michael Jordan, and as attractive as well, name the person whose looks you find most appealing? What could be more natural? But this deep-seated drive when linked to the onrushing train of genetic medicine is creating a trend that will shape—both literally and figuratively—the future of our species”.1

For most of our history as a species, we sapiens of the genus Homo have shared the planet with other hominid species. We know this because genetic science, by extracting DNA from ancient bone fragments, has transformed paleoarchaeology from speculation to certainty. This new research, which is amended and extended almost weekly, tells us we still retain, you retain, genes resulting from encounters Homo Sapiens had in Deep Time with Denisovans […]

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Homo Superiorus

Stephan:  This essay was originally published as the Schwartzreport column for the March/April issue of the peer-reviewed journal EXPLORE.

What could be more natural than wanting a healthy beautiful baby? Has there ever been a time in history when parents, even in the midst of disasters and despair, did not wish to be delivered of a healthy child? And who wouldn’t want to have a son or daughter who was as smart as Einstein, as athletic as Michael Jordan, and as attractive as¦. well, name the person whose looks you find most appealing? What could be more natural? But this deep-seated drive when linked to the onrushing train of genetic medicine is creating a trend that will shape – both literally and figuratively – the future of our species. You haven’t heard of this? It is not surprising. The linkage and its implications have almost no place at the table of the public conversation. Here are just a few examples of what I mean: Quietly in a laboratory in Vancouver, Robert Holt, head of sequencing for the University of British Columbia’s Genome Science Centre, is working to create the first made to order life form -what is being called ‘synthetic life’- a microbe.1 Dr. Holt is part of a project […]

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The Rise of the Right-Wing Tattletale

Stephan: 

This is what MAGAts are doing to reduce women to handmaiden status. by legalizing and rewarding tattletales for turning women in who get abortions, either through medications or doctors. As I read this it left me with the feeling that Republicans are turning us into the communist Soviet Union or Nazis Germany. This has nothing to do with fetuses, if it was the same people would be big sponsors of infant care. But they are not, quite the contrary. They are also sexual perverts obsessed with controlling LGBTQ people. And yet, I know that in less than a month millions will vote for MAGAt Republicans at both the federal and state levels. This is how sick the United States culture has become.

Photo-illustration by Vanessa Saba. Credit: Bernd Eberle / Getty

Last year, in Texas, a deteriorating marriage became the testing ground for a novel legal strategy favored by some of the country’s most prominent right-wing lawyers and politicians.

Marcus and Brittni Silva’s divorce had just been finalized when Marcus filed a lawsuit against two of Brittni’s friends. According to his complaint, Brittni had discovered that she was pregnant with their baby in July 2022, and ended the pregnancy by taking abortion medication. Marcus alleges that her friends Jackie Noyola and Amy Carpenter “assisted Brittni Silva in murdering Ms. Silva’s unborn child.” He is suing for wrongful death and asking for at least $1 million in damages from each defendant.

Noyola and Carpenter tell their own version of what happened in a countersuit they filed. Marcus drank often, they allege, and when he did, he was prone to verbally abusing Brittni. He got so drunk at one of her work events that he had to be escorted off the premises—but not before he called her a […]

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American Hatred Goes Global

Stephan: 

How do you feel about people all over the world seeing the United States, as a bully, a source of violence, and a spreader of hate? Frankly, it makes me quite angry that criminal Trump and the MAGAt world he has created has trashed our reputation throughout the world.

Members of the Proud Boys at a rally in Portland, Oregon. Credit: The Atlantic

In its decades-long fight against terrorism, the United States regularly criticized countries such as Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia for exporting extremist ideologies and violence. Ironically, today the United States stands accused of doing the same. The spread of homegrown American conspiracy theories, beliefs in racial superiority, antigovernment extremism, and other manifestations of hate and intolerance has become such a problem that some of the United States’ closest allies—Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom—have designated both American groups and citizens as foreign terrorists.

Although little reported by the U.S. press, the October 2022 killing of two people at a gay bar in Bratislava, Slovakia, by a man espousing racist and homophobic views is an example of the pernicious effects of this “made in America” ideology. In a now all-too-common pattern, the gunman posted a manifesto explaining his intent just before the attack. Written in English, the document displayed all the racist, anti-Semitic, and homophobic justifications that have become de rigueur for this […]

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How important is white fear?

Stephan:  This is a very interesting view of what is going on in the White demographic. I am running it because the author makes points that are not being discussed enough and should be because the White supremacy issue is tearing the country apart.

Why are so many white people throughout the liberal democratic world moving to the illiberal Right? The conventional explanation is that they are being driven by fear of the ‘demographic shift’. That is, because of immigration, both legal and illegal, and differing fertility rates among the relevant groups, white people of specific ethnic and religious backgrounds will soon no longer make up the electoral majority in the regions they currently dominate. Losing their majority status, in turn, is understood as meaning that the days of white privilege and political dominance in liberal democratic societies are now numbered.

An alarming number of whites, however, are not prepared to allow a commitment to liberalism to stand in the way of resisting the threat that the demographic shift seems to pose to their self-interest. They are accordingly embracing nationalist, racist, homophobic, Islamophobic, anti-feminist and other anti-liberal attitudes, and the parties and politicians that express them, in an effort to retain their social, political, economic and cultural dominance.

This view of what is driving whites to the Right has lots of adherents. The demographic shift […]

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