Ask yourself this: Are Trump and Republicans Working on Plans to "Thin the Herd?"

[MineralMan]

Trump and the Republicans appear to be putting a long-term plan in place that would have that effect. The Republican healthcare initiative, if examined, appears to be a plan for sick people who cannot afford healthcare to simply die. I can't draw any other conclusion from it. Then, consider their plan to eliminate planning for global climate change and to shut down environmental regulatory agencies.

Those two things appear to be designed to Make America Unhealthful Again. I'm old enough to remember driving into Los Angeles from the north and encountering a yellowish haze of smog which extended north into Ventura County. We could, again, poison our environment, which, combined with poor or no healthcare for the average person lower the life expectancy age.

Right now, here in Minnesota, people addicted to opiods who resort to street drugs are dying off at an alarming rate do to the introduction of carfentanil from China into the street drug scene. Designed to euthanize large animals, an incredibly small amount is lethal to humans. We've had a number of deaths recently, and nobody seems to be able to trace where the drugs are coming from. This seems to be a national trend. Addiction is expensive to a society. If the number of addicts were reduced...

And then, there is the increasing tolerance of bigotry of all types. We're not seeing fewer minorities killed by the police at all. We're also watching as undocumented immigrants are being herded out of the country at an increasing rate. Further, incidents of violence against racial, ethnic and religious minorities appear to be on the rise as well.

So, what's next? Maybe your next flu shot won't be free, as it is for most people now. If people go unprotected, the death toll from the influenza virus could rise from the current tens of thousands of people annually to a much, much higher figure. That would affect the elderly and the children of poor people more than anyone else. Those with means would be able to get the vaccine. Those without means, would not. Or, worse, imagine if a flu vaccine were somehow tainted or contaminated in some way...

I don't know. Is this an actual planned thing? Could be. Maybe not. I simply don't know. What do you think?

[JHan]

1. I wouldn't normally say yes but knowing of some extreme libertarian/conservative philosophies:

yes, the rationale is why should we pay for people who are not "contributing". If they die, they deserve to die. Their dying is not "my problem". Alternatively, we can't selectively choose those who should survive, even if they're poor, so no help should be afforded to the unfortunate unless "I" decide to give them charity.

It's Darwinism on steroids.

[Siwsan]

2. YES!!!!! I've been saying this, for months

They are attempting to initiate a cull of what they consider to be the 'useless eaters' and it terrifies me. And it is their plans to destroy the 'social safety nets' that is most frightening.

[MineralMan]

4. And their plan might well be a passive one. Just remove

all of the things that help people live longer, healthier lives, and let nature take over. There are other things, too:

Consider the plight of bees and other pollinators. It's impossible to underestimate their importance to our food supply. Simply by ending research and restrictions on the use of chemicals which kill those creatures, they could cut the food supply and make food more and more expensive.

Famine in the third world kills millions each year.

Ending environmental regulations and controls would have the effect of making it more difficult to survive if you were poor or ill.

[Siwsan]

8. And are they too stupid to realize that the environmental issues will affect them, too??

Or are they just far too blinded by their incessant greed??

[democratisphere]

3. drumpfanov's plan for the sick and poor is death.

If you do not submit to obsessive healthcare price gouging then begone with you.

[MineralMan]

5. So it appears to me, as well.

Shocking, if that's the real goal.

[democratisphere]

13. Everything drumpfanov and his henchmen and henchwomen do is shocking.

Psychopaths put no value on human life.

[world wide wally]

6. Whatever makes some money for one of their donors will become the law

[MineralMan]

7. Perhaps the Republicans are acting as a de facto Death Panel.

Or, perhaps not. Who can say?

[milestogo]

9. The decisions Trump is making affect the whole world.

The cuts to foreign aid, cuts to health programs, and a military policy that has no respect for civilian life are all leading to loss of life.

[Eliot Rosewater]

10. They dont want to share resources and they believe healthcare is a limited resource.

Paul Ryan lives his life by the Rand mantra that the weak must die.

I have said and known for over a decade the GOP wants me dead, I know it and I deal with them accordingly.

By never trusting them and assuming they want me dead at every turn.

[grantcart]

11. There is no long term plan. Its all about concentrating power by stampeding the herd.

Keep the herd preoccupied for the next news cycle.

[Squinch]

12. I don't think so. Take your example of opioid deaths: if the Republicans were going to thin

the herd, they would thin out people who don't look like them. Women, brown people, gay people, etc. The opioid crisis is hitting white men perhaps harder than any other group. They don't want those guys to die.

After all, while the crack epidemic which hit minority urban areas hard, was a result of the victims' moral weakness and needed to be solved with huge incarceration rates, the opioid crisis is evidence of an illness and needs to be addressed with empathy.

So I think it's just a greed thing and they aren't thinking any farther than that. They don't want to have to pay for communal shit and they want tax breaks. The end. That's what I think it is.

Also, just as an aside, I would take issue with your numbers on the flu shot. The "30,000 annual deaths from flu" figure that we hear all the time is not really deaths from flu. It is deaths from all respiratory illnesses including the flu. That includes old people who break bones and get pneumonia from being bedridden and other respiratory illnesses including the flu. So actual flu deaths are much lower than tens of thousands annually. It is more like in the hundreds to low thousands range, depending on the year.

[kerry-is-my-prez]

14. Those Republicans hate the poor, minorities and women. Who knows what's in their subconscious

or even more scary - their conscious minds. "Who cares if those people die?"

[hedda_foil]

15. I've been saying that for weeks.

[aikidomoves]

16. Our country had major Eugenics programs

.... mainly the secret sterilization of men and women certain "authorities" or medical personnel thought to be defective.

With the air quality being as dangerous as it is currently, and with the constant poisoning of our soil and water...we are killing the entire planet.

https://www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/eugenics/

Eugenics: Compulsory Sterilization in 50 American States

American eugenics refers inter alia to compulsory sterilization laws adopted by over 30 states that led to more than 60,000 sterilizations of disabled individuals. Many of these individuals were sterilized because of a disability: they were mentally disabled or ill, or belonged to socially disadvantaged groups living on the margins of society. American eugenic laws and practices implemented in the first decades of the twentieth century influenced the much larger National Socialist compulsory sterilization program, which between 1934 and 1945 led to approximately 350,000 compulsory sterilizations and was a stepping stone to the Holocaust. Even after the details of the Nazi sterilization program (as well as its role as a precursor to the "Euthanasia" murders) became more widely known after World War II (and which the New York Times had reported on extensively and in great detail even before its implementation in 1934), sterilizations in some American states did not stop. Some states continued to sterilize residents into the 1970s.

While Germany has taken important steps to commemorate the horrors of its past, including compulsory sterilization (however belatedly), the United States arguably has not when it comes to eugenics. For some states, there still is a paucity of reliable studies that show how and where sterilizations occurred. Hospitals, asylums, and other places where sterilizations were performed have so far typically chosen not to document that aspect of their history. Moreover, until now there has never been a website providing an easily accessible overview of American eugenics for all American states.

This site provides such an overview. For each state for which information is available (see below), there is a short account of the number of victims (based on a variety of data sources), the known period during which sterilizations occurred, the temporal pattern of sterilizations and rate of sterilization, the passage of law(s), groups indentified in the law, the prescribed process of the law, precipitating factors and processes that led up a state’s sterilization program, the groups targeted and victimized, other restrictions placed on those identified in the law or with disabilities in general, major proponents of state eugenic sterilization, “feeder institutions” and institutions where sterilizations were performed, and opposition to sterilization. A short bibliography is also provided.

While this research project was initially intended to give short accounts for each state, it quickly moved beyond this goal. For those states for which detailed monograph-length studies are availabe, it merely summarizes existing scholarship, but for other states for which such information is not readily available, it establishes the core parameters within which a state's eugenic sterilizations were carried out. As part of this research the current state of the facilities where sterilizations occurred or that served as feeder institutions is addressed.