Go West, Weird Man. The oddballs of the MAGA movement have nothing on Silicon Valley transhumanists.
By Émile P. Torres,
Truthdig
| 08. 08. 2024
Image by Julien Tromeur from Unsplash
The latest Democratic line of attack targeting Trump, his running mate JD Vance and the MAGA movement is to call them “weird.” Not the good “weird,” in the mold of David Bowie or Albert Einstein, but bad weird, in a way most Americans find profoundly creepy. Trump saying that he would be dating Ivanka if she weren’t his daughter, or Vance talking about a conspiracy of “childless cat ladies” — that kind of weird. Social media is overflowing with examples of MAGA followers and officials doing things like donning “Real Men Wear Diapers” shirts and amorously rubbing the nether regions of a Trump cutout.
Unlike Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” comment in 2016 — which backfired spectacularly — this effort to “bully the bullies” appears to be sticking, because the charge rings true, as noted by “The Daily Show’s” Ronny Chieng: “You can’t say, ‘Guys, guys, I’m not weird!’ Because that sounds weird.”
But the modern GOP does not have a monopoly on weird in American life. In Silicon Valley, a bizarre...
Related Articles
Since the “CRISPR babies” scandal in 2018, no additional genetically modified babies are known to have been born. Now several techno-enthusiastic billionaires are setting up privately funded companies to genetically edit human embryos, with the explicit intention of creating genetically modified children.
Heritable genome editing remains prohibited by policies in the overwhelming majority of countries that have any relevant policy, and by a binding European treaty. Support for keeping it legally off limits is widespread, including among scientists...
By Angus Liu, Fierce Pharma | 06.16.2025
A second patient has died following treatment with Sarepta Therapeutics’ Elevidys, raising more doubts about the Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) gene therapy’s safety profile.
Sarepta and its ex-U.S. partner Roche reported the death early Sunday. Like the first case, disclosed...
By Sophie Alexander and Ike Swetlitz, Bloomberg | 06.25.2025
A California-startup focused on genetically editing human embryos — a step toward creating so-called designer babies — is raising money as many of Silicon Valley’s ultra-rich turn their attention to one of the most controversial technologies in medicine.
Bootstrap Bio...
