Is that you, Gene?

In the middle of the last century, when Massey Harris tractors got into bed with the Ferguson Company, they merged their complementary ingredients to become the best and in 1958 adopted the new name, Massey Ferguson. From the earliest beginnings a hundred years earlier the history of tractors has been one of continual improvement, exploiting new technology, discarding outmoded models and moving forward in a form of man-driven evolution; tractorgenics.

The continual improvement of farm machinery, as in any type of business, is driven by competition. Bigger, better, faster, more: prairie bestriding beasts with giant wheels driving sharper blades through more soil than ever before, trundling off the productions lines to turn wild earth into shelves of cornflakes and bread. Improvement is good, improvement is necessary because without it businesses fail.

Well, that was always the story in the formerly capitalist west. Meanwhile, through the iron curtain, a different model of progress was being adopted. Using the same old production methods and employing the same old, tired-out labour, the same old tractors were churned out, year after year. But progress there was – in the use of words. Tell a person something often enough and he will come to believe it, especially in the absence of contradictory information. Keep that curtain tight shut and block out the truth and almost anything can be promulgated as real.

Today we have the equivalent of the Eastern Bloc’s anything-but-casual approach to the truth about annual production statistics. Chocolate rations increased, comrades, tractor output at an all-time high and yes, everybody is equal! Except, of course they’re not. While some elements of human society strive forward with good matches and a healthy merging of those complementary ingredients, others languish behind the mythical curtain of equality, churning out the same tired old shit year after year while telling themselves that somehow, this is progress.

So, with the West afraid of politically unwelcome truths, now it’s the Chinese who are the new Massey Ferguson of genetic research, forging ahead exploring relationships that are verboten under the new consciousness of multicultural pretend-harmony and finding links that tell us what we always suspected but never dare voice. People. Are. Different. Not equal; different. And the great big modern-day bogeyman is that, whouda-thunk-it, race plays a part.

Stand by for an orchestrated front of denial as once again the life sciences bête noire of eugenics makes its latest bid for respectability. Observe as western governments shield your delicate eyes and ears from the horrors of inconvenient findings and protect your feelings from the nasty men. But the truth does hurt – progress necessarily means leaving some things behind. Look around at Britain’s shrunken, dried up, isolated gene puddles and forget about delicate sensibilities for a moment. Don’t tell me you don’t see people who in a truly functioning progressive society would probably never have been born.