Myra-Breckinridge-Gore-Vidal

seaweed: not enough of it). I demonstrated that essentiallyMaithus had been right, despite errors of calculation. Idescribed what happens to rats when they are crowded intoo small a place: their kidneys deteriorate, and they gomad. I told how whenever the food supply of the lemmingsis endangered, a majority of the race drown themselves inorder that those left behind may flourish. Then I gavestatistics for the current world death rate, showing how ithas drastically declined in the last fifty years due toadvanced medicine. The physically and mentally weak whoordinarily would have died at birth now grow up to becomerevolutionaries in Africa, Asia and Harlem. As a result ofmiracle drugs and incontinent breeding, the world's foodsupply can no longer support the billions of people alive atpresent; there will of course be even less food for thosethousands who are joining us every minute. What is to bedone? How is the race to be saved (I did not go into themore profound question of whether or not it should besaved)? My answer was simple enough: famine and warare now man's only hope. To survive, human populationmust be drastically reduced. Happily, our leaders areworking instinctively toward that end, and there is no doubtin my mind that nature intends Lyndon Johnson and MaoTse-tung to be the agents of our salvation. By destroying amajority of the human race, they will preserve the breedsince the survivors are bound to be not only wiser than webut racially stronger as a result of cellular mutancies causedby atomic radiation. If I say so myself, I had my listeners'eyes bugging out by the time I had sketched for them man's