A school musical for freaks, geeks, nerds, losers, misfits , the terminally uncool and the terminally shy

All the kids up on stage in way too many high school, college or Sunday school musicals are the same kids that run (ruin ?) the rest of school life.

You know the ones .

All they of the conventionally smart mind, faces neatly symmetrical & teeth gleaming white, from a family with money, physical fit and socially attractive and exhibiting a very successful love life.

My musical will be different - it is a sort of a "Revenge of the Nerds" but on a much, much higher moral plane and based upon a true story from WWII.

(I know - I know - won't the social studies department just love that !)

"Unfit valour" : They defied Allied & Axis eugenics (and their own physical failings) to bring us "Penicillin-for-All"

What would penicillin look like today if Hitler, Stalin or Churchill had delivered it - instead of Dawson ?

In 1943 , Hitler, Stalin or Anglo-American Big Pharma could have delivered penicillin to us - delivered us penicillin either as expensive as Avastin or only to be given to the truly deserving Proletarian or Aryan.

But against the eugenic-mad world of 1943 , perhaps only a bunch of misfits and unfits could have delivered us inexpensive, abundant ,un-patented, un-encumbered Penicillin-for-All...

Misfittin' : despite the Allies, delivering Penicillin-for-All

Without unfits and misfits, what you end up with is a group or society that fits together only all too well and that produces nothing but 100% group think and 100% group agreement : led by alpha male bosses and seconded sotto voce by timid yes-men.

Which in turn leads to such well known dangers such as the lemming or bandwagon effect, herd behavior, mob or crowd rule , right down into mindless conformity , cults and dictatorships.

WWII's dying were unlikely to ever get penicillin in the quantities needed but for the efforts of The Seven (misfits), led by Dr Martin Henry Dawson.

Misfits : despite Allies, Penicillin-for-All

Elites physically and mentally fit but morally unfit ....

Morally, WWII was a truly sordid war where in all the world's nations (with just a few sturdy exceptions) only fought the Axis if the Axis attacked them first.

Certainly that was the case of the two biggest neutrals or non-interventionalists, the USSR and the USA ,but it applies to all but the British Commonwealth as well.

And even in the Commonwealth , in places like Eire, Quebec, Afrikaner South Africa, Congress India et al, hundreds of millions were unwilling to fight the Axis.

The MORAL miracle of WWII's Penicillin-for-All

In the context of WWII's values (on both sides) , the reality* of wartime Penicillin-for-All truly was a miracle - a moral miracle.

Correspondingly, it really is no surprise that this  miracle could only have been conceived by a bunch of 'misfits' doing a moral end-run around the 'normal' elite of America and Britain.

Misfits Acting Up : despite the Allies , Penicillin-for-All

What many call Eugenicide I call Plenticide.

That is because I think the same mass impulse among the educated of past years to cleanse the world of misfits (culminating in the mass murder of Slavs, Jews and Romas) also sought at the same time to rid it of all types of non-human "pests".

It was all part of the complex and unconscious reaction formed by a truly unfortunate coincidence thrown up in the late Victorian Era.