Attacks on scientific expertise have been increasing, especially in politics. Health and Human Services nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is among the more prominent people who have done that.
I thought it sounded strange when he spoke as well. Turns out he has some condition which makes it sound like that, so maybe we shouldn't point it out.
Or maybe we should - the right has nothing against playing dirty, maybe it's time to take the gloves off. Who knows.
Americans stay being aggressively anti-intellectual. It's been that way since waaaay before Trump too. We're gassing up Trump too much with this. Americans have been like this longer than I've been alive.
I think of it this way : movies were really popular before talkies came in. So, movies didn't die off when they started talking, but it was a new era. Same thing here; it's still anti-intellectual, just better and shinier
New era? Pretty sure we've been living in this isocracy full force since 2008 when the deplorable morons lost their minds and went full stupid racist with the tea party.
There's new approaches to it. You would usually hear creationists say things like "true science agrees with us". It was nonsense and they never understood how science works, but there was this assumption underlying it that science was correct. They existed in a culture that at least conceptually embraced science and were coming at it from that angle. They were trying to co-opt the aesthetic of science rather than dismissing it entirely.
With attempts at funding freezes in health care and agencies under gag orders, we're seeing a much broader attack on science as a concept.
Despite his takes on vaccines, he’s the one cabinet pick I like. He is focused on the toxic food environment Americans live in and don’t seem to want to acknowledge. I feel like I took crazy pills yesterday when NYT put out an article implying that weight loss had nothing to do with calories. It’s amazing all the mental gymnastics some people will do just to not be a little hungry for a while.
The problem is that his takes on vaccines actively disqualify him. They could've found any number of other people who could've promoted those types of healthy lifestyle without vaccine hangup.
Oh and the ADHD labor camps. More people should be talking about those.
I agree on that. Very bad look when he was pushed on his past statements and his answer was “P-P-President Trump”. Looked kinda pathetic to me. But I’m taking the bad with the good. I’m hoping parents will do the right thing and vaccinate their kids and that he will focus on improving the food supply in the US and tightening regulations for ultra processed “food”.
What he wants and what he can do are very different things. And no, the worse is Hegseth and that cannot be argued. The US health system needs to be burnt down to the ground, I do not think RFK will do that but I welcome anyone who will try.
Fluoride is worth questioning though, we don’t really know for sure whether it is harmful or not and science is increasingly proving that the risks are very real and maybe not worth the benefits. We don’t know for sure yet, but I think it should be left up to the communities to decide AFTER they’ve been given the chance to review all the current studies on the subject. It needs to be an informed decision.