Bonus Sample: We Already Know What September Will Bring
It's been quite the week at HHS with Robert F Kennedy Jr in charge. Derek considers what's been going on: Bobby's announcement that he's going to "determine" the cause of autism by September; his social media marketing-driven visit to grieving families in Texas; his pivot on the MMR vaccine; and his recommendation to the CDC that fluoride be removed from public water supplies.
Show Notes
RFK Jr. says HHS will determine the cause of autism by September
RFK Jr. says he plans to tell CDC to stop recommending fluoride in drinking water
What RFK Jr. Told Grieving Texas Families About the Measles Vaccine
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I'm trying really hard not to do a full late-stage Lenny Bruce for this episode.
If you're not familiar with Lenny Bruce, basically the reason we have comedy today, uncensored, truly free-speech comedy, is because of Lenny Bruce.
He was arrested many times for expressing his mind in the 50s and the 60s especially.
It kind of drove him mad.
There's a 1974 film where Dustin Hoffman stars as Lenny Bruce.
Highly recommend it.
You'll get a glimpse into his life.
Personally, I would recommend reading How to Talk Dirty and Influence People, which was his 1965 autobiography.
I think I read it over 30 years ago at this point.
I have a feeling it holds up.
He was a tremendous man, but at the end of his career, he was so bogged down.
By all the shit in his life that he would just go on stage and read his court cases, the transcripts or the reasons that he was being arrested to dwindling audiences.
Only a few people would show up and he would just talk for hours.
People would leave because it wasn't funny anymore.
But it was such an overwhelming amount of...
Shit coming at him that he didn't know how else to process it.
Which is kind of how I feel trying to keep track of Maha and HHS and all of its tentacles right now.
I know that flooding the zone is the tactic that this administration uses.
So it makes sense that Bobby Kennedy coming into it with his Maha initiative would apply the same tactic.
He's been using it before.
He is a master of gish gallop.
He is a master of deflection.
He will always go to where he wants to go and swerve the conversation that way.
I've never actually seen a full interview where he was held to his account for his beliefs and ideas because people just get exhausted by him.
But honestly, it's no time for exhaustion.
Because our health depends on it.
Depends on staying up to date with everything he's doing because you need to arm yourself with this sort of knowledge because pretty soon a lot of the health infrastructure is going to collapse around us.
And I'm not being hyperbolic.
That is the stated goal is to get rid of what so far 20,000 employees at HHS.
Jay Bhattacharya, who's now the director of the NIH, on Barry Weiss's honestly podcast.
And honestly, it was a fucking nightmare.
Because the dude is not anti-vax, but he is enabling Kennedy completely.
So for example, when the vaccine's autism supposed link comes up, Bhattacharya says in one sentence that he's...
He's good with the studies that have shown there is not a link, and then immediately pivots to other things.
Well, what is the cause of autism?
Well, do we know that COVID vaccines don't cause autism?
These conspiratorial ideas that will help enable Kennedy while spending a very short amount of time giving credence to the actual science that we have.
And this is not what we need or deserve, I guess, depending on who you voted for.
We could say deserve, but this is not what we need from a public health perspective.
So I want to go through a few examples of And I'll end with an example from the Make America Healthy Again tour,
which is a thing.
And it was in Arizona recently.
And someone actually asked him about...
His statement where he said the most effective thing that you can do for the measles is get the measles vaccine, he said that on Twitter.
He did not say the MMR vaccine, by the way, which is part of the slipperiness, but he did say that, which infuriated some Maha stans.
But he quickly wiggled his way out of that.
And that's where I want to start.
I'm Derek Barris, and this is a Conspirituality Bonus Episode.
We already know what September will bring.
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