Sometimes false equivalencies come from the most unexpected sources.
In 2008, the always vitriolic and reliable Matt Taibbi released his book The Great Derangement in which he looked at the growing disconnect between the American electorate and reality/facts. For reasons never explained and certainly not justified by reality, he presented End Times Christianity (and all the beliefs like creationism that accompany it) and 9/11 Trutherism as opposite ends of the political spectrum. That is, what creationism and fundamentalism are to The Right, Trutherism is to The Left. This is so far beyond stupid that I still can't believe he, of all people, wrote it.
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Trutherism is and always has been a movement of the Alex Jones crowd, the ultra-survivalist paranoid types who, if anything from the normal realm of politics can be applied to them, are closer to Libertarians than Liberals. They are a loose collection of conspiracy theorists, anti-government types, and good old fashioned charlatans and rubes.
So to call Truthers the Christian fundamentalists of The Left is beyond a stretch – it is just false.
Had he waited a couple years or done a bit more research, he would have realized that the actual left-wing version of right-wingers who think the planet is 6,000 years old are the anti-vaxxers. This is not to say that all anti-vaxxers are liberals, as a good portion of them harbor some level of "Ain't no gubmint gonna tell ME what to do!" motivation. But if you want to point to something absolutely, categorically false and stupid that has a decent amount of popularity on the left (primarily among the Mother Earth Hippie liberals), crackpot vaccine theories are a much better fit for Taibbi's analogy. As a recent editorial puts it, the anti-vax movement is driven almost entirely by "Rich, educated, and stupid" parents. In other words, it is driven by people who should know better but don't; who have so bought into the idea of all things Natural being inherently superior that they have knee-jerk reactions against anything pharmaceutical or chemical entering the body. An author astutely called Whole Foods the "temple of pseudoscience" earlier this year, and although it pained many of my friends and colleagues to admit it, that is not inaccurate. Objectively, nothing separates the touted "holistic" and "natural" cures for various health issues from snake oil salesmen on infomercials. Or from the kind of awful science practiced by the religious right.
For the kind of person who believes that a bunch of herbal supplements* can cure your ailments "Nature's way," the intellectual leap to anti-vax arguments is not very far.
That movement ties together several strains of American political paranoia – the distrust of Big Corporations, the insistence that things were so much better in the good ol' days, and the insistence that thanks to the internet, we all know better than any "expert" excepting of course the self-identified ones who tell us that what we believe is correct. It is popular among liberals, myself included, to take great joy in mocking the various stupidities of modern conservative ideology. We are less eager, logically, to point out that different flavors of that same poisonous logic pop up on the left as well.
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There are knuckleheads among us, and they sure as hell aren't talking about 9/11.
*This is not a blanket statement implying that there is no value in non-pharmaceutical medicine or that no conditions can be treated "naturally". It is instead an argument that the vast majority of what are offered as natural or herbal remedies have no scientific evidence to support their claims whatsoever – a problem endemic to the unregulated "dietary supplement" industry.
eau says:
I notice the book came out in 2008. Maybe something… big… happened in 2008, perhaps even towards the end of 2008, that gave the right a little push towards uncovering big, bad government conspiracies. Perhaps Taibbi had difficulty finding conservatives and libertarians* who were willing to go on the record saying "9/11 was an inside job" before the end of 2008, for some reason.
Just a theory. Maybe we should look in to big changes in the political landscape that came about during that period.
*redundant, I know.
wetcasements says:
I'm more interested in how Taibbi and Alex Pareene's newest venture is going to work out. I like them both, but it could be a bit too much of a good thing.
Still, couldn't be any worse than the snooze-fests that are 548 and Vox.
Sarah says:
What I've been hearing from many anti-vaxxers is that the disappearance of smallpox and the reductions for measles and polio are the result of better sanitation and people not living so closely together. (Measles is airborne and can hang around in an area for several hours, continuing to be contagious and actively effective in the interim.) At least one of them has said that a disease like mumps should not have a vaccine because it is not really so bad and once someone has had it and recovered they have a lifetime of "natural immunity." Also, they like to take the relatively few vaccine fails and trumpet them as evidence that no one should bother getting vaccinated. (Every vaccine has a failure rate; one of the reasons for the big push to vaccinate everybody for smallpox and wipe it from the earth was because of the high rate of bad reactions for the vaccine. Also, the effective rate I've heard for the canine parvovirus vaccine is about 80%, but I will still vaccinate my dog.)
Maren says:
Let me tell you, as a parent in a liberal/hippie area (Northern California), the rhetoric you hear from other parents makes it impossible to interact with some of them. There's the anti-vaccine crowd, and also the people who want to use essential oils for everything, and oh, let's not forget the users of homeopathic stuff like "teething tablets" which were recalled a few years ago for having varying quantities of too much belladonna! (They've since lowered the amount to the point where they're basically just sugar tablets.) And there's always that idiot on the Facebook group who says "well can [X homeopathic thing] really be dangerous, when it's all-natural?" Let me tell you about all the poisonous stuff in nature…
I have come to suspect that "homeopathic" is such a buzzword for a lot of people because it sounds like "homey," making people think it's some kind of home remedy like hot water and honey for a cold. When either there's so little actual content to it as to be worthless, or there actually is something in there that can make kids sick (babies were having belladonna-induced seizures a few years ago until the FDA stepped in on those teething tablets).
I understand wanting the best for our kids, and the world is definitely full of chemicals and not-food in our food, but the reactionary "it's natural!" movement is so depressing. I've basically learned at parties just not to get near this subject because I get so rage-blind but you can't educate anybody. And of course there's the flip side, my super conservative 24 year old step-cousin with a baby my son's age she refuses to vaccinate and plans to homeschool…but also stopped nursing at one year because her husband wanted her to, and had circumcised! So apparently some "not natural" interventions are OK. *eyeroll*
Major Kong says:
I have run into the occasional 9/11 "truther" on the left, but I believe you're correct that it's mostly a right/libertarian thing.
As for the people who believe that "natural" automatically means "healthy" – I like to point out that arsenic and mercury are perfectly natural.
Matt says:
The big difference I can see: nobody in Congress, no matter how "far-left" they might be painted as, is running around holding televised hearings to "uncover the conspiracy" or insisting that science textbooks should have to be rewritten to reflect their bullshit.
*That's* the difference. There are cranks of every flavor out there, but modern conservatism is the only movement that's LET THEM TAKE OVER THE SHOW. 40 years ago the JBS crowd was just as fundamentalist, racist and generally-bugfuck-insane as they are now in their "new and improved" Tea Party flavor, but back then they had to content themselves with sitting quietly in the back and spamming newsletters…
Xynzee says:
Hemlock is natural. Same with uranium and arsenic. I sure as heck don't want to be gnawing on a root or lump of it. Of course by that same token, mumps, measles and Ebola are also "natural".
One of the problems is that because, for example, cranberry juice is naturally occurring and therefore cannot be patented no one will do clinical trials on it to determine its efficacy in UTIs. We're quickly running out of antibiotics, and from what I've heard the last line ones have serious side effects. Taking this into account, wouldn't it be far better for everyone if 80% of UTIs can be knocked out by whatever is in cranberry juice to use it as the go to of first treatment, thereby preserving the antibiotics for more serious cases? It also comes back to the concept of building the immune system by giving the body better quality food to work with, while avoiding ingesting pesticides and herbicides*.
Where it's easy to produce a vaccine for then go for those.
*UC Davis did a study that finds—surprise—a link between maternal exposure to pesticides and autism.
http://m.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/publish/news/newsroom/8978
Rocket says:
Re: Matt's point above, there are a very small number of Democratic politicians who embrace wacky conspiracies too (Kucinich's anti-chemtrails bill comes to mind). Trutherism definitely made it much, much higher in the echelons of the Republican party than any conspiracy nonsense ever did in the Democratic one though.
Jonas says:
The anti-vax craziness is an idea that is found across the political spectrum but skews conservative. Certainly there are liberals out there who are anti-vaxxers, but the movement itself is heaviest among the Christian home-school crowd. And politically, it is Republicans who are fighting against mandatory vaccinations for public schools, like the Texas Republican Party, where this is in their platform.
This is ironic that you mention this in a blogpost criticizing liberals who say that 9/11 truthers are liberal when they are really not. The anti-vax movement is not a liberal movement.
JohnR says:
Reasonable point, Ed; of course there is a distinction between Knowing things for which there is no evidence (Bigfoot Israel!) and Knowing things which are factually untrue (Vaccines Cause Autism!). One big trouble is, as humans, we seem to be hard-wired to believe darned near anything and then find rationalizations to support our beliefs. That's how we come to Know things that just aren't so. Science isn't a perfect counter to that, but it's something.
BrianK says:
Echoing what Jonas said, there's not much evidence (aside from anecdata) that anti-vaxxers are politically liberal. In fact, researchers from Yale & the Cultural Cognition Project found that roughly equal numbers of conservatives & liberals agree with the anti-vaxxer conspiracy theory.
(See: http://prospect.org/article/vaccine-fear-mongers-are-wrong-theyre-not-ideological )
That's not to say left-of-center types shouldn't police this kind of sloppy thinking in our own ranks. But this particular brand of "woo" is stubbornly bipartisan.
Benny Lava says:
Conspiracy theories are inherently conservative. Didn't you read the paranoid style in American politics?
c u n d gulag says:
Sure, we've got some loons amongst us liberals.
The difference is, our Democratic politicians don't bow to them, and consider them a critical part of their voting base.
Shit, the MFer's barely pay any attention to us normal liberals!
deep says:
Same thing with the anti-GMO movement. Some extreme leftwingers are so obsessed with the "keep nature and our bodies clean of toxins" the really buy all the anti-science bullshit that's been going around about GMOs.
Xynzee says:
@Jonas: I wouldn't class Dr. Jenny McCarthy—and by extension Jim Carrie—as a raging Fundy. Would you? Same with my macro-biotic cousin. She seems to keep a mixed bag of company who seem to be of a left-wing survivalist bent. I don't see many crosses and Bible verses on FB popping up, but there's they do have conspiracies.
I thought some of the original survivalists were pot growing hippies who'd either scored bad acid or the paranoia had become permanent. Though this does prove that the Left-Right continuum is a circle and far less linear. The further round you get the harder it is to tell if the person is a churcher, Bircher or is a hippie with a massive crop to protect.
My annecdata puts the electro-magnetic types in the Left wing camp, but I can see a crossover.
What surprises me about the Truthers is that they are almost always aligned with the Libertardian-proGOP set. When the whole 9/11 fiasco happened on their guy's watch. Where as the Left Wing sees elements of some kind of plot with Shrub and Chicanery. Haliburton getting large numbers of contracts?
Skipper says:
I'm a firm believer in vaccines and I don't think I'm a "Truther," whatever that is. But, if you want to talk about people selling shit to us, you also need about Big Pharma. They invent a drug — and then they invent a disease that we all just happen to have that requires the drug. One of the latest is Testosterone replacement. They are pushing that big time, despite the fact scientists know almost nothing about it, and there is no evidence that it's necessary or helpful. In fact, it can be harmful, as it could cause otherwise harmless prostate cancer cells to grow. And the drug is expensive. And then there ars statins. They would put them in the water supply if they could. Everyone I know is on them. Most of what statins do could be done with lifestyle changes – diet and exercise — and without beating the crap out of your liver. And let's not even talk about the crap they're pumping into kids.
Khaled says:
Statins, like most drug therapy, are cheaper and less risky than a stay in a hospital with a surgical procedure. Drug companies sell lots of statins because people refuse to change lifestyles.
Chuck B says:
"…and the insistence that thanks to the internet, we all know better than any "expert" excepting of course the self-identified ones who tell us that what we believe is correct."
This is one of the worst aspects of the internet- the rise of the "internet PHD" who spends an hour researching some topic online and then thinks they know as much as the people who have spent years or decades actually working in that field.
sluggo says:
I picked up my generic statin form the pharmacy yesterday. Under $3 for a month's worth of pills, add in generic BP meds and baby asprin. At least big pharma isn't getting rich off of my heart.
I like the comment about the non-linear/ circular nature of politics.
drouse says:
Taibbi's problem is the window of time that he sampled. Without any evidence to support it, it is my thinking that conspiracy types gravitate to groups that hold minority views. After the court anointed Bush, the GOP had abandoned all pretense and was yanking the country to the right so hard that we had whiplash. It seemed like the left had become a very small minority that was just screaming futilely into the void. I became a regular at FDL back when it was just Plame and the Libby trial. Then came the Attorneys General thing and the hits just came coming. All the usual tropes came up in the comments and in not a few of the posts. Trutherism, FEMA camps and cancelled elections all put in their appearance and weren't laughed out of existence. And FDL wasn't even the worst in that respect. After watching complete GOP control over government for a few years, paranoia seemed like a perfectly logical response. Things didn't start to subside until after the 06 midterms.
Major Kong says:
I'm sure bb will show up with a "Both sides do it!" in 5…4…3…2…1….
wmd says:
While it's true that the Holistic Healing crap is loved by DFH, it's worth noting that the supplement industry is mostly unregulated due to Republican efforts – championed by Orrin Hatch.
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/06/22/orrin-hatch-the-supplement-industrys-lap/
Well mostly says:
My daily bike commute takes me past a Walmart and a Whole Foods. There may be a hundred reasons why people shop where they do: May be a result, may be a cause. But if I have a choice I would rather have the physical profile of the WF types, trippy as they might be, than the folks waddling into Walmart, many of whom look like they might be making their last shopping trip ever. There's a lot of snake oil out there for the gullible types, no doubt, but if anyone thinks General Mills has the well-being of their customers first in mind……..let me introduce you to the intense pressure of the public stock market and quarterly earnings reports. Do you think analysts care about how much corn-syrup is in the product? Obesity is not on their list of concerns.
Matt's mistake, and he makes some, is trying to figure out conspiracy theories. Like trying to figure out crazy-you can't do it. You can recognize it but better to leave it at that. I always find his writing worth reading.
Csicopper says:
Truthers on the left….Zounds! If you find one, steer way around him or her. I mean what else might be hiding in there?
Anti-vaxxers on the left are rare, have some relation to the back to nature crowd and those with fish oil capsules on their grocery list.
I wonder what Ebola experts such as Donald Trump and anti-vaccine cranks will do when the vaccine is ready?
The thing is that it's hard to scare left-wingers with pseudoscience and crackpot medicine. Big Foote and UFOs sure, homeopathy, no.
Brian M says:
Well mostly:
Maybe this is my class bias, but there is a vibe at WalMart that is seriously disturbing. Everyone seems really unhealthy….obesity rampant, and unhappy. And the employees all look miserable.
My suburb is not upscale enough to have a Whole Foods.
Penn Pablo says:
All the anti-vaccine loons I run into are also anti-fluoridation, worship Reagan and Billy Graham, and think 9-11 is a gubmint conspiracy. They home school their brats and want "god" to remain in the pledge of allegiance. I doubt if any of them are liberal other than in their overuse of fats, sugar, and sodium in their meals.
Gerald McGrew says:
To pile on with Jonas and Brian here.
http://mikethemadbiologist.com/2013/08/15/anti-vaccination-has-a-slight-rightwing-bias-and-the-whole-foods-liberal/
"[i]As I’ve noted before, there’s a slight bias against vaccination on the right, not the left. This always comes as a shock to people, because inevitably the shibboleth of the ‘Whole Foods Liberal’, which is simply the updated version of the limousine liberal, is raised. [/i]"
Sorry Ed, but your talking point in this post isn't accurate.
Leon says:
I know there's a large contingent of RW anti-vaxxers, but it simply isn't just RWers. Oregon and Washington is dealing with this anti-science crap quite a bit, which has led to a bunch of cases of whooping cough. And please keep in mind that just a year or two ago, liberal Portland voted down fluoridation in our water because chemicals. So lefties can pat themselves on the back for our belief in science, but that's only the case until it isn't. LWers are also prone to accepting pseudo-science, though perhaps not as active in our rejection if actual science.
Fred says:
The truth about 9/11? The Busies ignored all expert advice to pay attention to Osama bin Ladin and His Merry Band. To quote Little George, "OK, now you've covered your ass." while he was on vacation for the whole summer in Texas. Were the Bushies just being stupid or did they see an opportunity to let something happen that would give them the excuse for the Mideast war they had all called for? I don't know but I don't think stupid people get to occupy the White House especially after they lose an election.
Major Kong says:
I like Trader Joe's. It's basically a low-budget Whole Foods.
If I go into Whole Foods with 3 things on my shopping list I walk out with a cart full of impulse-buys.
anori says:
This is anecdotal, I know, but during my time in extremely lefty Ithaca, New York there was an outbreak of whooping cough. Yup, I blame the anti-vaxxers.
Anonymouse says:
@Penn Pablo; I've noticed exactly the same things as you. "All the anti-vaccine loons I run into are also anti-fluoridation, worship Reagan and Billy Graham, and think 9-11 is a gubmint conspiracy. They home school their brats and want "god" to remain in the pledge of allegiance. I doubt if any of them are liberal other than in their overuse of fats, sugar, and sodium in their meals."
Sifu Snafu says:
Its interesting that so many folks here are seeing a majority of right wing anti-vaxxers, the majority of my acquaintance are lefties. Typically the lefter-than-thou trust-fund hippies.
MF says:
@Sifu: It's mostly lefties in my experience, also. But hey, the PPP data seems to show it's bipartisan. I would add anti-GMO (specifically health threats, not corporate malfeasance) to the left-wing fantasyland. It would be interesting to see some polling on that as well.
Perhaps most disturbing was that 58% of republicans believe that global warming is a conspiracy. Do respondents understand that's different from just thinking it's an error? Do they really believe that thousands of scientists around the world, answering to different governments and employers, are turning down fame and (no doubt) a fat paycheck for a convincing rebuttal, just to annoy Jim Inhofe? And they're doing so without anyone defecting or having their cover blown? Incredible.
Bitter Scribe says:
Part of the problem is the Internet. Printing something that looks good and conveys information well costs money, a lot of money if you want a wide reach. Yet anyone with reasonable web design skills can make a page full of anti-vax nonsense look as outwardly impressive as the Journal of Infectious Diseases.
Ed says:
Portland almost voted down water fluoridation last year. California has some of the worst vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks. I think the "talking point" has some legs.
democommie says:
"California has some of the worst vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks."
Which counties and municipalities.
If it's Orange County and similar places, they skew republican.
If it's LA and similar cities, they skew poor and not anxious to get on public lists.
There may be millions of left wing Troofers and Anti-vaxxers–they have ZERO clout re: gummint policy.
democommie says:
Major Kong:
If I find myself in a Whole Foods, I know I'm a looooooooooong fuckin' way from Oswego, NY. Farmers' Market is as close as we get to the earth, here.
Jason T. says:
"The anti-vax craziness is an idea that is found across the political spectrum but skews conservative. Certainly there are liberals out there who are anti-vaxxers, but the movement itself is heaviest among the Christian home-school crowd." — Jonas, September 8th, 2014 at 7:32 am
I just saw this. I actually tend to agree — at least in Pittsburgh, which may be an anomaly, as it often votes Democratic but skews very, very conservative.
The right-wing fundamentalist Christian radio stations here carry a lot of paid programming from unaccredited healthcare practitioners who push anti-vaccine nonsense as part of a general anti-intellectual mumbo-jumbo, along with commercials for various snake oil health supplements, which carry sotto voce disclaimers saying they're "not approved by the FDA to treat any disease."
There are definitely a lot of anti-vaxxers on the left — maybe there are more on the left than on the right — but as a wise person once told me, when you go to the far left, you meet many of the same crazies coming around from the far right.
bad Jim says:
One of the recent measles outbreaks was in Southern Orange County, CA, which is predominantly conservative. Dr. Bob Sears, recently profiled by the LA Times, is in part to blame. Another outbreak was in liberal but comparably affluent Marin County.
It shouldn't be possible to get sick from a truly homeopathic remedy, which pretty much by definition contains no active ingredients. There's general confusion between the categories of herbal and homeopathic medicine, commensurate with the ignorance of their purchasers.
It may be a fallacy to ascribe scientific ignorance to the ideological fringes; it's probably evenly distributed across the spectrum.
geoff says:
Two things: I am not a 'winger myself, but I do listen to a fair amount of rightwing radio. (So does Tom Tomorrow; it doesn't necessarily mean yr a nut.) And very recently I heard El Rushbo (he actually calls himself that!) pontificating about how Global Warming Is A Scam perpetrated by pointy-headed scientists to pollute our precious bodily fluids or some shit. The right has a pretty strong (KOCH) interest in denying science across the board, so we end up with people who don't "believe" in evolution or climate change or vaccination or…
I would not call myself a 9/11 truther, but there is no denying that the Bush administration lied about internal and external warnings prior to 9/11, strongly opposed the formation of the 9/11 Commission and then appointed Ms. Rice's colleague Philip Zelikow as executive director (after striking out with Henry Kissinger), and of course kinda sorta tried to blame the whole damn thing on Saddam. Do I think the Pentagon was hit by a cruise missile or a particle beam? No. Do I think the US government knew a lot more about Saudi involvement in the attacks than we the public have learned even today? Sure do. If that makes me a crazy then pass me the tinfoil.
Xynzee says:
What's interesting to me regarding GMOs is that it started as a lefty-fringe, anti-corp, vegan, hippy thing—see Food Inc/The Omnivore's Dilemma, Morgan Spurlock—and has been picked up by the right. To prove this, can you imagine a pro-Shrub/Rush is Riecht type breaking into a piggery?
Barry says:
I'd like to pile on here about 9/11 Truthers – IIRC, there was precisely one federal-level Truther politician (Cynthia McKinney), and she was primaried out after her first term.
Meanwhile, on the right, I'd place my money against the political survival of any politician who was *not* a conspiracy theorist.
catbirdman says:
I think there are two distinct varieties of anti-vaxxer. Clearly there's a Christianist/anti-government/anti-science strain on the right, but on the left I think it's more an "entitlement/narcissist" thing. The vaccination rate in my kindergartener's class, in a rather precious part of Long Beach, CA, is a pathetic 66%. The data for kindergarteners in working-class parts of Long Beach are closer to 90%, and some schools even reach 100%. Among lefties, I will bet there's a correlation between a parent's level of fear that their child is going to get gunned down in the street — a cause they can't really control — and their interest in reducing risk of death by preventable disease. The people in my neighborhood, who don't really have that fear, seem to think they're just so special and clean that no dirty, third-world disease is going to penetrate their bubble.
Robert says:
My favorite swipe at the anti-vaxer/natural remedies crowd is pointing out that vaccines are the only homeopathic treatment actually shown to work.
Both of our sons are taking prescription medications for a variety of diagnosed mental illnesses (as am I), and my husband is taking medication to replace his thyroid hormones. Big Pharma, doing its part.
evodevo says:
One point: NCCAM (National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine ) was pushed through by Tom Harkin, Dem Senator, because he had had good results from taking bee pollen (!!) for allergies. So, your tax dollars are at work supporting this s^&t.
I usually associate lefties with "crystal power", healing oils, reiki, therapeutic touch, Rolfing, "natural" foods, etc. etc. combined with a confusing plethora of concepts from Eastern Religions (reincarnation, "old souls", ….). When my husband's old hippie cousin – who is an RN!!! – starts in on this crap, it's all I can do to hold my tongue. They're lovely people, but the total lack of critical thinking makes me grind my teeth.
el mago says:
fine line of distinction between extremes of both wings and they seem to blend and merge in unfocused indiscrection. or something like that.
Pat says:
Ditto BrianK—although it's a tempting stereotype that they're soy-latte drinking Whole Food liberals (by the way, the founder of Whole Foods is a libertarian dickwad, so that stereotype might be a bit more appropriate economically than ideologically), the anti-vaccination crowd is not liberal. More anti-vaxers voted for Bush than for Kerry, e.g., which seems a pretty clear indication.
Alfred Schweitzer once concluded that cannibalism was entirely a myth after he'd followed African villagers instructions to the other village where the practice had occurred (invariably a horrified "No! we don't do that! but we know who you're thinking about, they're a little ways down the road") and inevitably came 'round to the place he'd started. Everyone knew it must have been practiced somewhere, but when you actually looked for evidence, there simply wasn't any.
In the same way, although everyone knows that liberals must believe something as stupid as conservatives do, when you actually look at the evidence, you invariably find that firmly committed-to stupidity is the exclusive property of the political right: anti-vaccinations, young earth creationism, death panels, more guns/less crime, WMDs, trickle-down economics and tax cuts that pay for themselves, Reagan hagiography, any of the three orders of rebuttals to Piketty's thesis (there's no equality! okay, there's inequality, but it's not inherited! okay, it's inherited, but that's a good thing!), QE leading to inflation and the debased dollar, any of John Quiggin's zombie economics…. I mean, I could go on, but the point is rather clear.
It's almost as if when your political movement makes an open-embrace of anti-intellectualism in the 1970s, then for the generation to follow, that movement will get invariably dumber. Funny how it works that way.
Pat says:
… adding to the end of my last comment, unless that idiotic belief is in the greatness of Phish. That's a fair rap on the left.
mothra says:
Well, this is pretty much a dead thread, but I think also part of the blame for the anti-vaxxers lies with the fact that all of THEM were vaxxed and therefore didn't get those childhood diseases or even know anyone with them. So no big deal, right? Those diseases are nearly wiped out, right?
My mother, who survived every childhood disease thrown at her and even some uncommon childhood diseases (hepatitis, scarlet fever), never did understand why anyone would avoid vaccines. She would say that if any anti-vaxxer would have been alive when she was a child and seen what childhood diseases can do, they'd be lining up at the doctor's office to be first to get their children vaccines. Also, I had measles when I was in 2nd grade. The vaccine was released the next year. I was out of school for 2 weeks and pretty damn sick. Why would you want your child to go through that?
Kevin says:
"My favorite swipe at the anti-vaxer/natural remedies crowd is pointing out that vaccines are the only homeopathic treatment actually shown to work."
Vaccines are hot homeopathic.
Kevin says:
NOT homeopathic.damnit.
democommie says:
"NOT homeopathic.damnit"
Correct, vaccines are real.
video sodomie says:
This is where self-worth comes into play, this conception of yourself, governing you to effortlessly attract the girl without trying so hard. In her opinion, early sex education is a field demanding more thought and more ideas so that it is delicate with. A child's exposure to pornography is plainly abuse and we need to do no matter what we can to protect against it.