rootsbreadandmakka
He said this after and seemingly in response to usaid refusing doge access to their servers. So I’m not really convinced that’s a political statement over musk just lashing out cause he didn’t get his way
I really hate chalking things like this up to pure stupidity and ignorance, but sometimes I can’t see any other reason why they do the things they do. I remember when trump left the tpp. Here was a guy who railed against China constantly, yet pulls out of a deal meant to contain China economically. I loved it, but I can’t see why someone obsessed with the Chinese threat would do something like that except out of pure ignorance as to the tpp’s purpose.
The same with USAID. Do these guys understand what USAID is, or have they really just bought into the liberal lie that it’s a great humanitarian mission, and they oppose that humanitarianism. Like, is there something more nefarious going on here that I can’t see, or is it really just some dumb push to “remove woke” or whatever?
Idk how I feel about this. Personally I think there’s a lot that has happened that seems to contradict this. Trump is expressing real expansionist ideas - his idea of Canada as a “51st state,” which as far as I can tell seems to be the only reason he’s enacted these tariffs on them, some attempt to use economic force to get them to accede to unification, and these attempts to buy Greenland. He seems to want to exert more influence over Latin America, this whole Panama Canal thing, the rhetoric which seems to foreshadow an invasion of Mexico. You also have Elon getting involved in German and UK politics - the afd thing and the “grooming gang” thing, seemingly an attempt to bring the far right to power there. And we know Elon has always has his eyes on Bolivia due to lithium, probably also the reason why there’s such focus on Greenland.
So tbh it doesn’t seem to me at least like there’s been a whole lot of pulling back. I don’t think USAID has been dismantled as this guy says, it’s just being taken over by Elon, I think there are plans to put it under the state dept. The foreign assistance pause is temporary but it’s not ended - I think a lot of these things are going through Trump era restructuring for whatever reason. Even the who thing, there’s been a whole to do about leaving WHO but when trump was signing the eo he (and I forget the quote) is open to rejoining the who under a better deal or whatever. And the whole eo, he’s mad about the influence China has in the organization. Prettt much, he wants greater dominance over the organization and I think leaving the who and pulling funding/collaboration is an attempt to force the who to accede to his demands. The WHO has already had to pull back capacity due to this.
Even the Rubio thing, yeah he’s saying we’re in a multipolar world now or whatever, but really he’s expressing a need to reassert American dominance in global politics. Sure he’s talking about diplomacy, but it seems to be a gesture towards realpolitik than any sort of pulling back as this guy is characterizing it. Rubio seems to have simultaneously drank the kool aid and believes the liberal lie that USAID and stuff are selfless humanitarian missions that he wants to pull back from, while also recognizing the decline of American hegemony and expressing a need to reassert “American interests.”
It’s like trumps first term when he pulled out of the tpp and the Iran nuclear deal. This was called isolationism, just as he’s referred to as an isolationist now, but it didn’t come with any real pulling back and instead trump ramped up tensions with both China and Iran for 4 years, not recognizing that both the tpp and jcpoa were tools to contain both countries.
Anyway a lot of disorganized thoughts, hopefully someone got something out of that or maybe I’m just straight up wrong
Tbh I’ve gone back and forth on this and have concluded that the most annoying are the ones you need to deal with on a daily basis. However in the liberals’ defense I will say that I can usually hold a normal, non political conversation with even the most pretentious of liberals, whereas chuds tend to insert every grievance of theirs into everything and are often just impossible to talk to.
The most annoying right now to me though are the chuds who don’t like trump. Not never trumpers, but the conservatives for whom Trump was the lesser evil. Chuds fucking suck as you say, liberal anti-Trump politics can be annoying but it’s generally well intentioned and I can find common ground with it. But with lesser evilism chuds, they’ll do the same shit you’re describing above, owning the libs constantly, but then trump does something that no one likes, like these tariffs rn. And suddenly these people are on your side. My dad is doing that rn. He’ll celebrate all the “ending DEI” crap, but then trump institutes these tariffs and it’s all “hey don’t blame me I don’t like the guy!” Like stfu and own your decision
I suppose just being socialized into the patriarchy. But I’d love to peer into the mind of someone who is on a first date and decides hey I should start getting aggressive here thatd be a good idea. That’s a mindset that I find so completely alien to me and it’s not as if I wasn’t raised and socialized with patriarchal ideals myself
I can’t tell you how many times I’ll like see something online that seems like a really hyperbolic and extreme men suck sentiment and I’ll go “ok I understand the sentiment but this is a bit much.”
And then I’ll talk to men irl, even men in my own circle who id hope are generally “better” and just realize that nope, I was wrong, men really are completely unsalvageable
Would love to hear how the US plans to do this while undergoing massive brain drain
I like just found out it’s from a neurological condition. I had no idea, I honestly thought he just talked like that.
Yeah lol that’s the one.
I mean, it’s really not the worst possible belief system one can have. He’s essentially just laser focused on improving Americans’ diet and lifestyles to become healthier. Which…isn’t a bad thing. And he’s right that things like diet and exercise will keep the body strong to fight disease.
But he leans on this understanding of the immune system where it is literally the only thing that decides whether one gets sick or not. To the point where germs don’t matter - which is where the logic behind that video going around where he’s wants the NIH to stop studying infectious diseases comes from. Why study infectious diseases if they don’t actually make you sick? It really all depends on the strength of your immune system. And therefore, why put resources towards public health if all we really need is stronger immune systems?
And so then we get to what I think is the most dangerous part of this, which is that he’s essentially individualized disease. When you get sick, it’s your own fault. Like we saw during Covid, it’s the fault of underlying disease, obesity, age. If someone is young and healthy, then we blame diet, processed foods. Maybe they used drugs or used to, or they’re a former smoker. Anything but Covid itself. And so if you die, or get disabled, hey it’s a tragedy, but you brought it upon yourself because of some personal failing or inherent imperfection. Eugenicist thinking.
And private healthcare loves this since it gives them any number of reasons to deny coverage. Kennedy went on an on today about “putting people in charge of their own healthcare.” I totally agree with lifestyle changes so that people can be healthier, but first of all we haven’t created a world amenable to healthy lifestyles, and second of all we don’t need to flirt with germ theory denial to live healthier.
Sorry went off a little there lol
It was at literally the very end as all the senators were running out of the room to try and get to a confirmation vote and the chairman was trying to get whoever it was who asked to yield since her time was up. So it was sort of glossed over, and of course Kennedy’s gonna say yes, he’s not gonna go to his confirmation hearing and say he doesn’t believe in germs. It wasn’t dug into at all, and the senator said well I have more that I’d like to submit to the record, specifically she was talking about shit from his book where he lays out his sort of softcore terrain theory where he doesn’t necessarily reject germ theory but laments that it’s the prevailing view in medicine and lays out his beliefs that germs aren’t actually that big a deal.
Sorry that’s what I meant. Too much that I didn’t want to type. I wish they had dug into it more but instead it was some throwaway question at the very end that why the hell would Kennedy answer anything but yes.
Extremely surprised by this turn of events