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Third Party, Third Rail
Last week, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently threw his support behind the candidacy of Donald Trump. He first gave a speech about suspending his campaign (at least in several swing states) and then spoke again that night at a Trump rally in Arizona. Both speeches were excellent.
Whatever opinion you may have of RFK Jr., the issues he has brought to the forefront are remarkable to hear from any mainstream political figure. Some highlights:
Stopping the endless wars.
Removing neoconservative holdovers in the halls of power.
Dismantling the unaccountable intelligence agencies.
Ceasing the disastrous regime change doctrine we have pursued for decades.
Addressing regulatory capture and the insane revolving door FDA to Pharmaceutical complex that has led us to a state of disease and unhealthiness that is shameful for any developed nation.
While each of those issues is important, what stood out most of all for me was his discussion of the food supply in this country.
Statements like "Our food is poison" are obvious, but you'll never hear them said by anyone in a position to do anything about it. Kennedy highlights the insane amounts of chemical additives, preservative compounds, dubious re-definitions of ingredients, misleading advertising, bought-and-paid for research, and ridiculous government guidelines that regulate our food supply.
The bottom line: We're all becoming fat, miserable and chronically diseased at earlier ages and to a greater degree than ever before.
Sound of Silence
It's an easy enough problem to spot. Who among us can say that people in our society look to be healthy and of an appropriate weight? Obesity and chronic disease have gradually become worse and worse over the years. The population has become a grim physical manifestation of the neglect and self-abuse this country has been subjected to. A visual indicator that all is not as it should be.
Since these issues are so obvious and important, You'd think that the government would have it at the top of their agenda. They do not. I can only see two possible explanations:
Our leaders are all blind, and thus unable to see the effects of the poison they have allowed our food supply to be replaced with.
Our leaders are purposefully quiet about this crisis because they are incentivized in some way to perpetuate it..
While I don't credit our leadership with much awareness of either themselves or the actual issues facing this country, the idea that they are blind to this visually obvious problem seems unlikely. We can reasonably assume that instead, they are willfully ignoring the issue for their own reasons.
I don't think General Mills is passing everyone envelopes full of hush money, although maybe that's the case in some instances. However, senators and representatives are at some level beholden to the interests of their constituents and more importantly, their financial backers.
Congress has been subsidizing corn and grain crops for decades. This has led to gigantic agricultural conglomerates being built around the ever-flowing tap of government money. Big agriculture sees huge profits and uses those profits to buy more politicians intent on supporting the same systems. The money flows in an ever widening circle and before long we're all being told that 8-11 servings of glyphosates a day are vital to our continued wellbeing.
The T-Zone
Still, it feels implausible that an entire country could be so thoroughly ignorant and misled about the obvious effects of such agricultural practices and government malfeasance. To pull off a ruse like that would require teams of very experienced propaganda merchants working around the clock to buy off authorities and experts and spin entire media ecosystems into mouthpieces for the industry. Who would even be up to a task like that?
To his credit, RFK Jr. included this inconvenient fact in his speech. Supposedly, the big tobacco firms are no longer as heavily invested in big agriculture as they were through the 80's, 90's and 00's, but we're still saddled with the baggage of 40 plus years of "Doctor Approved", "Nutritionally Sound", "Safe for Human Consumption" garbage and poison being pushed at us from all angles.
Widening The Lens
The covid era has opened many peoples eyes to the depravity of the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry in this country. These institutions have been corrupted by phony research, pill-pushing schemes, and graft that benefits the insurance companies and hospital systems at the expense of the patient. Why then, should we be surprised when we look around at every other facet of society and see the same behavior?
What are the odds that any other industry is any different? Scams that prove effective are always replicated elsewhere.
Reaching Across the Aisle
It won't really hit you until you go and look for yourself. Go to a grocery store and walk the aisles. Pull any random item from a shelf and look at the ingredients. Do you see things like:
Soybean Oil
Sunflower Oil
Canola Oil
Cottonseed Oil
Grapeseed Oil
Safflower Oil
Xantham Gum
High Fructose Corn Syrup
You will. In everything. That's not an exaggeration, either. I will bet that if you pluck 10 items at random from any grocery shelf, 8.5 of them will have one or several of those ingredients.
Some argue that the use of seed oils and other artificial preservatives, fillers, flavor enhancers and dyes have no negative health effects. I won't pretend to be any kind of authority on the issue, just someone who possesses common sense.
My Common Sense Analysis:
If:
Over the last forty years, sugars, artificial sweeteners, preservatives, pesticides, seed oils, dyes, and chemical filler agents have become principal ingredients in almost every food product sold in this country.
And:
Over the last forty years, Americans have seen skyrocketing rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and hypertension and a slew of other chronic diseases.
Then:
We can reasonably assume that at least some portion of the blame for the condition we find ourselves in can be laid at the feet of fundamentally changing our diet to one based mostly in hyper-processed oils and sugars.
Symptoms Only
It isn't as if the effects have not been noticed. We're all very aware of the laundry list of health problems being faced by more and increasingly younger people all over the country. What solutions are available to us?
We can go to a doctor. They will be happy to provide us with statins for our cholesterol, beta blockers for our blood pressure, insulin for our diabetes, proton pump inhibitors for the reflux caused by our awful diets, and an endless list of other drugs to plug the various holes our food supply has punched through our systems. If all else fails, they can just paralyze your digestive system with Ozempic and call it a day. I can see no possible bad outcomes down the road from any of this.
Maybe we should talk to a nutritionist or dietitian? They'll be happy to place us on a low-fat, low-salt, plant based diet that is still based on ideas from Ansel Keyes's fake research in the 50's and scientists paid off by sugar barons and the corn lobby.
What about just working out? Getting more exercise is never a bad idea, but an entire industry has sprung up alongside that aim to sell you the same poison that General Mills is pumping out but with a different label. Soy, carbs, and sugar are still soy, carbs, and sugar regardless of the catchy slogan and big X's on the container.
There has been a four decade gold rush surrounding the collective misery and disease of the entire population. The government, the medical establishment, the insurance conglomerates, the agricultural lobbies, the fitness industry, the nutrition industry, and the pharmaceutical giants are all sustained by this parasitic system. They attach themselves like leeches to the people of this country and slowly siphon off their health, their happiness, and their income. The best thing for this system's bottom line is for you to remain sick, sad, medicated, broke and malnourished.
All of the monied interests that benefit from our dysfunction are ready and willing to sell us a solution to the sickness caused by this poisonous buffet they've trapped us in. Rest assured, they've got a treatment for every symptom you can imagine. Not one of them wants to talk about the cause. That would spoil the game and they can't allow it.
We Missed It
What does all of this say about us? How have we allowed the state of things to get this dismal? How does something as fundamental as our food supply and our own health just get completely subverted in plain sight? I think it largely comes down to a misplaced trust in our institutions. We sometimes underestimate how much implicit trust the Greatest Generation and many of the Boomers had in government and medicine.
"The government is there to watch out for charlatans and con-artists..."
"The FDA keeps an eye on these things..."
"They wouldn't just let them put poison in the food..."
"Doctor's orders...I need these pills for my cholesterol..."
"Just use the Food Pyramid, The USDA knows what they're talking about..."
"Experts weighed in, good enough for me..."
This type of blind trust and assumption of a good faith relationship between government, industry and population leads to the type of system we find ourselves in.
Today, we can easily see how horrible and dangerous these attitudes are, but we have to remember that a majority of people genuinely thought this way throughout the last century. The corruption and callousness of our government and industries just wasn't understood the way it is now.
Even today many are happy to go along with anything someone with a degree or a title tells them
"Safe and effective"
"Horse paste"
"Six feet"
"My mask protects you"
We may not have learned much after all.
Stop Doing That
There have been some people calling out the awful practices of big agriculture and government misconduct when it comes to our food supply. Vegan movements and organic operations rose out of an awareness of the problems with the system and a desire to find alternatives. I don't believe that veganism or organics are the solution, but I applaud anyone that identifies an issue and works out solutions for themselves.
Those alternative movements had the potential to branch out and create a widespread rejection of the status quo. The problem was that those movements were championed by people who turned it into a political stance and also an identity.
This type of thing alienates most people from digging deeper into alternative food models. When you attach your beliefs about diet and food-sourcing to political and social ideology, most people tune out your message altogether.
Unfortunately, due to this politicization, an issue that should be front and center for every American gets lumped in with the people gluing themselves to sidewalks to show OPEC they mean business, or dressing up in a Handmaid's Tale outfit to fight climate sexism.
People don't take them seriously and for good reason.
New Energy
Kennedy bringing this issue to the main stage is incredibly important. The state of our food systems being aired out and explored by regular members of society gives it a chance to be taken seriously. This may lead to a more narrow focus on the cause of our problems rather than endlessly treating the symptoms.
I don't pretend to know the answers to all of these problems, but I know that solving any problem starts with us acknowledging that a problem exists.
If Kennedy speaks to only one thing that matters in his political career it may be this. I can't think of a better hill to plant the flag of dissent on. We must become more aware of the direct line between the problems with our food supply and the declining health of our country. The merchants of death have had a stranglehold on the health of the population for decades. Much of that population still hasn't noticed.
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“I'm a human being, I exist. And if I speak one thought aloud that thought lives, even after I'm shovelled into my grave.”
This was a good read. In my experience, the insane problems with the food industry in the U.S. are so glaring to people who live in different countries. For example, when I talk to people from Europe online, they just can’t believe the way Americans eat. It’s odd to think that some people still don’t realize that when you walk into a grocery store, you have to be in “avoid poison” mode. Although it seems more people are waking up to this terrible reality. It would be great if more people like RFK would speak up and do something about the matter.
I am a surgeon. I tell my patients diet and exercise are magic pills. Exercise is wonderful for anxiety. Don’t eat foods with more than 5 ingredients. Shop the outside of the grocery stores not the inner aisles
Kennedy thinks vaccines may be implicated in autism. I’m not sure but at least he is ASKING THE QUESTION. He is brave. We need many more brave leaders.