his eco support has been heavily criticized as outdated before. i wouldnt hold his past as a good thing.
AmidFuror@fedia.io 1 week ago
This is a tangent, but I'm curious how many people who uncritically supported Kennedy's environmental efforts are rethinking the accuracy of his claims based on what they know is wrong about his public health claims.
What's the difference between evil pharma pushing deadly vaccines and evil chemical companies polluting our environment? There are historically proven incidents of both (if we expand vaccine to medical treatments in general), but how many of the specific cases he made against companies were contrived bullshit pushed by cranks? Take fluoridation for a less controversial example among educated people.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 1 week ago
jatone@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week ago
the problem is more that these departments have repeatedly lied about and continued to allow the use of dangerous substances which eroded the trust with the public. This gave individuals like RFK the ounce of truth they needed to undermine them.
‘<minority group X> can totally be researched on without their consent’ ‘PFAs are perfectly safe!’ (when used appropriately, and discarded after N years both of which never happen),
‘Mercury fillings are safe!’ (because we can’t actually measure the damage they do accurately enough to decouple it from natural damage, but they’re not actually safe), ‘Weed has no medical uses.’ (because we wouldnt allow it to be studied, turns out its very medically useful). ‘mdma/shrooms have no medical uses!’ (turns out they’re great at treating depression and a host of neurological conditions) ‘artificial food colorings are safe!’ (turns out they’re not and we’ve known it for years) ‘trans fats are safe!’ (they werent). ‘you dont need to wear masks to protect from covid’ (turns out we needed to wear masks)
the list goes on and on. and in each case where we finally got these organizations to do whats best for the american populace at the expense of corporations it has taken a monumental effort despite the data basically being very clear.
But each time a person suffers and learns about these things it puts another set of nails in the coffin for whether a randomly selected member of the population trusts them or not leading to people like RFK being able to take advantage of the mistrust.
what you’re seeing now is the end result of these kinds of situations happening repeatedly.