Faith in the Darndest Things

Quick quiz: Who is the most dangerous man in America?

You thought I would say Trump, right?

While I wouldn’t argue with anyone who sees our mad emperor as the biggest threat to our country, our planet, and possibly life on Earth, my nominee for the man most likely to kill us all is that rapscallion of the Kennedy clan, Mr. RFK Jr.

You see, the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services is trying to end vaccines, weakening public health infrastructure, firing health experts who actually know what they’re talking about, cancelling scientific research that could save millions, and spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories that will eventually lead to Americans chugging vitamins and gurgling bleach instead of getting vaccinated. I wouldn’t be surprised if he outlawed chemotherapy for cancer patients in favor of dousing them in essential oils. 

Kennedy’s idiotic whims and hostility to science will straight-up kill people. But he is symptomatic of two of the Trump administration’s chief characteristics. 

The first is aggression toward expertise, logic, facts, or data. The monumental hubris of conservatives comes out as attacks on those fancy-pants eggheads who study things and learn things and base their conclusions on anything other than the Bible, Trump, or own made-up theories that a 10-year-old could disprove with two minutes of Google searching.

In particular, the Republican hatred of science is well-established. This is part of the larger trend of anti-science mysticismenabling autocracy around the world. Millions of supposedly rational conservatives would rather believe a babbling conman with a messiah complex over decades of scientific research. This ignorance and anger will soon cause the American scientific and technological empire to collapse.

The second “theme that unites Trump’s inept handling of deportations, his trampling on human and civil rights, his rejection of the rule of law, his dictatorial centralization of power, and his utterly inept handling of the economy is the ineptness itself.”

The problem is that Trump “has the attention span of a fruit fly,” which is “causing chaos across the federal government, as rival sycophants compete for his limited attention.”

The result is that no one is in charge, and the Trump administration is “coming apart, [and] incompetence is everywhere.” The administration can’t keep military secrets, maintain financial stability, or protect children from measles. In essence, Trump “cannot protect America.”

But hey, at least red dye is banned. So as our economy nosedives and masked fascists rampage through the streets and we die of preventable diseases, we can take great comfort in that.