OAN Guest Commentary – Rick Amato
Thursday, November 14, 2024
With 47th President Donald Trump purportedly promising Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK) a prominent role in his administration, his second term is expected to focus significantly more on healthcare reform.
Sneering at RFK has been a favorite pastime for American elites for nearly two decades. Whether his fans were Bay Area leftists (as many were, until the last few years) or more recently, COVID-19 vaccine skeptics, it didn’t make a difference.
What mattered to these bien-pensants is that RFK and his followers don’t believe “the science.” Not that they’ve read the studies themselves, of course, but the scientists who get quoted in left-wing outlets like the Atlantic and the New Yorker seem pretty certain that all of Kennedy’s beliefs are bologna.
The self-satisfied sycophants of scientism spend so much time scoffing at benighted “anti-vaxxers” that they miss the broader reason for RFK’s appeal. When Kennedy says he wants to “Make America Healthy Again,” he gives people permission to notice what’s right in front of their faces and ask, “Hey, what the hell’s going on here?”
Maybe vaccines aren’t driving the spike in autism rates, which tripled between 2000 and 2016, according to one study. Maybe the increased prevalence of childhood food allergies — which now afflict 1 in 13 kids — can’t be attributed to atrazine in the water supply. Maybe antidepressants aren’t to blame for school shootings. If those are the wrong explanations though, then what are the right ones? The response can’t simply be to ignore these problems. People aren’t that stupid. They see it gradually becoming worse and they want answers.
Take obesity. In 1990, the most overweight state in the union was Mississippi, with an obesity rate of around 25 percent. Today, that same percentage would make it the thinnest. A study in the New England Journal of Medicine predicted that, by 2030, the national obesity rate will be 48.9 percent, with the thinnest state, Colorado, in the mid-30s and the fattest at nearly 60 percent. No one seems to know why this is happening or how to stop it. Despite all the diet apps, trendy workout classes, and Michelle Obama’s tasteless lunch slop, Americans continue to balloon in size, adding Xs to their clothing labels at an alarming rate. The only thing we’ve come up with that does seem to be putting a dent in obesity rates is semaglutide injections like Ozempic and Wegovy. But those treat the symptoms, not the causes. Instead of figuring out why adults and children are so fat now, we offer them a drug with unknown long-term side effects.
Watch this pattern repeat itself enough times, and suddenly RFK’s “conspiracy theorizing” doesn’t sound so crazy. He might be wrong on certain specifics, but it’s obvious to anyone paying attention that the pharmaceutical industry cares more about making profit than about protecting Americans’ health. Additionally, after the COVID-19 pandemic fiasco, most don’t feel obligated to “trust the experts” anymore.
“Experts” at the CDC told us that COVID-19 came from a Chinese wet market, that going to Black Lives Matter (BLM) rallies would help fight the pandemic, and that taking the vaccine would prevent transmission of the virus. “Experts” at Purdue Pharma watched hundreds of thousands of Americans perish after using their recklessly-marketed opioids. In fact, “experts” in mental health still urge gender dysphoric, confused children to poison and mutilate their bodies (and they can risk losing their licenses if they offer any other solution).
In addition, the “experts” in the Biden-Harris administration just parrot whatever their self-interested Big Pharma donors require of them.
For example, the Biden-Harris White House (and Harris campaign) came out in full force for regulations on pharmacy benefit managers, the companies that negotiate Big Pharma’s prices down for American businesses, just as the drugmakers were lobbying the government to stop these thorns in their sides. Coincidence? I think not. The Biden-Harris health “experts” say unequivocally that government force against PBMs is what’s best for healthcare consumers, but others (like Trump’s advisors) think differently.
I can’t say I’ll agree with everything RFK does in his anticipated, but so far unspecified, role in the second Trump administration. But, what we’re doing right now isn’t working. Americans know that. It’ll be nice to have someone in Washington, D.C., who knows it too.
Rick Amato is the Editor-In-Chief of Your America TV and the host of Politics & Profits with Rick Amato.
