Things Can Always Get Worse
An essay on the times.
Back in 2020, another teacher and I were talking on the phone about everything going on. At one point she said, “Things can’t get any worse, right?” There was an awkward pause. Then she repeated herself. “Right?”
“Things can always get worse,” I said.
She didn’t like that answer.
But it’s the truth.
We’re in the fast lane of collapse now. As we speak, RFK Jr. eases into a murky government role, announcing plans to hollow out the FDA and fire hundreds of federal workers across agencies like the NIH and NIAID. Meanwhile, supposedly liberal opinion columnists like Leana Wen seek only to normalize and mainstream outlandish ideas like removing fluoride from our drinking water. Wen has completely ignored the organ and brain damage done by repeated “mild” Covid infections for going on four years, but she’s suddenly interested in peer-reviewed studies suggesting too much fluoride can cause developmental harm in children, not to mention “problems such as anxiety and emotional instability.” According to her, a “slight increase in tooth decay” is worth the risk in a country where nearly 69 million adults can’t afford dental insurance or dentist visits.
Toward the end of the article, she admits that “Kennedy’s long history of antiscience propagandism give[s] me nightmares,” but she doesn’t write about any of that. It’s not lost on us that Wen has spent the last several years herself promoting antiscience propaganda, downplaying the risk of airborne diseases from the start. I’m sure she has fueled plenty of her own nightmares.
If you’re screaming inside yourself right now, you’re not alone.
It might sound like random nonsense and typical Trumpian buffoonery to start talking about the health impacts of fluoride four years into a raging pandemic, with another one (H5N1) about to take off.
This isn’t just madness, though.
This is where your average brunch liberal loses the plot, but it’s not hard to see why RFK Jr. is turning fluoridated water into a controversy, and why obtuse health pundits like Leana Wen are helping him do it.
There’s an agenda.