USA Politics

____no5 said:
The difference here is that the guy is anti-vaxx twenty years or more now, way before this became trendy with Covid. So at the very least I can trust his sincerity. He might be wrong but not a liar.
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Do you think that just because you aren't aware of movements that they aren't trendy? The anti-vax movement began in 1998, and he hooked onto it in 2005.

____no5 said:
And I don’t see where’s the monetary gain comes from. The man is clearly against Big Pharma. Monetary gains come when you work with the lobbies not against them.
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They grift the rubes, man. They give paid speeches to crowds, to tell them how vaccines cause autism, and how COVID vaccines are designed to spare the Jews and the Chinese but not the poor lil white guy. They beg for donations on their radio show. They sell overpriced books about conspiracy theories around vaccines (and half of them go back to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion). There's lots of money in there for the well-connected grifter. After all, when PT Barnum said there's a sucker born every minute, he was underestimating the amount of suckers.
 
LooseCannon said:
Vaccines causing autism isn't just a debunked claim, it was an out-and-out lie designed to enrich disgraced former doctor Andrew Wakefield, and he continues the grift to this day.
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Exactly. The hbomber video on vaccines is a fascinating deep dive that explains this in detail for anyone who is interested in learning more:


____no5 said:
But does RFK Jr engage in such activities? Apart from speeches of course.
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He, at the very least, has written books about his anti-vaxx stances, so there's definitely a financial component.

He is not an honest man. He peddles literal lies. I don't understand why we should give him the benefit of the doubt, but I also don't wanna derail the thread too much, so I'll leave it at that.
 
Vaenyr said:
He, at the very least, has written books about his anti-vaxx stances, so there's definitely a financial component.

He is not an honest man. He peddles literal lies. I don't understand why we should give him the benefit of the doubt, but I also don't wanna derail the thread too much, so I'll leave it at that.
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Fuck, a crack there. I liked him so far. I'll be watching him more closely now. Thanks.
 
LooseCannon said:
roblox_oof.mp3
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Man I had watched his political stuff for a while, but never paid much attention to his other videos. The day he dropped the Roblox oof video I just absentmindedly clicked on it thinking I would back out ten minutes in. I mean, it’s two fucking hours long about a half a second soundbite, what the fuck?

Anyway that video may be the greatest thing in the history of YouTube and my life has never been the same since.
 
It’s interesting to think back on this but I can actually credit ‘BreadTube’ greatly for getting me out of a lot of bad beliefs that had held over from my upbringing. When I stopped believing in Christianity I essentially had to relearn how the world works and finding people like ContraPoints, Philosophy Tube, and hbomberguy was a massive help.
 
The Tommy Talarico saga is wild. I’ve been following that since he became head of Intelivision. That HBomber guy video is fantastic, I’ll have to check out the vaccine one.

The interesting thing about RFK is that he seems to be pulling votes from Trump more than Biden. The default is to assume that a third party is bad for the incumbent (or incumbent party) because that's what we're used to, but RFK definitely aligns more with the republicans particularly with the anti vax conspiracy stuff. There's also a block on the fringe right that is upset with Trump promoting the vaccine and the sentiment could be powerful enough to cause Trump to lose some votes. The problem is that Trump has a low ceiling (those swing state polls are basically a very best scenario for him whereas they could easily swing much further in the other direction). His ability to win is riding heavily on third party votes siphoning enough support from Biden to allow Trump to win with 47-49% of the vote.

Either way RFK is a grifter. His supporters are the most gullible of the gullible. Even more gullible than Trumpists.
 
LooseCannon said:
Being anti-vaxx isn't an unpopular truth, it's a conspiracy theory that gets people killed. There's virtue in speaking the truth; there's no virtue in a mass murdering lie.
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The problem is, "anti-vaxx" is a really broad spectrum of opinions and especially during COVID, you could have been labeled such for a lot of stuff that would be perceived as acceptable otherwise... and afterwards indeed became more so.

And not just vaccines - I remember when speculating that COVID is an artificial virus that has escaped from a lab in China was being laughed at and got you comments for your "tin-foil hat" - and in the past year or so, I have seen more and more experts admit that it is a possible origin explanation (I'm too lazy to search for it now, but these were no conspiracy crazyness websites or anything, either trust me or don't)

I am vaccinated against many things, including COVID - but it is always a choice between the effect of the vaccine and the potential adverse effects.

In hindsight, taking into consideration that the vaccine doesn't prevent transmission, doesn't prevent severe course of the illness (and at least some people told me it was first being advertised as either of those or both, though I don't personally remember it) and for example seeing as the relatively recently developed RNA vaccines might have effect on the heightened rate of seizures in vaccinated children - see this FDA study I found - I do find certain reluctance to be more legitimate than you probably do - at least I'm thankful that my country hasn't allowed the vaccination of children (who usually have a mild course of the illness anyway), but some otheres were not as lucky. Which might also make me an anti-vaxxer in some people's eyes.

That's not endorsing any anti-vaxx psycho on the net (I realise that in NA the situation is rather different in this regard, although we also get some stuff imported from overseas) and as I've said, I'm vaccinated, just saying there's a spectrum and I always wonder what type of an anti-vaxxer a given person is - because there were times when both sides were being less than reasonable.
 
JudasMyGuide said:
The problem is, "anti-vaxx" is a really broad spectrum of opinions and especially during COVID, you could have been labeled such for a lot of stuff that would be perceived as acceptable otherwise... and afterwards indeed became more so.

And not just vaccines - I remember when speculating that COVID is an artificial virus that has escaped from a lab in China was being laughed at and got you comments for your "tin-foil hat" - and in the past year or so, I have seen more and more experts admit that it is a possible origin explanation (I'm too lazy to search for it now, but these were no conspiracy crazyness websites or anything, either trust me or don't)
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This is not quite correct and conflates two separate things. There have been two "lab leak" theories. Theory A is the one that has been attacked from the get go for being a conspiracy without any evidence; it's the one that claims covid was created in a lab and possible leaked on purpose. There is no evidence for the virus being man-made.
Theory B, the one that could be seen as possible, is the one that says the virus occured naturally, was studied in a lab that specializes in these types of viruses, and due to accident, mistake or incompetence escaped the lab and leaked to the outside world.

Note that the consensus is that neither of those is the true one, but B has at least some plausability. A has none at all.

JudasMyGuide said:
I am vaccinated against many things, including COVID - but it is always a choice between the effect of the vaccine and the potential adverse effects.

In hindsight, taking into consideration that the vaccine doesn't prevent transmission, doesn't prevent severe course of the illness (and at least some people told me it was first being advertised as either of those or both, though I don't personally remember it) and for example seeing as the relatively recently developed RNA vaccines might have effect on the heightened rate of seizures in vaccinated children - see this FDA study I found - I do find certain reluctance to be more legitimate than you probably do - at least I'm thankful that my country hasn't allowed the vaccination of children (who usually have a mild course of the illness anyway), but some otheres were not as lucky. Which might also make me an anti-vaxxer in some people's eyes.
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Eh, you're obviously entitled to do whatever you want to, but the simple fact is that the vaccines are verifiably much safer than the virus. One of the rare, but serious, side effects with the vaccines is myocarditis. Though it's usually a mild case that is perfectly treatable. On the other hand the virus itself is order of magnitude more dangerous and much more likely to cause severe cases of myocarditis that are much harder to deal with. Purely from a statistics POV the vaccines are much safer and the best bet, compared directly to the virus.

As for RFK and what kind of anti-vaxxer he is: He spread lies about the covid vaccines, but has been anti-vaxx for close to two decades before this pandemic and holds on to disproven conspiracies.
 
That study actually specifically says that you should discard the reporting on seizures as the same effect was not detected in previous cohorts.
 
Also worth noting that RFK's whole shtick has been not getting children vaccinated. It goes beyond adults making choices for themselves and into adults making harmful choices that put children in danger.
 
Tim Scott is out. Not significant in the grand scheme of things, but now is the time for the establishment to coalesce around someone. I am still going to ride the bold prediction that DeSantis doesn’t make it to Iowa. Shoeliftgate feels like the final nail in the coffin.
 
It does feel like the GOP donor class is starting to agree that only Nikki Haley has a chance of knocking Trump off his perch. She just announced a $10 million ad buy, too, which feels calculated to try to push out some of the poorer candidates.
 
I sort of hope Haley wins the primary and then the general. That might make the GOP turn back from cultism and into (a relative term here) a more moderate approach. A Democrat win, while policy wise greatly preferable, would perhaps galvanize the cultism further.
 
Yax said:
I sort of hope Haley wins the primary and then the general. That might make the GOP turn back from cultism and into (a relative term here) a more moderate approach. A Democrat win, while policy wise greatly preferable, would perhaps galvanize the cultism further.
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Certainly better than Trump by a country mile, though I'm not sure how we'd all feel about it once she started conducting military strikes in Mexico without their permission.

Still, imagine how much healthier this election would feel if it were something like Phillips vs. Haley instead of Biden vs. Trump redux.

As for Tim Scott, I'd normally say he'd be high on the list of potential Trump VP picks for the usual pandery reasons, but the only "problem" for him is that he wouldn't be an unconstitutional yes man if Trump demanded that he advocate for undemocratic things. If Trump gets in again, he's going to want as many shitbag loyalists in place as possible across the board so he can do whatever he wants until the courts finally stop him 2-3 years later.
 
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