Yeah but he has been a fixture since the 90s, and he wasn’t always like this.
Sadly, lead poisoning probably claimed yet another baby boomer. As boomers get older, their brains aren’t able to compensate for the damage to high levels of lead exposure they experienced as children. Boomers and Gen X were exposed to a lot of lead paint and leaded gasoline. In modern times, lead levels above 3.5 ug/dl are considered a sign of a problem that warrants attention. People like Bill Maher who was born in 1956 have blood levels around 15-25 ug/dl.
There may be a little more nuance to it, but I don’t think it’s much more complicated than Heracles’ explanation. Demonizing the opposition is right out of the fascist playbook. In the past, Conservatives and Liberals disagreed, often very vehemently, on what policies were best for America, but there was usually no question that both sides wanted what was best for America, they just had very different ideas on exactly what was best. But now the right is openly saying “Liberals hate America”.
This isn’t exactly new; McCarthy fanned the flames of Comminist infiltration fears (lawyer Roy Cohn being the common link between McCarthy and the young trump who learned more about how to be a hateful asshole from Cohn). And Repubs like Gingrich propagated the myth that almost any form of help from the government is (GASP!) Socialism. You want affordable health care? Affirmative action? Go move to Canada or Russia, you Commie. While perpetuating that ‘lift yourself by your bootstraps’ myth that tilting the playing field toward the middle class and underprivileged was wrong, the right was busy tilting the playing field toward the rich. And the playing field gets steeper all the time, meaning demonizing the left needs to keep getting louder to distract the ordinary folks teetering on it.
One side believes in a natural order and the other in a more perfect order. The latter views the former as stubborn. The former views the latter as heretics.
I see your point but it’s more like they’ve been told by someone with an axe to grind (grasping power) or a buck to be made or both, “They are going to put 20 tarantulas into your home but we can stop them.”
You’re doing it wrong. I was asking about strawmen arguments to cement my sense of moral superiority; not living, breathing humans with complex emotions.
Ehmmm…okay? The South is more rural, more rural is loosely correlated with higher per capita levels of incest. I’m not sure how much of the difference can be laid at the feet of deliberate anti-intellectualism.
Again, obesity levels are higher in the U.S. South and Appalachia. Again the main association seems to be rural and poverty. But especially poverty. While conscious anti-intellectualism can play a factor, food deserts and economic stress are probably a much bigger one. You see the same thing in poor urban areas everywhere.
I’m not at all comfortable with a narrative grouping that seems to imply that obesity is a moral evil on the level of racism and incest. I’m also not particularly convinced that you can tie anti-intellectual sympathies with the Antebellum South with fat people in this country. I suspect morbidly obese liberal Black Americans are going to be a bit skeptical of that notion as well.
Exactly. For the past decade, I’ve worked with a health insurance company in Alabama. Yes, Alabama has among the highest rates of obesity in the U.S., as well being among the highest for diabetes, asthma, high blood pressure, heart disease, and COPD.
It’s about culture, diet (heavy on the sugar and fat), poverty levels, and lack of education on healthy eating, and not political affiliation; there are a lot of Democratic-voting Black Alabamians who suffer from the same suite of health conditions.
To the OP: the right has long been more likely to see things in terms of right/wrong, black/white, etc.
This can lead to seeing their political opponents as not just wrong on the issues, but utterly immoral, evil, pedophiles, America haters. The rhetoric from Gingrich/Limbaugh cited above whipped this up.
When Hillary referred to (a subset of) MAGAs as ‘deplorables’ they went berserk. They consider this tactic their exclusive property.
Not just obesity, but also smoking. My home state West Virginia has the highest rate of both. Food deserts can play a role in obesity, but smoking is just ignorance, along with maybe some defiant, defeatist, self-destructivism, driven by poverty.
Indeed, and I should have mentioned that, as it contributes to the high rates of respiratory diseases, as well as cancer. About the only negative health issue that Alabama does not rank highly on is heavy alcohol use.
