This sounds like a stupid question, but I’m being genuine.
He is telling people to eat more meat, which sounds absolutely insane to me.
What qualifies him to give health advice ? Why are americans trusting him ?
There are SEEMINGLY UNLIMITED reasons to discredit this person and one of them is not ‘addict in recovery’.
Hell, for the right person that could’ve made them even more credible.
Again, we americans are not. Only the antivax fools are.
No one is taking his advice.
My last job was at a very large university, top 25 SEC state school. My boss supported Trump in part because she knew RFK was going to fix things.
Wtf is wrong with being a former heroin addict? I know plenty of drug users and former drug users who aren’t fascist shitstains and are actually pleasant people. Also like, you’re going after him for being a former addict? God forbid someone be in a bad place in life and luckily manage to recover from it… Addiction, a health condition, just morally scars you for life then? Would you say that about someone who recovered from cancer? Fuck off.
yeah the question is not phrased properly
it should be “why are the people who give former drug addicts a bunch of shit when it’s convenient to them now paying attention to a former addict”
It’s about the hypocrisy, not the person’s past
Good take.
This all stems from eroded systems coupled with a lack of good education and our media. Not everyone is listening to him but his messages didn’t become popular overnight. The carnivore diet, raw milk, anti vaccine, anti masking, anti fluoride movements have been bubbling in echo chambers for decades now.
Because people weren’t smart enough to see through them, they’ve created a market for alternative health and pseudo science.
We’re living that quote from Carl Sagan.
I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.
Being a former heroin addict doesn’t make someone a bad source of information, especially if they’ve turned their lives around.
But I agree otherwise
Having a worm drive your thoughts does tho…
Yeah, “from a guy with a dead worm in his brain” would make for a better question.
It isn’t exactly a credential.
Right, but you wouldn’t put a former heroin addict in this position. The optics alone are sure to cause trust issues and this guy is nowhere close to being qualified to run HHS.
I feel like goddamn brain worm should be a hard disqualify for jobs that impact health.
He’s not trusted by most Americans.
There are pictures of this guy eating dog roasted on a spit. I am certain he picked up that dead bear because he wanted to eat it (the one he dumped and made it look like it was hit by a scooter).
Fuck RFK but I will never hold being a former heroin addict against him.
Yea it’s not the addiction or even the brainworms that disqualify him, it’s simply his stupidity.
But you must consider the possibility that heroin and brain worms damaged his brain, contributing to the stupidity, and his own stupid choices led to those circumstances that possibly increased his stupidity. Thus he remains open to criticize on all those topics.
I don’t think heroin addiction necessarily damages your brain, and if you make it out the other side you will have learned quite the lesson (presumably)
Anything that causes respiratory depression lowers available oxygen to the brain and can cause damage over time.
I understand the sentiment of destigmatizing addiction, but let’s not lie and say it can’t cause permanent damage. It’s a disease, right? And diseases can have aftermath.
This is true, but I didn’t suggest that it can’t cause brain damage, just that it doesn’t necessarily have to follow. People with sleep apnea or who live at high altitudes don’t all have brain damage either.
If this was true those on chronic opiate medications would be given supplemental oxygen. There would also be studies demonstrating the neurodegenerative effects of opiates.
Opiates are rather safe outside of overdose and sequelae of unsafe injection / smoking. They are incredibly benign in the sense you could take 20-40-80-160mg OxyContin your whole life and not have any issues beyond constipation.
Managed prescriptions are taken in safe doses. There’s no way to guarantee someone addicted to illicit opiates will stay below the threshold of dangerous consumption.
Even alcohol in large enough quantities kills brain cells. Stop pretending addiction is harmless, because it’s not helping addicts the way you seem to think it is.
I never said addiction was harmless. However, your claim that opiate addiction causes neurological issues due to oxygen deprivation outside of an acute overdose is unfounded. If this was the case, chronic opiate users (in the strictly clinical sense) would be given supplemental oxygen.
Stupid people are redeemable as well. But this asshole has seen the science, ignores it, and continues to spread his lies that will harm and/or kill people for political reasons…
Yea I guess you can fix stupid, but you can’t fix willful ignorance when presented with facts and evidence. I have long thought it made no sense that all these govt positions don’t require any expertise in the area they legislate.
I don’t think you can fix stupid. “Stupid” is label of intellectual capacity. And we ain’t Algernon’d anybody for real.
Listen, I’d hire a former heroin addict for a job no problem, but I don’t think I would date one.
Rfkjr is unqualified for his position.
This is honestly a disgusting take because it shows how biased you are against addicts. Not a stupid question. Just a nasty one. Your 2nd and 3rd are good questions though. I don’t think there’s jack shit qualifying him to give health advice in reality. He’s a crackpot supplement pusher. Which I feel kinda answers your 3rd; americans have a long history of being stupid and blindly trusting whatever the pill-pusher says, because they hear what they want to hear. Unfortunately.
I hate RFK and all the damage he’s done/is doing to our country’s general state of health. His history of addiction is literally last on the list of reasons not to trust him. In my view, a history of addiction (now being in recovery) usually gives you a pretty sane view of health, since it brings you so close to death. The overwhelming majority of recovering addicts that I know lead healthier lifestyles than non-addicts. Oftentimes when people see with clarity how much damage they’ve done to themselves, they desperately want to treat their body better.
This was exactly my first thought. He should be disqualified for many reasons, but that ain’t one of them. Thinking that way is why we have him.
Fuck rfk, but him being a former heroin addict is probably his least worst trait.
I’m sure he was just as crazy before and during as he is after.
Americans are not, but Republicants are.
A third of the US are beyond help, beyond fucking stupid. Another third can’t be arsed to do anything, they’re so apathetic. One will follow without question, the other might go either way.
Also Shitler put RFK in place, so we’re all forced to hear his moronic opinions…
Some people in that first third aren’t that stupid but they’re gullible and insecure. Maybe also a little stupid. My girlfriend’s dad, for example. He’s not the sharpest tool in the shed, I think he’s about average intelligence, but he’s gullible and insecure. I think he got sucked in when he started listening to some questionable podcasts.
Apathy comes from depression and grasping at things that don’t make sense can be read as anxiety. America failed to develop an educational system and now has no clue how to cope with stresses being applied to it.
It didn’t fail its been slowly dismantled for years… they want people to be dumb so they can control them…
That swings too close to conspiracy theory territory. Hanlon’s razor still applies. The powerful didn’t say ‘I want them dumb, so I will defund the schools.’ They said ‘I don’t get anything out of paying for other people’s schooling, so I won’t.’ Then it was ‘just world’ bias combined with PR to bring it into the mainstream.
Defeating the just world bias at scale is probably one of the greatest hurdles to achieving anything really great on a societal level. How do you achieve a sane middle ground between ‘I deserve everything I experience. Luck had nothing to do with it,’ and ‘I have no agency whatsoever.’?
I’ve gone zero days since the 2024 election without seeing a liberal target fascists with insults that are oriented toward vulnerable groups. Jokes about old people being valueless, queer people being weak and deceptive, fatness as a sign of poor moral character. People who make these jokes also incomprehensibly claim that they challenge fascism fundamentally and not only when it comes for them.
This man is going to be singlehandedly responsible for an incalculable number of deaths (many of which will be addicts who are disproportionately excluded from access to medical treatmen) and he is in the position to do so by capitulating to an infamous pedophile, rapist, and failed business man. What kind of person would take the opportunity to assert that addicts aren’t to be trusted when talking about a man who is already RFK Jr.?
Former?
