The conservative world has captured the media, and it’s the single largest problem facing health, science, democracy, and so much else these days.
It’s terrifyingly sad
this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2026
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Yet the oligarch-owned mass media and political class will claim "nobody could have predicted this"; meanwhile "the left" have considered the fascist state propaganda machines that conservatism have constructed around the world, and the disinformation campaigns they wage 24/7, to be the greatest threat facing humanity for multiple decades...
We know exactly who the propaganda operatives are. They could be destroyed or neutered at any time. The oligarchs can't destroy democracy without first destroying the minds of the average voter, so their propaganda machines are allowed to continue.
huh, i live in a highly liberal area... people here are just as stupid and believe all sorts of crazy nonsense.
mostly because they believe it makes them smart and progressive. and if you show them evidence that is contrary, they just call you ignorant and stupid and conservative. because it's conservatives who are stupid and bad, if you are liberal you can't ever be wrong!
I'm surprised how many liberals are against nuclear power and GMO crops. For a long time I've considered them to be good if done safely, while a lot of liberals are against them across the board. If the alternative is famine and coal power, I think it's worth it.
most people, liberal or conservative, don't look at evidence. they just think what they are told to think by their 'leaders'.
and yeah, as a 'liberal' i am pro many things that liberals HATE and they basically won't talk to you about it, they will just totally dismiss you as a person because if you DISAGREE YOU ARE A BAD PERSON.
it's not about policy, it's about BEING PART OF THE TRIBE OF GOOD. and they will tow the party line no matter how absurd it becomes, because they HAVE TO BE PART OF THE TRIBE.
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Nuclear is good until destroyed by nature, human. Renewables are the way
I remind people that RFK Jr was planned to be a part of the Obama administration but wasn't believed possible to make it through confirmation hearings with the negative being - he's too leftist. RFK Jr was for a long time a major influencer in hippie medicine. He's pretty much a quintessential example of young 60/70s, often privileged upbringing, hippies that would go on to be today's anti-science (intellectual authority) leaders.
I know plenty of people with degrees that are leftist in most American issues but are the opposite when it comes to health/medicine/nutrition. Plenty of the top of my high schools grade class rankings went to university and were culturally art focused. They would be called hipsters. They have degrees. And quite a number are deep into homeopathy/alt-health. At least a couple have gone down the osteopathy career path and they're not the worse but they do veil the homeopathic uncertainty with their actual scientific jargon knowledge to make it sound more certain
Carl Sagan’s warning seems relevant:
“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 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...”
Highly recommend Sagan’s book “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”
Calling them "unproven claims" does a disservice to science, society, and all of humanity. Call them what they are: lies. They're lies, and they're killing people.
They're lies, and they're killing people.
That is entirely the point.
Staggering number of people no longer have a living memory of anyone that lived and died in those times before vaccines and food safety.
Don't worry, reminders will come around again. They always do.
Most of us lived through 2020: saw cities shut down; hospitals using refrigerated trucks as morgues; literally millions of dead. Most of us then saw the vaccine roll out and all of that just went away.
True that, but the number of people that are living examples of not being vaccinated are few and far between.
I knew people in wheelchairs because they got polio as children..
Couldn't miss that.
Some of my southern cousins who were vaccinated with the Blood of Jesus, got covid and died and they're gone and it's a case for the familiies and the public of "out of sight, out of mind.."
My grandmother told me how when she was in school, each year some kids would not show up and just never come back.
They had polio and were in Iron lungs or got a disease like measles and died.
My entire family is vaccinated. The misery she told, no. Fuck that.
Unfortunately, anyone younger than you who won't have met the grandparents will only be getting that info secondhand.. and this is the point where generational amnesia takes over and people poo-pooh the warnings..
My grandparents were children when the Great Depression hit and they saw tons of people not make it from sickness.
My gran lost many childhood friends.
I have to say, my great grandparents were very on-point with cleanliness and managing illnesses at home. No one on my entire family of that generation succumbed to the Spanish Flu that hit in the late teens to early 20's.
Listen to the doctors, they see the consequences of those who do not. Yikes!
There are a lot of graves, but apparently those don't count.
Let them dumbies exctinct
I remember when they were calling it "Plandemic" and insisted liberals were trying to turn the US into a dictatorship. Funny how it all worked out and yet nothing was learned.
Aka a staggering number of people are stupid, or at least undereducated.
a staggering number of people are also unhealthy and unfit.
because becoming educated, health, and fit, requires lots of leisure time and resources.
It's a boy who cried wolf situation. Too many decisions driven by profit and greed led to a complete collapse in faith for public interest.
Doesn't matter if alternative ideas aren't grounded in reality, it matter that the mainstream can't be trusted.
The hypercapitalist behavior only takes and no longer delivers, as such it's being abandoned in droves by those who need actual care.
For example, "David Bersoff, head of research at the Edelman Trust Institute." sounds like an empty title, full of bullshit.
Here's some interesting tables from the report:
edit: Interesting how much more accepted it seems to be to answer "I don't know" in Japan compared to other countries.
american culture punishes humility. it's a culture that rewards arrogance.
and we love bullshit. american culture is amazing at producing bullshit and selling it.
I'm shocked by how well the US does compared to other countries. I would have thought that it is very easy to be a conspiracy theorist when your country has death panels in the form of health insurance companies denying treatments.
I never doubted science, but I just learned how Fluoride affects your teeth, and it’s incredible. I get that it can be harmful in large quantities, but I think if people understood what it actually does they might be less scared of it.
One of the little known historical gems about peoples meeting each other was when the early European settlers got to the Southwestern US, many were astonished by the fact that among the native tribes - even the oldest member had beautiful teeth. Fluoride is naturally occurring in the water in many parts of the southwest.
Yes! Apparently some communities have to remove it from the water first because the naturally occurring levels are too high in modern times now that people brush with it.
I actually have Fluorosis stains on my front teeth. I had no idea what caused that before. I’ve had it for a very long time. It’s just a cosmetic symptom so I’m not worried about it. Something like 25% of the population have staining on teeth from Fluorosis and it’s how the communities can tell when Fluoride levels need to be adjusted in water.
Fluoride levels in water used to be much higher but as society got better at brushing their teeth, it wasn’t needed as much.
I actually have Fluorosis stains on my front teeth.
I used to have that as well! It does fade with time and in my case, those are the teeth I have with the least wear on them now. (am in my 60's) Still needing a few crowns in the next couple of years, but that's expected after such a long time..
So many people in this thread aren't getting how we got here.
It's not about understanding. Flouride conspiracy, raw milk, et al all have a a tinge of truth to them but they also have a larger cognitive bias and that is that it allows people to buck government regulations.
This is "rules for thee but not for me" wrapped up in pseudoscience. These people benefited from flouride, pasteurized milk, regulated beef, etc. but believe that the over reaching government is holding back their freedom. This is about conservatives wanting to push their policies at the detriment to the population because conservatism is that they must be the group that pushes the rules and never have to be bound by them.
This is ultimately about oppression.
No amount of education will fix the empathy they lack.
The headline writer misspelled "disproven."
Why the fuck is even Nature giving more credence to this delusional shit than it deserves?
I recently found out one of my college kids believed the crap about raw milk. I told him that any such benefits were due to it being whole milk, not due to it being unpasteurized. I’ll take my milk fat without a side of diarrhea, thank you
While China and India make advancements in science and medicine, the US is headed back to witch trials and traveling medicine salesmen.
I wonder what you do about this.
I just started reading Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan, published in 1994, and the intro is basically saying the same thing but framed as curious people being more well read in Atlantis than they are in interesting recent science or critical thinking skills
What I've seen in people I know is that it centers around a need for certainty. They're scared of something they can't control or are too tired to or lack belief in themselves to control. Scared of having autistic children, there must be an identifiable cause that can be avoided to blame. There's a growing vocal crowd saying vaccines so latch onto that. Friends I've seen with just about zero dietary self-control, they get into dietary fads. Like alkaline water and way more expensive seasonings than the common price - marketed as healthier. They generally make no weight goals or whatever but the expensive placebo brings them some mental comfort
I just remembered the ones that seem like they really want to come off as smart and seem certain that the way to that is to be very visibly against conventional wisdom regardless of their lack of proof and lack of ability to prove their beliefs. They're the leaders and the ones coping the followers
Yeah its basis is in social panics. The same reason marijuana was banned in the USA. Immigrants today also social panics. They use social panics as a weapon for the ignorant.
So they are destroying culture, burning books, killing scientists... how is this a surprise?
'Staggering' number of people are idiots. It's okay, the non-idiots know what we're dealing with here.
10,000 BC - 380 AD: What your family says is the truth
380 - 1700: What your priest says is the truth
1700 - 1906: What you read in books is the truth
1906 - 2007: What you hear and see on Radio and Television is the truth
2007 - Now: What you see on your phone is the truth
America is getting exactly what it deserves. Ignorant morons are well represented today.
Yeah, tends to happen when you nominate an insane imbecile (I know, that doesn’t narrow it down at all) to be in charge of all national health policy
For each statement, between 25% and 32% of respondents said they believed it, and another sizeable percentage (17–39%) said they didn’t know whether it was true. In total, 70% of respondents believed at least one of the claims (see ‘Divided views’). The findings, which have not been peer reviewed and were published today by the Edelman Trust Institute in New York City, were described as ‘staggering’ in an accompanying article by the think tank’s chief executive, Richard Edelman.
A lot of smart people, scientists even, would be inclined to say "I don't know if it's true" with the key word being "know".
If they're not familiar with the literature and they're being exposed to a claim for the very first time, they'd potentially want to consult the research on the matter. (Not "do their own research", but to look into respectable research done by professionals)
Like all that raw milk stuff? I've got no clue what that's about. And if the claims are like "Raw milk promotes the maintenance of healthy bones and teeth better than homogenized milk" or something, I dunno man. I've never heard anything one way or the other. "I don't know if it's true". I might even be leaning towards disbelieving it, but I don't know.
Yeah, so that accounts for the grey being reasonable (although in some of these a arguably too large, if things are well established and people are unsure that's because of groups spreading uncertainty)
The article is mostly focused on that red bar though
I'm not sure if 1/4 to 1/3 of people being gullible is staggering to me
Maybe they shouldn’t have lied about JFK.
What. I dunno. Just sayin.
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