One Brainworm To Rule Them All

Better than EPA: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—bear scavenger, Peter Luger Steak House appreciator, wannabe journalist impregnator, brainworm victim, once (and future?) Just Asking Questions guest (in its nascent form)—will soon be in charge of some 20 percent of the federal budget, because fuck it, why not?

President-elect Donald Trump announced yesterday that he was putting RFK Jr. in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees 13 different divisions and is in charge of a massive chunk of the federal budget. Included in HHS's purview is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (which provides vaccine guidance and tracks infectious disease outbreaks); the National Institutes of Health (which oversees research on cancer, Alzheimer's, infectious diseases, and HIV/AIDS, and supervises 27 different institutes and centers); the Food and Drug Administration (which is tasked with authorizing different drugs for use in the U.S. and conducts safety inspections for food and drugs and supplements and medical devices); and the operation of those little programs called Medicare and Medicaid.

In short, if confirmed, RFK Jr. would be in a position of extraordinary power. Some have greeted this appointment optimistically, believing RFK can MAHA or "make America healthy again." Others voice worry about the competence and experience of RFK Jr. (as well as other appointees). Still others—like Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D)—flip-flop, seeming to fall in line after feeling the political winds shift.

Look, making America healthy again is a valiant objective. I am personally anti–seed oils and pro–working out; the sedentary lifestyle in which one eats infinite processed foods and ends up with terrible chronic illness is a horrible side effect of American abundance. The Means siblings, whom RFK Jr. seems to rely on quite heavily, often speak in hyperbole but they're…not altogether wrong, and maybe hyperbole is needed to get Americans to wake up and begin to take responsibility for how we treat our bodies. When rates of obesity and diabetes remain stubbornly high, it's not wrong to sound the alarm that mass cultural change is needed. We are no longer undernourished, as a people; we're so materially successful that our problem is being overnourished to the point of sickness.

But RFK Jr. is not a scientifically literate, fact-based, competent, experienced, or measured person. He is wrong about HIV/AIDS; linking vaccines to autism; and the purported danger of thimerosal. On some things, he is correct: The COVID regime and the "noble lies"—which are still lies!—spread to the American public by our purported health authorities are despicable. We still need accountability. Considering which endocrine disruptors might exist in our environment and what unintended consequences might stem from SSRIs are valid research questions to which RFK Jr. has brought attention. Also, raw milk is great.

But in order to actually administer these programs, you need more than the ability to just ask questions and spread theories about what could be happening. You need some amount of competence. Perhaps RFK Jr. can take a pickax to the government waste that stems from certain companies being in bed with their overseers, but don't count on it:

It's widely known that Medicare Advantage providers upcode procedures and scam the gov out of tens of billions a year. But the plan admins like Humana and UnitedHealth buy off both parties and nothing ever changes. Most gov waste like this is just a political choice.

— Lee Fang (@lhfang) November 15, 2024

"When we talk about making America healthy, we really have to talk about corporate capture and the way that large corporations have captured our governmental agencies," said Make America Healthy Again PAC spokesman Jeff Hutt. Again: Not a totally bad goal, but unclear that the MAHA types will be able to pull this off, let alone in a way that's judicious and not just focused on punishing Monsanto for the show of it or banning the development of GMO crops, which are widely considered safe.

One other takeaway that's kind of wild: This isn't even the first time RFK Jr. has gotten close to serving in a president's cabinet. He and his brainworm just keep getting lucky, over and over again.

2008: Obama is strongly considering RFK to run EPA

2024: RFK to run HHS

total realignment https://t.co/YBQgkB0ZDI pic.twitter.com/oKrOUHxGU8

— Will Manidis (@WillManidis) November 14, 2024

Liesistrata: Much hay has been made over the last two weeks about TikTok liberals coopting the South Korean 4B feminist movement, in which women swear off dating men, marrying men, having sex with men, and bearing children. (The Korean word for no is bi, and yes, this would have all been considered cultural appropriation just a few short years ago.)

In Korea, this movement started in 2016 following the murder of a 23-year-old woman in a public restroom by a man who was seemingly motivated by feeling "ignored and belittled" by women. The police did not categorize this as a hate crime, and a feminist movement gained steam; this all happened right as South Korean feminists were shirking traditional beauty standards and growing angry about molkas—hidden cameras installed in spaces where women might get naked, so that internet pervs can gaze upon the female form, illegally and nonconsensually.

It's worth noting that in Korea, the birthrate has been in free-fall for a long time; dysfunctional sexual and coupling-up norms did not start with 4B. Since 2013, it has had the distinct honor of having the lowest birthrate in the world; that rate now hovers at 0.72 children per woman, per 2023 numbers.

It's also not clear that any of the American 4Bers, who are reacting to the reelection of Donald Trump, which they claim shows the true misogyny of American men (never mind women like me, who also voted for the man), will actually make good on their promises. Nor too that they had any interest in sleeping with these Trump-voting men, or even the opportunity to. But all of this points to something odder happening with a certain subculture of Gen Z women: Sex not as something they authentically derive pleasure from, but rather as a political tool.

Take the hypersexualization we saw from the Harris campaign. The Kamala HQ New York Fashion Week party was adorned with "abortion rights are hot" and "hotties for Harris" slogans, along with a "grab them by the…" claw machine arcade game (the stuffed animals appear to be pussy cats, natch) and a couch that has a sign "property of J.D. Vance" affixed to it, winking at the viral but false story that an adolescent Vance would masturbate using couch cushions. A post-Democratic National Convention party had a gumball machine dispensing Plan B and "my kink is equality" signs, along with, confusingly, a sign reading "Tim Walz got me laid."

This is, of course, in addition to the abortion vans parked outside the DNC.

Setting aside the fact that you can't declare yourself a hottie, there's a confused concept of what sex is for. You would think fourth-wave feminism would have moved past the idea that it is merely a bargaining chip, like the women of Lysistrata who withheld it to get their husbands to stop fighting the Peloponnesian War, or a party theme used in service of a presidential candidate. These Gen Z leftists have done away with the sensual in favor of the crass; now, it's not clear that their TikTok movement is anything more than a ploy for attention at best, a cry for help at worst.

Scenes from New York: I dunno, man, it's been a long week. Would you like a photo of my beautiful neighborhood? I live in the southernmost part of Queens, where New York City ends and the Atlantic Ocean begins, both because I am a surfer and because I have wholly given up on Brooklyn for the time being. Where do you live? Tell me in the comments, or via email!

new york city is a beach town pic.twitter.com/YsQTxumIXH

— Liz Wolfe (@LizWolfeReason) November 13, 2024

QUICK HITS

• Will Democrats manage to take the right lessons away from their massive 2024 defeat?On the new and improved, relaunched Just Asking Questions (cohosted with Zach Weissmueller), we chat with Lee Fang, formerly of The Intercept (before he was unceremoniously bullied out of the workplace due to…the crime of…accurately reporting what a source said). Please listen and subscribe to our new YouTube channel. Our old intro music was once called "'70s porno-adjacent in a bad way" so we hope this is much improved. The more subscribers we get to this new channel, the more likely it is that they'll keep me around, which may be good or bad news for you, depending on what you think of this ole thing called Roundup.

• "The government cans bad employees about four times less often than the private sector does," writes Santi Ruiz for The Free Press. "It takes a lot more than saying 'you're fired' to get people out the door." At the same time, it's "impossible to hire new, better civil servants. Our systems for sourcing are shattered. Take Jack Cable, 17, who won the Department of Defense's 'Hack the Air Force' contest against 600 other contestants by identifying weaknesses in Pentagon software. But when Cable applied for a DoD role, his résumé was graded 'not minimally qualified' because the hiring manager didn't know anything about the coding languages he listed himself proficient in. Or take the Federal Aviation Administration, which has been screening prospective air traffic controllers for how many sports they played in high school in an effort to meet its racial quotas."
• "The incoming Republican majorities in the House and Senate mean Trump can enact a tax bill without making concessions to Democrats," reports Bloomberg. "Republicans will only be constrained by how much deficit spending the party's lawmakers and global financial markets can tolerate."
• You could do worse than listening to Elon Musk and Javier Milei!

President Trump tonight at Mar-a-Lago with Elon Musk and Argentina President Javier Milei.
. pic.twitter.com/itHw6gPIS9

— Paul Villarreal (AKA Vince Manfeld) (@AureliusStoic1) November 15, 2024

• It turns out that appeasing the mob only leads to more terrible mob behavior. Who could have possibly predicted?

BREAKING: Pro-Hamas students and faculty at the University of Washington have posted photos of what they did to the president of the university's home.

That UW president gave in to every demand of the encampment last semester. Appeasement never works. pic.twitter.com/wc9Aozb6KF

— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) November 14, 2024