Trump’s hydroxychloroquine habit is the triumph of rightwing quackery
By Richard Wolffe REPRINT from THE GUARDIAN Opinion
The president’s anti-science cult represents the nadir of a long tradition of conspiracy-loving wingnuts from the fringes of American conservatism
What kind of buffoon brags about taking a drug that could kill him?
Among the many ailments Donald Trump has inflicted on his own country – not to mention the rest of the world – there may be something even worse than hydroxycholoroquine.
Yes, it’s bad that he claims to be taking an anti-malarial that his own Food and Drug Administration says is unsafe and ineffective to treat Covid-19.
Yes, it’s astonishing that Trump’s tools forced out of office an actual vaccine expert because he dared to question the president’s love of an unproven drug.
But it’s even worse that he is a one-man delivery vehicle for a dunce cult that denies science.
We’re not just talking about the presidential brainwaves that bounced around the world, hitting bodies with very powerful light or bleaching patients “by injection inside or almost a cleaning”.
Trump’s anti-science cult does not begin with quack remedies for a pandemic, and it does not even begin with him.
He represents the nadir of a long tradition of conspiracy-loving wingnuts who used to populate the fringes of the American conservative movement. Over the last half-century they have moved steadily into the mainstream of the Republican party, where their fact-free fairytales about the evil establishment have found a natural home in the cranium of the 45th president.
In this age of hyper-connected ignorance, there are no independent experts and there are no true facts. Your scientific theories are equal to my Twitter theories, just as your FBI investigation into Russia is equal to Rudy’s supposed investigation into Ukraine. All opinions are equal, but some are more equal than others.
How can you deny this democracy of dunces when there are supposedly experts on both sides? Brad Parscale, the Ferrari-driving Trump campaign manager, slapped down the science of Covid-19 cures by citing the work of a respectable-sounding group of doctors.
“The press is going nuts over @realDonaldTrump taking hydroxychloroquine (prescribed by doctor). Of course, if he’s doing it, they must oppose it,” he tweeted on Tuesday. “But the Association of American Physicians & Surgeons says otherwise.”
Parscale linked to a story on the AAPS website about the group’s letter to the Arizona governor citing its own “frequently updated table of studies” of the drug, claiming it has “about [a] 90% chance of helping Covid-19 patients”.
What kind of crazy medical cabal is keeping such a powerful drug from dying patients?
The AAPS has a long record of exposing the obvious malevolence of mainstream medicine as part of its mission to keep government out of healthcare. It took a bold stand against the science that HIV causes Aids, citing “official reports and the peer-reviewed literature”.
It also blew open the science of how Barack Obama was using mass hypnosis to bamboozle voters with his fancy speeches. Apparently the O of his campaign logo resembled a crystal ball, which explains why so many Jews supported Obama. If you think that’s crazy, you should take a look at “a 66-page extensively footnoted but unsigned article” that inspired the AAPS article.
The AAPS counts fewer than 5,000 members, compared with more than 220,000 members of its arch-enemy, the American Medical Association. But it’s quality, not quantity that counts. Among its past members, the AAPS counts Rand Paul, the ophthalmologist who now serves as one of the few doctors in the US Senate. His kooky libertarian father Ron, a former OB-GYN, was also a member.
There’s ample evidence that most Republicans think scientists should butt out of public policy.
This is a shame because there are only 17 doctors among the 535 members of Congress, and 14 of them are Republicans at a time when the nation and the world would appreciate some informed medical opinions in the middle of a once-in-a-generation pandemic.
Instead, there’s ample evidence that most Republicans think scientists should butt out of public policy. Before the pandemic struck, recent polling showed that just 43% of Republicans think that scientists should play an active role in policy debates, compared with 73% of Democrats.
Even fewer Republicans – 34% – think scientists are any better at making decisions about science policy than you or me.
These opinions did not crawl out of the primordial soup on their own. They have evolved over time in a warm bath of fringe conspiracy groups that have spent decades fighting against the teaching of evolution, among other social evils. One of those groups was Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum, which worked to push evolution out of the classroom, almost as doggedly as Mrs America fought against women’s rights and the Equal Rights Amendment.
So it’s no surprise to find her son Andrew named as general counsel to the AAPS. Among other projects, Andrew Schlafly founded a conservative alternative to Wikipedia, to correct its “liberal bias” on things like evolution.
Schlafly’s group was not alone; its brother-in-arms was the anti-commie, anti-civil rights John Birch Society, which Phyllis somehow believed was not sufficiently concerned about the Soviet Union.
Today the Birchers believe that among the many globalist plots against America – led by the UN of course – is a vast scientific conspiracy. The biggest one, naturally, is the supposed science about the climate crisis. But if you’re at all confused, the Birchers’ website cites “conspiracy” as the first thing that bothers them about science.
“By definition, a conspiracy is when two or more people work in secret for evil purposes. The John Birch Society believes this definition fits a number of groups working against the independence of the United States,” its website declares about science. “Extensive study has shown us that history is rarely accidental.”
Extensive studies are everywhere if you know where to look. It was no accident of history that Barack Obama recently tried to hypnotize young Americans by warning that the fools who ignored the pandemic were also ignoring the climate crisis.
“We’ve seen all too terribly the consequences of those who denied warnings of a pandemic,” he tweeted. “We can’t afford any more consequences of climate denial.”
His successor is immune to this kind of mind control known as logic, especially when it comes to testing for Covid-19. For Trump, the number of tests is both a remarkable triumph – the biggest in the world – and also a remarkable admission of failure. You see, if you test more, you find more sickness. It’s like a scientific plot conspiring against him, much like the negative hydroxy study that he called “a Trump-enemy statement”.
“By doing testing, you’re finding people,” he explained to a couple of governors and reporters on Wednesday, before bragging again that the US was testing more people than Germany and South Korea. “So we’re way ahead of everybody. But when you do that, you have more cases. So a lot of times, the fake news media will say, ‘You know, there are a lot of cases in the United States.’ Well, if we didn’t do testing at a level that nobody has ever dreamt possible, you wouldn’t have very many cases.”
This was a genius strategy, first perfected by a teenager hiding under his bed covers to avoid homework. But then one of those fake news reporters asked Trump about a per capita comparison with countries like Germany and South Korea.
“You know, when you say ‘per capita’ there’s many per capitas,” said Trump. “It’s, like, per capita relative to what? But you can look at just about any category, and we’re really at the top, meaning positive on a per-capita basis too.”
At this point of his presidency, there’s a whole team of anti-science vectors called Trump officials
Per capita would be relative to the capita in any normal universe. But “scientists” may have also discovered signs of a parallel universe where everything is backward, including time itself. That’s the universe Trump came from, through a wormhole that leads directly to Mar-a-Lago.
It’s far bigger than one president, though. At this point of his presidency, there’s a whole team of anti-science vectors called Trump officials. Among them is the White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, who promised to never lie to the media, but who managed to slam them all the same for what she called “apoplectic coverage of hydroxycholoroquine” on Tuesday.
“And interestingly, I found this out just before coming here,” she explained, “hydroxychloroquine, of course, is an FDA-approved medication with a long-proven track record for safety.”
Well Kayleigh, you make a great point. The FDA has approved lots of medications like chemotherapy drugs that will actually kill you if you self-prescribe. So maybe the scientists are wrong about everything.
America’s founding fathers knew we’d end up in this place. “Facts are stubborn things,” John Adams declared in his successful defense of the hated British soldiers responsible for the Boston massacre. “Whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence,” he said 250 years ago.
Then again, Adams thought that democracy was doomed because of the power of the plebeian mob. “Remember Democracy never lasts long,” he wrote. “It soon wastes exhausts and murders itself. There never was a Democracy Yet, that did not commit suicide.”
If not by quack medicine, then by the conspiracy theories of a president who believes in Trump-enemy science.
