A scar on history

This old quote is about politics and sociology, and of course it’s disturbingly relevant today:

“This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore. A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong. And such a people, deprived of the power to think and judge, is, without knowing and willing it, completely subjected to the rule of lies. With such a people, you can do whatever you want.”

Hannah Arendt, German historian & philosopher (1906–1975)

But now think about how strongly that applies specifically to alternative medicine, the wellness influencers and grifters, and of course “make America healthy again” (MAHA). A little more about each of those now…

Old-school alternative medicine and quackery were always based on excessive skepticism of anything “mainstream” — a largely adversarial relationship with scientific medicine (despite some shallow “integrative” pretensions).

And then it all got so much worse in the last 20 years with the rise of conspirituality, the wellness industry and its army of grifters and influencers, and of course the whole antivax thing — trends and movements that all cast much more doubt on any and all conventional wisdom, routinely descending into full-blown conspiracy theories.

And MAHA is all of that, of course, but on steroids: politicized and empowered to an unprecedented degree, spewing ignorant and deranged health propaganda with a volume and intensity that will leave a scar on history. And not just American history.