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justaprogressive

(2,427 posts)
Sat Nov 9, 2024, 12:20 PM Saturday

Meet Jack D. Ripper, the New Health Czar By Joe Conason

Over the few days since Donald Trump's election victory, America has gotten a foretaste of the wreckage likely to ensue when he returns to the White House. His promise to endow Robert F. Kennedy Jr. with plenary authority over health and food regulation — and to let him "go wild" — shows once more how little Trump really cares about anyone or anything but himself.

As Trump and his associates surely know, Bobby has no qualifications whatsoever to direct or oversee any federal health office, no matter how small, let alone a major agency like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the Food and Drug Administration. Their corrupt deal with the anti-vaccine activist — who has made millions from his attacks on public health — was premised solely on his sycophantic endorsement of Trump and his perceived influence on the crackpot segment of the American electorate.

So confident is Kennedy of Trump's unconditional support that he has already announced his first policy directive, effective on Jan. 21, 2025: an attempt to curtail the municipal fluoridation of American water that has been in continuous effect in most places for decades. Cities and counties dose their water with tiny amounts of fluoride, a naturally occurring substance, because study after study has proved that it prevents dental decay in children, who are saved from the grave health impacts not only of rotting teeth but the infections and disabilities that can follow.

Yet Kennedy somehow has come to believe fluoride is a poison that must be removed from water systems immediately. Perhaps he was influenced the John Birch Society, which has promoted the idea that fluoridation is part of a left-wing plot against Americans since the '50s. (Stanley Kubrick satirized this nonsense in his 1964 film "Dr. Strangelove," which featured a rant by the fanatical right-wing Gen. Jack D. Ripper, justifying a nuclear strike against the Soviet Union that will end the world: "Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face?&quot


https://www.creators.com/read/joe-conason/11/24/meet-jack-d-ripper-the-new-health-czar
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Dennis Donovan

(25,035 posts)
1. I just watched Strangelove 2 days ago - trying to stay away from MSNBC and politics on my TV
Sat Nov 9, 2024, 12:23 PM
Saturday

It was the first thing I thought of when RFK Jr says they're going to remove the fluoride from the water. Our "precious body fluids."

andym

(5,671 posts)
2. I also thought of Gen JD Ripper's quote about "precious bodily fluids" when I head RFK Jr speak of banning fluoride
Sat Nov 9, 2024, 12:28 PM
Saturday

At least this won't lead to nuclear conflagration as it did in "Dr Strangelove."

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