Beyond the antivaxx stuff MAHA is either banal or fake
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Excerpts from Matt Yglesia’s substack.
Kennedy, in a way that I find completely perverse, has received credit that he doesn’t even remotely deserve for making the banal observation that lifestyle determinants of health are probably a bigger deal than official medical care.
This has been retconned by people experiencing a weird conjunction of credulousness and paranoia as some kind of deep, dark, forbidden truth about America that “they” don’t want you to know.
In truth, the Clinton administration promulgated “a comprehensive plan to promote physical activity and decrease obesity in the nation's young people.” George W. Bush announced a “HealthierUS initiative designed to help Americans, especially children, live longer, better, and healthier lives.” Michelle Obama had “Let’s Move” and an initiative to improve childhood nutrition. The Biden administration just last year promulgated new school nutrition guidelines offering less sugar and more “protein-rich breakfast foods such as yogurt, tofu, eggs, nuts, and seeds.”
The idea that, conceptually, it would be good for Americans in general and children in particular to exercise more and eat less junk food is genuinely the least controversial idea in American politics. It’s driving me insane to see banal, vaguely lib-coded platitudes about health care and public health now be coded as daring red pill insights that we need to give credit to a crank for articulating.
This is especially true because the whole difficulty here isn’t that it’s brave to say that people should eat healthier and work out more. It’s hard to actually get people to do that. The same country that doesn’t want to make Covid vaccines mandatory also isn’t going to want to ban packaged snacks and sodas. You could obtain giant public health gains by raising the alcohol tax, but people don’t want to pay higher taxes.
The only actual intersection between any of RFK’s stated views and anything acceptable to a business-friendly anti-regulatory Republican Party is discouraging vaccination. Of course, like any human being, Kennedy has some ideas that are correct. But those ideas are either banal or unrelated to his actual authority in office. What he is doing as HHS chief is sowing doubt about longstanding vaccination programs.
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The President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports was established in 1956 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in response to concerns about the declining physical fitness of American youth. The catalyst for this initiative was a 1953 study comparing the fitness levels of American and European children, which found that over 50% of American kids failed basic physical fitness tests, compared to only 8% of European children. This alarmed U.S. officials, who saw physical fitness as crucial to national security, especially in the Cold War era.
Early Years (1950s–1960s)
• Eisenhower formed the President’s Council on Youth Fitness, with Vice President Richard Nixon as its first chair.
• In 1960, President John F. Kennedy rebranded it as the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and aggressively promoted fitness through public campaigns. He even published an article, “The Soft American,” in Sports Illustrated, urging Americans to embrace physical activity.
• Schools were encouraged to implement new physical education programs, and in 1966, the President’s Physical Fitness Award was introduced to recognize students who excelled in fitness tests.Expansion and Peak Popularity (1970s–1980s)
• President Lyndon B. Johnson added “Sports” to the Council’s name in 1966, making it the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports to emphasize both general fitness and organized sports.
• Under President Richard Nixon, the Council developed the President’s Physical Fitness Test, a standardized set of exercises in schools that included:
• Pull-ups (or flexed-arm hang for girls)
• Sit-ups
• Shuttle run
• 50-yard dash
• One-mile run
• Sit-and-reach flexibility test
• In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan promoted fitness through celebrity endorsements, and Arnold Schwarzenegger became the Chairman of the Council in 1990 under President George H.W. Bush, boosting its visibility.Decline and Shift (1990s–2013)
• Over time, concerns grew that the test discouraged less athletic kids rather than promoting lifelong fitness habits.
• In 2013, the Presidential Youth Fitness Program replaced the old fitness test, focusing on health-based fitness standards rather than competitive benchmarks.The program’s legacy remains significant, as it helped shape physical education in American schools for decades. Let me know if you’d like more details on any era!
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The most amazing thing is that we knew as scientific fact that smoking was bad for you long, long before it reached its current low levels. One is tempted to think cultural messaging and social factors that go along in that stew, played a larger role than the academic truths that pre-existed them. But I know that the smart people don't actually think that cultural messaging or cultural forces in general are important, as compared to academic truths.
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But yes, the T2 diabetes thing can be hammered home, they can talk about blindness, amputations, comas, all that, they can talk about how it's epidemic just as much as being gross and fat (most often messaged in simply aesthetic terms). These things can make a dent in the culture, and "fat Matt" (a name I never call him myself, as I think it is mean) will have to find a way to accept that without complaining too much.
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The cultural messaging re cigarettes was going full blast already in the 70s. At some point smoking became uncool among higher social status people. While it would be idiotic to say health concerns weren’t a cause of that, it wasn’t so simple as getting the message out on, say, MTV instead of PBS Newshour.
Honestly being in shape and eating well long ago completely swept through higher status US culture. Like smoking, it lags in middle America and among the poor.
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If the findings are the same as all of the other studies, is it really going to change anybody's mind?
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Depends on who's lying to whom.
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@Jolly said in Beyond the antivaxx stuff MAHA is either banal or fake:
Depends on who's lying to whom.
A simple 'no' would probably have been easier.
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Trust, once broken, is hard to regain.
It's why cheating kills marriages.
“Cry havoc and let slip the DOGE of war!”
Those who cheered as J-6 American prisoners were locked in solitary for 18 months without trial, now suddenly fight tooth and nail for foreign terrorists’ "due process". — Buck Sexton
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@Jolly said in Beyond the antivaxx stuff MAHA is either banal or fake:
Trust, once broken, is hard to regain.
It's why cheating kills marriages.
The bogus link between autism and MMR vaccines goes back decades. The lying and fraud started in the 90's, and it wasn't perpetrated by those who support vaccination.
I was only joking
