The New York Times had a completely silly story yesterday with the headline “Whole Foods, MAHA and the Battle Over Healthy Eating in America.” What battle? And what in the world does Whole Foods have to do with it?
There is no battle, and Whole Foods has nothing to do with it. Instead, the Times went out and found some right-wing kook and associate of Charlie Kirk who would give them the quote they wanted to whip up a fictitious element of controversy. You’ll have to wait for the 14th paragraph to get to the quote and the made-up premise of the story:
“They do notice Whole Foods’ lack of voice in this movement and wondering where their leadership is in this. … This is the moment that you guys have allegedly fought for your entire existence. Why are you slowing down when you should be ramping up?”
Whole Foods has been fighting for this MAHA moment for its entire existence? Whole Foods is slowing down? I’ve been shopping at Whole Foods for thirty years (starting with the San Francisco Whole Foods back in the 1990s), and somehow in my lefty blindness I failed to notice that this was a right-wing thing all along.
This kook, by the way, says she was at Chick-fil-A “like, four times a week” until she had a “conversion.” Sure she did. All fanatics have conversions. Then they consider themselves an enlightened elect while those of us who’ve been there for fifty years (my roots are in the hippy era) are insufficiently pure and have to be purged. Clearly MAGA wants Whole Foods to endorse MAHA. The New York Times has been foolish enough to help a fascist movement with corporate intimidation, something that all fascist movements have to do.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s so-called “Make America Healthy Again” movement has nothing to do with the kind of knowledge and commitment required to actually live a healthy lifestyle with a healthy diet. Instead it’s a right-wing movement of Pharisees, and, like all right-wing movements, it’s based on demonization and derp. Does anyone think that Robert F. Kennedy is going to teach the deplorables to stop buying ultra-processed foods and sugary drinks, to shop healthy, and to go home and cook from scratch for the rest of their lives?
Of course not. They just don’t have the wiring that would take. Rather, they think that condemning vaccines, fluoride, seed oils, Tylenol, and Red Dye No. 40 will make them healthy again. It’s really just a different kind of scapegoating and a new genre of derp.
If I start seeing deplorables in MAGA caps at Whole Foods — there are plenty of them around here — I’ll let y’all know what they’re buying.
Hi David,
The fluoride in your list immediately makes me think of one of my favorite films of all-time: Dr. Strangelove, where, as you’d expect, the absolute end of the world begins with the paranoiac conspiracy of the ‘communistic’ fluoride that’s poisoning us all and must be stopped (by unhinged amounts of power) . . . I was already thinking of Dr. Strangelove in recent days due to watching ‘A House of Dynamite’ ~ which feels like a somber, yet frantic, modern revisit that I highly recommend.
Now that Trump has randomly (or predictably, depending on how you look at it) called for revamping nuclear testing ~ Dr. Strangelove (whose 60’s era characters, as you may know, provoke many perhaps unintentionally prophetic aspects at once frightening and uncannily-hilarious) has crossed borders from a dark comedy simulation game, playing out the most insane scenario conceivable ~ to a feeling of living a hyper-surreal ‘surreality’ in real time and space that is manifesting the same kind of unthinkable stuff way too eerie and too fast. (Neil deGrasse Tyson the other day I heard had to debunk that he was in fact *not* on camera declaring the world is flat.)
I just wonder to myself if the communistic fluoride (now called woke fluoride) was an invention for the movie by Kubrick & co. to be the hair-trigger to bring on the end of everything ~ or was it a borrow of the time of some real conspiracy-floating deplorable shit of the day.
Hi Malinda: I did watch “A House of Dynamite.” It’s even more chilling when one observes that, in “House of Dynamite,” the people handling it were pretty competent. I doubt whether that’s the case at present, outside the military. As for fluoride, I’m of the pre-fluoride generation. It was the next generation in which so many people were totally cavity-free. It’s funny how some people think they can demonize their way to health. Speaking of which, I saw a piece this morning in which Marjorie Taylor Greene tells us that extraterrestrial are demons.
‘demonize their way to health’ is very apt 🙂
it reminds me of its brother: kill our way to peace
‘A House of Dynamite’ scared the shit out of me most because — you’re so right — Trump is no Idris Elba as competent commander-in-chief president we wish we had. This presidency feels like being trapped in a car going 120 with a suicidal maniac who’s steering with his knee.
Extraterrestrials would have more humanity than MTG at this point. She and her cartoonish off-the-wall hallucinations would fit like a glove into the cast of Strangelove. Don’t you wonder sometimes ~ does she really believe what she’s saying??? Is it an act? Are all MAGA brains that out to pasture? You’re so on the nose with ~ HOW do we download education into them?
Fox and Murdochs built their empire on the the extreme perversion and tabloidization of everything we ever held dear. 🙁
They concocted this mess.
Some people I follow in independent news are already calling for new Nuremberg trials. I wish.
Speaking of ~ are you familiar with this guy Bovino of the Border Patrol who is going around wearing Nazi SS style Himmler haircut and Waffenrock trenchcoat dress ~ chilling. I knew Musk’s sieg heil at the inauguration was just a teaser and the opening credits.
In that 60 Minutes interview that happened with Norah O’Donnell, did you see? Trump said we need *more* violence and cruelty in the illegal kidnappings, not less. I have to explain to my early 20’s age kids ~ this is the world I brought you into. This is NOTTTT in any way, shape, form the world I brought you into. 🙁
I think Marjorie Taylor Greene is mostly an act, and that she says whatever she think will get attention. That said, though, I do think she has an extraordinarily primitive mind. Yes … I’ve been reading about Bovino. The Fuentes guy is in the news this morning, too. The Nazis in the movement apparently think it’s time for them to start coming out of the shadows. I too dream of Nuremberg trials. They’ll all get pre-emptive presidential pardons, though, and I’m not sure how the law will be able to work around that. The Guardian reports this morning that the fortunes of ten American billionaires have grown by $698 billion in the last year. They’re the ones actually reaping the gains, though they’re not the ones committing the crimes. I just hope I live to see the day when we will be able to tax them completely out of existence.