Thursday's Most Active Threads

For the third day running, one of the most active threads was about a cabinet nomination by President-elect, cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump. This one was titled, "RFKjr Tapped to Head HHS" and was posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. As noted in the title, Trump announced that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was his choice to head the Department of Health and Human Services. I consider this choice a little unusual for Trump. His previous cabinet choices emphasized loyalty. Kennedy is a bit of a loose cannon whose loyalty might be in question. Putting Kennedy in charge of HHS is not just putting the fox in charge of the henhouse, it is more like putting someone who denies the moon landing at the head of NASA. The chances of Kennedy completely destroying the department are fairly high. At first glance, I can see several categories of damage that Kennedy might do. One is messaging. MAGAs especially tend to believe Trump and his top people rather than experts. The more that Kennedy deemphasizes important health measures and, instead, highlights unproven quackery, the more that public health is likely to suffer. Second is interference with important research projects that he simply doesn't understand. It is common practice to track down some esoteric research project that, at first glance, sounds ridiculous and highlight it as a waste of money. The problem is that you never really know where these projects might lead. For instance, the popular weight loss drugs Ozempic and Wegovy had their origin in research into lizard venom. The flip side of this coin is that Kennedy might direct research into areas that aren't productive. A poster in this thread suggests that Kennedy might put significant funds into stem cell research which the poster believes would be a waste of time and money. I don't have the knowledge to comment on that in any way, but Kennedy has plenty of off-the-wall ideas that I could easily see him prioritizing that either lead nowhere or make things worse. Additional damage could be by simple neglect. HHS is huge, encompassing the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and much, much more. It is going to take a while for Kennedy to simply learn all this is under his purview. If he gets lost trying to reform the FDA, for instance, what will happen to the rest of the Department? One specific threat that Kennedy presents is his attitude toward vaccines. Kennedy has falsely linked vaccines to autism and has equated the use of vaccines to the Holocaust. Any steps Kennedy takes to discourage the use of vaccines could have a profound negative impact on health, especially of children. Kennedy also promotes discredited theories such as his claims about the benefits of raw milk. This is particularly concerning because the United States is currently experiencing an outbreak of the H5N1 bird flu virus in dairy cattle. The H5N1 virus can be spread through unpasteurized milk from infected cows. If the H5N1 bird flu continues to spread during the Trump administration, having at the head of HHS a man who promotes a mechanism for spreading it and who will likely interfere with vaccines meant to combat it will be, to say the least, problematic. Kennedy even supports some of the leading MAGA theories from Trump's first term, such as believing that ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine are effective COVID treatments. It is hard to pin down exactly which of Trump's cabinet picks presents the most threat to our well-being, but a very strong argument can be made for Kennedy.

Yesterday's next most active thread was also posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. Titled, "Melania won’t move to the WH", the original poster linked to a CNN story saying that Melania Trump will not move to the White House but, instead, is expected to split her time between Mar-a-Lago in Florida and Trump Tower in New York City. Trump is quoted in the article as saying, "This time is different". Trump does expect to return to the White House on occasion in order to participate in important events. DCUM posters can get riled up by the slightest things, but this topic doesn't really trigger them. It is safe to say that Melania Trump was never all that popular among DCUM's base. Many posters consider her marriage to President-elect, cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump to be a sham. Most posters don't blame Melania for wanting to be away from her husband as much as possible. The MAGA reaction is typical for them. Divert, high-jack, and whatabout. They have little to say about Melania or the White House. Instead, they want to talk about President Joe Biden visiting Delaware or former President Barack Obama skiing in Aspen. The thing that you must understand about DCUM's MAGA posters is that they will spend years complaining about something, but then find exactly that same thing acceptable when Trump does it. Many posters believe that Melania didn't actually live in the White House during the first Trump administration. Instead, she is suspected of having lived with her parents in Potomac, MD, close to where Barron Trump went to school. One strange thing about this thread is that none of the liberals seem concerned about where Melania lives, other than a few that worry about the price of protecting her in a separate residence. But the MAGA posters react as if she has been roundly criticized. As a result, they defend her from attacks that don't exist. The only thing that I will say is that I can certainly sympathize with her about wanting to live a separate life. She didn't run for anything, and there is no reason to force her into duties that she doesn't want to do. However, a point made by several posters that she wants to live in New York because Barron is going to college there struck me as strange. Just imagine if a poster started a thread in DCUM's college forum saying they were going to move to their child's college town in order to be with them. Such a poster would be buried under an avalanche of criticism, being labeled a "helicopter" parent or worse. Therefore, I'm not sure why this is an acceptable explanation for Melania.

Next was a thread titled, "This is not going to end well, and we are nearing the end." and, like the previous two threads, posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The original poster presents an extremely bleak, if at times factually challenging, picture of the current United States. According to the original poster, Russia has been planning for 80 years to cause the collapse of the United States. Now, we are in the final stages of that effort. Russian assets are now in the Oval Office and at the head of many important departments. The poster says that the "Rubicon has been crossed" and Russia "is going to deal us the final death blow." I noticed this thread when it was created and glanced at it. However, I completely misunderstood what it was about. Otherwise, I would have immediately deleted it. The first issue that I have is the original poster's contention that Russia has been planning this for 80 years. Eighty years ago, what is now "Russia" was the "Soviet Union". Plenty has happened over that time period to interrput any planning that might have been going on. I am not naive about Russia. After all, I am married to a woman from the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. To say that she is suspicious of the Russian government is not even touching the surface of it. But I am doubtful of the Russians' competence to pull off a scheme of this scale. Russia is led by a man who thought that he could conquer Ukraine in three days. How is that going? Similarly, I am completely willing to accept that President-elect, cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump, as well as some of his appointees such as Tulsi Gabbard, are compromised by Russia. But the idea suggested by the original poster that Trump would allow a dirty bomb to be exploded in New York City suggests that she has no idea about Trump's priorities. Trump owns far too much real estate in New York to allow the city to be rendered uninhabitable. What the original poster does do is provide an answer to MAGA prayers. They have been desperate to find signs that liberals have lost their minds. They instantly seize this outlying post to use to represent all liberals. In their minds, because the original poster is easily discredited, all liberal criticisms are similarly discredited. The MAGAs argue that Trump is no different than any other president and that liberals are just sore losers. In fact, Trump is different than his predecessors. No previous president staged an insurrection in an attempt to prevent a peaceful transfer of power. No previous president has spoken so openly about wanting to punish his opponents. No previous president has as blatantly advocated undemocratic means of wielding power. These are real concerns, but not ones that MAGAs are willing to entertain. Instead, they brush off liberals as being overly dramatic and point to the original poster to prove their point. One disappointing development of this election has been the reversal of roles when it comes to conspiracy theories. It used to be MAGAs who saw a man behind every current pulling strings. Now, some liberals are falling into that trap. However, luckily, DCUM has generally not seen many liberal conspiracy theories, which is one reason this thread is so disappointing. In an effort to demonstrate that liberals are as prone as MAGAs to believing in conspiracies, one poster resorted to making a claim about Reddit. The poster didn't provide a link to Reddit to support the claim, so who knows whether the accusation is true or not. But even so, that's Reddit, not DCUM.

The final thread that I will discuss today was posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. Titled, "NY Times editorial: ‘Universities Like Yale Need a Reckoning’", the original poster says that while he agrees with much of the guest essay, he doesn't understand what concrete steps are being advocated. He asks what others think. It is understandable that the original poster didn't immediately pick up on the author's specific recommendations for action. They were obscured behind flowery language and are fairly hard to pull out. More importantly, the author immediately conceded that his primary suggestion was not practical at this time. If I understand the article correctly, the main point is that the presidential election revealed a crucial division between those with college degrees and those without. He notes multiple reasons for this divide, but places part of the blame on universities for being too expensive, being too "woke" (though he didn't use that word), having opaque admissions policies, concentrating on sports, creating exclusive bubbles, and hoarding endowments. His prescription is a "moonshot for public schools, secondary and higher ... founded on an aggressive, positive assertion of the values and faiths that such an education represents." However, the author also notes that this is "not going to happen under Republicans." As such, he doesn't really have much in the way of immediate recommendations. His one concrete recommendation that could be implemented now is to de-emphasize studies that touch on race, ethnicity, and gender. The "stop being woke" suggestion is hardly new or revolutionary. To the contrary, this has been part of almost every discussion related to education or politics for years. The author also notes the 250th anniversary of the American independence coming in 2026 and suggests that schools provide a "genuine, substantive national commemoration" of the event so that it is not dominated by "Trumpists". The author doesn't offer much of a vision for such a commemoration, but to me, this provides an opportunity to combine "woke" values with accurate history. Surely, any discussion of the American Revolution should note that the first American to be killed was Crispus Attucks, a man of African and Native American descent. Similarly, wouldn't it be appropriate to mention that the resulting independence limited the right to vote to land-owning White men? At any rate, it is somewhat strange that a professor at Yale University would present such a strenuous argument in favor of public education. Certainly, I agree with him, but perhaps he should consider his own role in that effort. I don't think this past election was decided because of one issue. Rather, as I have written before, it was a death of a thousand cuts. Lots of different issues each likely motivated small numbers of voters, and in this regard, some might have voted the way they did because Yale is not transparent about its admissions criteria. However, I don't think that fixing Yale's admissions would have much electoral impact. I do see value in winning the culture war around education, but I think that involves acting more intelligently without sacrificing our values. Schools, particularly those that are public, clearly have a role to play.