The Washington Post ran a biting but very encouraging story headlined, “Trump will push to get fluoride out of drinking water, RFK Jr. says.”
That much was true, RFK did say that:
It might have been the fairest WaPo story I’ve ever seen. Meaning, fair for the WaPo. I expected an all-out effort to paint Trump and RFK as tinfoil-underpants-wearing conspiracy theorists. Shockingly, it only slyly hinted in that direction. Something held it back. Maybe the emerging truth.
Granted, the article was packed with pro-fluoride propaganda, including a tender recitation of fluoride’s halcyon American history (the waste chemical was first salted into Michigan’s water supply in 1945). But surprisingly, it also included two short segments questioning the fluoride narrative. Here’s the first one:
Fluoride supporters often reflexively claim, without evidence, that there are thousands of studies showing water fluoridation is safe. Thousands! But attorney Michael Connett, who prosecuted the recent successful anti-fluoride lawsuit in California, got the chance to depose all the major involved agencies, including all the usual 3-letter suspects. Guess what they all said? They weren’t aware of a single study showing neurological safety following fluoride exposure.
Maybe the WaPo was forced by circumstances to take a more neutral tone. But take a moment to reflect on how far and how quickly we’ve come.
Four years ago, a political candidate who even asked questions about fluoride would have crashed and burned faster than a billion-dollar F-35 fighter jet. Four years ago, the WaPo wouldn’t have even bothered treating this story like a real news issue. Instead, it would have run a tongue-in-cheek story about the history of conspiracy theories, starting with the Germanic Tribes blaming malodorous vapors and vile effusions for the bubonic plague.
The WaPo hasn’t changed—the public’s perception has. The WaPo is still at it.
Another WaPo story this weekend leaned harder into the conspiracy angle, featuring the alarming headline “GOP’s closing election message on health baffles strategists, worries experts.”
Experts baffled again.
But even that article was quietly rebellious, quoting convicted investment fraudster and known pharma shill Martin Shkreli. A worse choice for an anti-Kenney, pro-FDA quote can hardly be imagined:
But despite corporate media’s flailing efforts to slam shut the Overton Window, we are now having something close to a civil public debate about fluoride. In fact, one of the two major political parties, the party currently leading the race, is practically running on a promise to ban fluoride in drinking water. For the Overton Window to shift this far, a ton of regular folks had to become willing to re-consider the conventional narrative and question their assumptions about the government’s good intentions.
It would have been the simplest thing in the world for Attorney Connett’s federal judge to shut his case down by refusing to approve his subpoenas to federal officials. That’s what I would have expected, before the pandemic. Judges aren’t required to let litigants pursue wild conspiracy theories by deposing public health agency managers; those public servants could get nothing done if they had to sit for a deposition every time they swiveled their office chairs around.
Regardless of what happens tomorrow, things have moved a long way in a good direction. Get ready.
