MAGA versus MAHA

 

It is not exactly a new observation that RFK, Jr. and his "Make America Healthy Again" is not quite the same movement as MAGA and appeals to a somewhat different crowd.

MAGA itself appears to be split between two different ideologies -- the hardcore economic royalists, who think America was at its greatest in the Gilded Age, and the working class nationalists, who hark back to the 1950's.

I don't think RFK, Jr. fits with either ideology.  Most notably he is a great advocate of food regulations that are wholly at odds with the economic royalism pervading most of the administration.  I certainly don't think he aspires to return to the Gilded Age.

Nor do I think the 1950's are really what RFK, Jr. aims for.  After all, smoking was rampant.  It was also when fluoridation of the water became widespread.  Diet and exercise were sort of meh!  The real back-to nature movement began in the 1960's.  It seems most likely that the 1960's are RJK, Jr's golden age of when Americans were healthy.  Needless to say, that decade is anathema to either branch of MAGA!

I will also add that the decade has its advantages for an anti-vaxxer.  I have not heard Kennedy come out against the polio vaccine, which was developed in the 1950's.  Nor has he voice much opposition to the DPT (diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus) vaccine, which dates back to the 1940's. His hostility is toward the MMR vaccine, developed in the 1960's and not widely used until the 1970's.  The purported reason for this is supposed to be a study linking the MMR vaccine to autism.  

My suspicion is that something else is at work.  Nostalgia is part of it.  Polio and DPT vaccines were part of Kennedy's childhood.  MMR is a later development.  But perhaps more to the point, polio or tetanus -- perhaps even diphtheria and pertussis -- are scary enough that Kennedy is unlikely to want to take a chance with them.  But it is hard to escape the impression that he basically misses the good old days when catching measles, mumps, and rubella were an ordinary childhood right of passage, and that he basically thinks catching them builds character and that avoiding catching them is decadent.

And in that, at least, MAHA may match up with MAGA.