I mean shit, i can’t tell you how many people, doctors included, have been aghast that i might have to take a pill every day the rest of my life for blood pressure. as though it’s an addiction. people are fucking idiots.
Why are americans taking health advice from a former heroin addict ?
Submitted 13 hours ago by Hace@sh.itjust.works to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/6bc30063-7c82-4f1d-8852-a5db3bd983c9.jpeg
Comments
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 28 minutes ago
Randomgal@lemmy.ca 3 hours ago
Being a heroin addict does not make you a bad person anymore than having diabetes. Fuck off with that moralistic shit.
The guy is a scourge of humanity because of the choices he made and beliefs he holds. Don’t make it look like heroin is the cause.
thermal_shock@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Would you take driving lessons from someone who’s never driven a car?
Same idea, who the fuck is this McDonald’s eating fuck to give advice on health?
Not to mention all the dumbass comments he’s made about nearly eradicated diseases like measles, he’s a trumper, so he supports child rape and murdering of civilians who dont lick the boots and bow down to tangerine shitler.
Randomgal@lemmy.ca 36 minutes ago
The clickbait title implies the problem is his drug use and not, you know, any of his actual character flaws.
switcheroo@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
A third of the US are beyond help, beyond fucking stupid. Another third can’t be arsed to do anything, they’re so apathetic. One will follow without question, the other might go either way.
Also Shitler put RFK in place, so we’re all forced to hear his moronic opinions…
Sunsofold@lemmings.world 1 hour ago
Apathy comes from depression and grasping at things that don’t make sense can be read as anxiety. America failed to develop an educational system and now has no clue how to cope with stresses being applied to it.
Luminous5481@anarchist.nexus 8 hours ago
As much as I wish this dude would immediately suffer cardiac arrest from a clogged artery, him being a former addict has nothing to do with anything, and in itself doesn’t devalue anything he says. That kind of thinking is pretty problematic, and you need to have a real hard think about the way you obviously look down on people who are recovering from addiction, cause honestly you’re being pretty shitty right now.
Garbagio@lemmy.zip 8 hours ago
Mmmm, I think there’s still a point to the question. Being an addict is not a moral failing; it doesn’t make you less of a person. But the vast majority of people who believe in RFK also believe being an addict is reprehensible.
t’s like how people ask Christians why they vote for someone who’s been married x times. Personally idgaf how many times Trump has been married, I care about how many women and children he has assaulted. I don’t think divorce is a moral failing; hell, I don’t believe in the institution of marriage by the state. But, the very same people who hold him up also claim to believe that it should make him unworthy.
ameancow@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
vast majority of people who believe in RFK also believe being an addict is reprehensible.
While true, they’re also the segment of the population most impacted by the opioid epidemic.
There is no logistical consistency in the conservative mind, we have to stop trying to make square pegs fit into something that doesn’t even have holes. These folks go with how they feel, and they adore having a health and human services leader who gives them validation for believing in magic water, essential oil and avoidance of scarrrrryyyy needles and vaccines. That’s ALL they care about, nothing in his background would change that. NOTHING.
Doomsider@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
He spent his entire life literally destroying his mind. Is he bad because he is an addict? Perhaps not, but he has significant brain damaged because of the drugs.
I am all for recovery but the truth is he will never have the mental faculties to be a leader because of his life choices. He will never be able to make a full recovery. That is not discrimination, that is just reality.
Zamboni_Driver@lemmy.ca 4 hours ago
I do not need to take a hard look at this to clearly see that this is a person who does not approach life with the scientific method in mind.
Being a drug addict does not accidentally happen. It suggests a flawed decision making process which should make someone ineligible to be making decisions which affect millions of people.
I don’t look down on someone for being a heroin user, but I do trust their decision making process less than I would trust someone who did not make that decision.
Paranoidfactoid@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
You can’t get a security clearance with a history of narcotics addiction. NIR can you join the military. Because the addiction compromises you and your judgement.
There is no such thing as a ‘former addict’.
Luminous5481@anarchist.nexus 6 hours ago
Because the addiction compromises you and your judgement.
so does having questioned the US or Israeli governments, or participated in any protests or activism. as an example, yours was a pretty bad one.
new_world_odor@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
This is honestly a disgusting take because it shows how biased you are against addicts. Not a stupid question. Just a nasty one. Your 2nd and 3rd are good questions though. I don’t think there’s jack shit qualifying him to give health advice in reality. He’s a crackpot supplement pusher. Which I feel kinda answers your 3rd; americans have a long history of being stupid and blindly trusting whatever the pill-pusher says, because they hear what they want to hear. Unfortunately.
I hate RFK and all the damage he’s done/is doing to our country’s general state of health. His history of addiction is literally last on the list of reasons not to trust him. In my view, a history of addiction (now being in recovery) usually gives you a pretty sane view of health, since it brings you so close to death. The overwhelming majority of recovering addicts that I know lead healthier lifestyles than non-addicts. Oftentimes when people see with clarity how much damage they’ve done to themselves, they desperately want to treat their body better.
Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
This was exactly my first thought. He should be disqualified for many reasons, but that ain’t one of them. Thinking that way is why we have him.
otter@lemmy.ca 12 hours ago
Being a former heroin addict doesn’t make someone a bad source of information, especially if they’ve turned their lives around.
But I agree otherwise
eddanja@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Having a worm drive your thoughts does tho…
cabbage@piefed.social 11 hours ago
Yeah, “from a guy with a dead worm in his brain” would make for a better question.
Boiglenoight@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
Right, but you wouldn’t put a former heroin addicts in this position. The optics alone are sure to cause trust issues and this guy is nowhere close to being qualified to run HHS.
hateisreality@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
I feel like goddamn brain worm should be a hard disqualify for jobs that impact health.
PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S@lemmy.sdf.org 11 hours ago
Fuck RFK but I will never hold being a former heroin addict against him.
innermachine@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Yea it’s not the addiction or even the brainworms that disqualify him, it’s simply his stupidity.
Janx@piefed.social 5 hours ago
Stupid people are redeemable as well. But this asshole has seen the science, ignores it, and continues to spread his lies that will harm and/or kill people for political reasons…
RaoulDook@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
But you must consider the possibility that heroin and brain worms damaged his brain, contributing to the stupidity, and his own stupid choices led to those circumstances that possibly increased his stupidity. Thus he remains open to criticize on all those topics.
FudgyMcTubbs@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Listen, I’d hire a former heroin addict for a job no problem, but I don’t think I would date one.
Rfkjr is unqualified for his position.
irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 hours ago
Fuck rfk, but him being a former heroin addict is probably his least worst trait.
Triumph@fedia.io 9 hours ago
I'm sure he was just as crazy before and during as he is after.
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 2 hours ago
Americans don’t trust him at all. His own large, famous family hates him with a passion, every single one of them. He was thrust upon us by professional trolls who think it’s hilarious to watch people who actually care about their nation and it’s citizens get upset.
SlippiHUD@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
Why are americans taking health advice from a man who got brain worms from eating roadkill and didnt learn his lesson?
Thats the more appropriate lesson.
Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Americans aren’t. Fascist ignoramuses are. Those are not americans
niktemadur@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
He might have had the microphone before, but then legions of non-voters granted him THE POWER over their lives!
wHeN tHeRe’S aN eLeCTiOn YoU oNLy eLeCt OnE pErSoN!
bOtH pArTiEs ArE tHe SaMe LoL i Am NoT LiKe A mEdiEvaL pEaSaNt, i Am a PuRe AnD eNLigHtEnEd DeLiCaTe FLoWeRSam_Bass@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
You don’t just elect one person. You elect that one and you get everyone that one appoints.
noxypaws@pawb.social 3 hours ago
Heartwarming how many comments are defending sufferers of addiction in here from being lumped in with this piece of shit. Fedi remains such a breath of fresh air.
chunes@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
I’ve got nothing against people with former drug problems. I don’t trust him because he’s a doofus.
ragepaw@lemmy.ca 7 hours ago
Did everyone forget he drove around with a dead animal, and dumped it into a park?
No one should listen to this insane lunatics ramblings. But the addiction is a symptom, not the problem. He likely became an addict because he was mentally ill. Or, the addiction (and brain worm, and eating random dead things) made him mentally ill.
Either way, someone with delusions shouldn’t be in charge of anything.
night_petal@lemmy.zip 5 hours ago
He chopped the head off of a whale, strapped it to the family car, and drove it home as the viscera dripped into the cabin onto his wife and daughter.
Typotyper@sh.itjust.works 6 hours ago
He was doing drugs 30 years ago. He’s a spoilt rich kid
hitstun@feddit.online 11 hours ago
Every Cabinet position is filled with the worst possible person for the job. This is done on purpose to make the government fail at all the things it should be doing. We knew this would happen, of course.
Take everything they say as examples of what not to do. Don’t do what Donny Don’t does.
MeekerThanBeaker@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
I’m not taking his advice, not trusting him with anything.
This administration is nothing but a bunch of ignorant narcissistic racist scared buffoons who were taken from Fox News. The people who trust him are ignorant narcissistic racist scared buffoons who watch Fox News.
It’s really amazing how inept they all are.
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
I dunno. I think it’s really too bad they melted down the demon core. I’d probably trust him to run a supercriticality experiment all on his own.
LemmyKnowsBest@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Even his own family members have said he is in no state of mind or health to be in any position of authority whatsoever.
RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
…do you not understand this position isn’t even elected? I’m not fucking trusting him.
Snapz@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
People with old, dead, rotten brains recognize his Dad and Uncle’s name. It reminds them vaguely of a time when their own father’s were in charge of all the hard decisions, their joints didn’t hurt and they had an undefined future that could have been wonderful. That future has come though and turns out they are just themselves… they failed, nothing fun they wanted really happened and everything confuses them now. They feel like frauds about to be found out and forgotten at the same time.
So seeing something they think they recognize voting for “a Kennedy” makes them indirectly fell that their own Dad will magically come back to life, tell them he’s proud and then they will be millionaires and attractive people will want to have have sex with them and fix their iPhones.
It’s just that.
z3rOR0ne@lemmy.ml 8 hours ago
They’re not. Make no mistake, MAGA is full of a myriad of ideologies ranging from fascists, christian nationalists, white supremacists, anti vaxers, misogynists, transphobes/homophobes/terfs, pedophiles, capitalists/monopolists, incels, manosphere bros, and more.
They don’t care about what they together stand for, because as a single entity? They only stand for one thing: the power to take away social and civil liberties. To fuck the public, and maximize profit and control, to MAKE us all, at home and abroad, comply.
Even amongst MAGA, RFK Jr is a joke, only a small subset of MAGA take him seriously and luckily they’ll be dead of heart attacks and treatable diseases soon. What’s sad is they’ll have taken down so many innocents along with them. RFK Jr is there to distract the American public of the real issues with our Health Care System which is mainly affordability, access, and a competitive public option. It’s not that he’s even in the pocket of Big Pharma, though that is likely true. But even if he isn’t, Big Pharma still benefits from his incompetency, from the sideshow he creates.
Hopefully that clears things up. Americans aren’t stupid because they don’t have access to the medical research and information, Americans are stupid because their pride tells them that their intuition and their echo chambers of validation make them right in spite of aforementioned research and information. That’s MAGA, that’s America.
Basically all of us are choosing the devils we know because we gave up on looking for angels of our better nature long ago.
DigitalAudio@sopuli.xyz 8 hours ago
Wonderfully put. If people really want to dismantle MAGA, they need to first understand the underlying structure.
90% of MAGAts aren’t taking RFK seriously. But he’s there to appeal to the 10% that want him there. Now who’s that group? Mostly the people that opposed the health measures put forth during the pandemic. Remember that anti-health and even anti-vax groups were extremely small and irrelevant before the pandemic. The (in my opinion) justifiably tough measures we had to endure unfortunately created disenfranchised individuals who felt attacked and wanted revenge on the system afterwards. MAGA offered a place for them to go to. Some of them aren’t actively anti-LGBT or anti-immigration, but they thought the other side tried to poison them and their kids, therefore they’re bad, therefore let’s vote Republican.
That’s how everything works. The anti-immigrant crowd doesn’t really care about vaccines for the most part. But they’ve seen too many tiktoks of brown people shoplifting or doing X or Y bad thing. So now they feel the country has been taken over by a hostile mob of aliens. ICE and Kristy Noem appeal to that crowd.
Meanwhile, Technofascists probably aren’t anti-health and also probably don’t care too much about immigration, but they absolutely hate regulations, taxes for the wealthy and want to make as much money in digital grifting as possible. So they ally with the religious nuts, the anti-vax nuts and the racists because they can make more money.
The incels and contrarians are mostly internet edgelords who saw far too many blue-haired libs and women trying to ruin video games for them, so they grouped together to bring down wokeness. Because to them, wokeness ruined fun, ruined Star Wars and Ghostbusters and a bunch of other things they feel were ruined by Hollywood. This was the main group in charge of radicalising younger people.
And the Christian right is a mix of all of the above, but take the hardcore churchgoers from every group.
There are others. Anti-trans, anti-LGBT, etc. Each group has actually little to do with the other. Like the anti-Hollywood incel crowd is extremely antisemitic, while the Technofascist crowd claims to be super pro-Jewish (they’re only pro-Israel). In theory they should be opposed to each other. But MAGA is the temporary truce between them to fight this hypothetical common enemy.
That’s why they’ve fabricated this idea of the Antifa domestic terrorist in kahoots with the immigrant criminal gangster. They need to idealize these two groups as part of the larger problem because if they don’t, the entire MAGA movement collapses.
Therefore, fascism in the US can realistically only be stopped by:
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The internal collapse of MAGA: Infighting or a big enough issue to make the gap between them insurmountable.
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Military intervention: the armed forces or other groups with enough control of violence and weapons to overthrow the government.
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A civil war: the country reaches a breaking point and devolves into full on insurrection movements, separationist movements, and renders MAGA useless as it becomes the only allowed ideology in one of the two (or more) combatants.
I know people on Lemmy love the idea of insurrections and revolutions. And I understand that. But if someone doesn’t want to see a lot of bloodshed in the next few years, then they’d be hoping for one of the first two options.
z3rOR0ne@lemmy.ml 6 hours ago
Dude, either you are me, or I’ve been spending waaaay too much time on Lemmy, or both, lol.
Same fucking page. You broke it down better than I did. No notes.
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NABDad@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
This question really pushes the boundaries of the concept of “no stupid questions”, but I will respect the premise and answer with all seriousness.
There is nothing about being a former anything that is automatically disqualifying.
Not everything he says is without merit. Even a blind, dumb squirrel can accidentally find a nut.
Americans aren’t trusting him. He is only respected by the deluded cult members, and then only because their pedophile leader tells them to.
The people who don’t realize he’s full of shit are the people who can’t handle being the most ignorant person in the room. They’re swallowing all the bullshit that this administration spits out because it’s the only way they can pretend they are better than everyone else.
It’s all just corrupt, diseased minds taking advantage of other corrupt, diseased minds. If they didn’t reject the compassion of their opponents, I’d have sympathy for them. However, they chose the darkness.
BurgerBaron@piefed.social 13 hours ago
If he was a progressive pro-intellectual/science ex-heroin users in an alternate timeline, would that still be a disqualifier?
snooggums@piefed.world 9 hours ago
No, the point is that the has made constant bad decisions and the meme uses one of the most obvious.
I_Clean_Here@lemmy.ml 9 hours ago
Him being a former heroin addict is completely besides the point. His opinions and arguments would still be bullshit if he were the most competend medical doctor in the world.
lightnsfw@reddthat.com 8 hours ago
A lot of us are dumber than shit. They elected a president who is dumber than shit and he picked a secretary of health who is dumber than shit. I personally ignore everything RFK Jr. says.
Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Most of us aren’t. Hell, most of us didn’t listen to the Secretary of Health and Human Services before.
Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 hours ago
As others have pointed out, being a dry addict ISN’T a reason do dismiss what someone is saying, even about health.
Being the guy whose brain worm died from mercury poisoning, though…
Flauschige_Lemmata@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Even that isn’t the problem.
He was already promoting anti-vacs conspiracy theories in 2004. The tapeworm was removed in 2010. I doubt he had it for that long
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
Most of us aren’t.
The ones that are, are already so far down the rabbit hole they wouldn’t recognize reality anyway.
kandoh@reddthat.com 5 hours ago
Because he says ‘things weren’t like this when I was a kid’ and it resonated hard with dumb people who see stuff like autism and transgender problems to be eradicated
jaybone@lemmy.zip 9 hours ago
Nobody is trusting him.
He’s unqualified just like everyone else Trump appoints. Why is this a surprise?
BussyCat@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
You would be absolutely surprised how many people are trusting him…
Shake shack is advertising with MAHA as a tagline
SabinStargem@lemmy.today 7 hours ago
Good to know. I don’t want whatever they are letting slip into their food.
communism@lemmy.ml 1 hour ago
Wtf is wrong with being a former heroin addict? I know plenty of drug users and former drug users who aren’t fascist shitstains and are actually pleasant people. Also like, you’re going after him for being a former addict? God forbid someone be in a bad place in life and luckily manage to recover from it… Addiction, a health condition, just morally scars you for life then? Would you say that about someone who recovered from cancer? Fuck off.
mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca 1 hour ago
yeah the question is not phrased properly
it should be “why are the people who give former drug addicts a bunch of shit when it’s convenient to them now paying attention to a former addict”
It’s about the hypocrisy, not the person’s past