Read enough supernatural tales, and you will often hear of a centuries-long “shadow war” hidden from the public eye between vampires, werewolves, and other creepy-crawlies that go bump in the night. Secret societies, vampire hunters, and other ridiculous conspiracies make for fun movies and bedtime reading, but we all generally understand that these are entertaining absurdities.
Except for Blade, the hard-hitting 1999 documentary starring Blade, directed by Blade, all about how awesome Blade is. That is all very real and completely happened. Let’s not be ridiculous, people!
Now what if I told you that there actually is a very real war that has been waged over centuries, but all within the public’s eye? It’s tragic and the casualties are enormous. But they are all part of one struggle: the war of industry against the public’s health.
Freedom is When I Profit from Killing Babies
Let us go back in time to the America of the late 1800s. A working class mother goes to the grocer to buy brown sugar to bake a birthday cake for her son, and fresh milk for the boy’s newborn sister. Upon returning home, she opens the container of sugar to see lice jump out: for this is no brown sugar but instead ground up insects packaged and sold as brown sugar. As for the baby’s milk, well...
When a newspaper reporter sympathetic to the dairy industry asked him why he was making such a big deal about it, Hurty snapped back: “Well, it’s embalming fluid that you are adding to the milk. I guess it’s all right if you want to embalm the baby.”
-Deborah Blum, The Poison Squad
She will tragically die upon drinking it. These are the sort of common practices that were the standards of the late 19th century American food industry. Deborah Blum’s most excellent book The Poison Squad is an essential history of the depravity of greed and the years-long struggle to institute basic food safety regulations we have too quickly forgotten. Not even candy was safe!
“[chemist Jesse Park Battershall] tested 198 samples of candy and found that a full 115 were tainted by the use of dangerous dyes, mostly arsenic and lead chromate.”
-Deborah Blum, The Poison Squad
Just as John Snow waged a war against cholera in London, with the wealthy and powerful opposed to basic water sanitation & sewage treatment, American chemist Harvey Wiley (a notorious misogynist who compared women to jackals) crusaded against industry, mercenary academics, journalists, and even his own boss. It must seem obscene in retrospect, that anyone could oppose ensuring that children don’t die needlessly of such easily preventable causes. You would hope that upon hearing that someone was killing American babies, the first thing a Congressman would do is roll up his sleeves and slap on his ass-whooping boots to go knock together the skulls of those responsible. And yet, in Harvey Wiley’s time...
“The whole parade of food and drink manufacturers - dairy, meat, eggs, flour, baking soda, beer, wine, whiskey - not to mention the chemical companies, immediately lined up against the legislation. ... Within weeks, both bills were shut down in committee by legislators friendly to the different manufacturing interests” -Deborah Blum, The Poison Squad
Congress took the side of industry against American babies multiple times. This is in part thanks to open legislative war was waged by industry, demanding that we recognize their divine right to murder American children for profit, and that any regulatory attempt to prevent this is a grave violation of their freedoms. Would it not be self-defense to then drag these sadistic industrialists through the streets and mount their heads onto pikes as a warning to others who are tempted by such greed? It would take years of political struggle, and a final convincing of President Theodore Roosevelt (well after he led soldiers given formaldehyde contaminated beef rations) to finally convince Congress to pass the beginning of food safety regulations in 1906.
Sadly, the nation is currently suffering an extended campaign to destroy what little progress we have made 120 years later. All in service of a dogma that industry has a divine right to kill in service of profit. Even when that includes your own children.
The Medical Disinformation Industry
While public health disinformation has existed for centuries, the World-Wide Web and the monetization of social media has poured kerosene onto the fire in a way few could predict. In the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic, you could make a pretty penny (via ad revenue, brand deals, and subscriptions) spreading utterly obscene lies about every aspect of the crisis possible, screeching and howling like jackals at those trying to prevent needless death. One of the end results is countless horror stories of parents who had to bury their unvaccinated child dying of COVID-19 because they listened to these lies.
Under the failed leadership of COVID-19 pestilence sycophants Marty Makary, Vinay Prasad, and Tracy Beth Hoeg, the Food & Drug Administration completely failed to complete regular food safety inspections, and Americans are getting very sick and even dying as a result. Meanwhile, the corporations responsible for these outbreaks continue to report record profits, having exploited the pandemic to engage in price gouging. Children are also getting very sick and dying of measles, as a result of years of disinformation from those who claim to rally under the banner of “Make America Healthy Again.”
With COVID-19 in most Americans’ rear-view mirror, these cheerleaders for disease now strive to profit over sensationalist attacks against those trying to prevent deaths from contaminated produce, or measles, or every other disease in the book. They need a constant stream of ongoing public health crises in order to profit from attacking those who are working and struggling to prevent death, especially those of children. Your family’s constant sickness is their profit.
The Trump Administration’s deregulatory slash-and-burn agenda is ensuring that they’ll be making a steady income for years and years to come. Sadly, Democrats are failing to seize upon an easy opportunity to drum up public support.
Their endgame is that you should all grow quite comfortable with Americans dying regularly from causes that we’ve previously eradicated. That you should relish in the demonization and ruthlessly attack those who’d dare to save lives. That you should become as damned and perverse as themselves; loyal followers practicing in their demented rituals of human sacrifice.
The murderous scam artists of 21st Century America, just like 19th Century America, have no place in civil society. They have nothing of value to say and nothing of value to contribute. Like the common pests you’d find while working on a family farm, they are the ones who should be recoiling in fear at the sight of everyday people.
