Excellent post from Cory about how widespread corruption in public institutions leads to anti-vax, MAGA and other conspiracy theories.
“Conspiratorialism and the epistemological crisis: We may not know what’s in the box, but we can tell if it’s been damaged in transit.” pluralistic.net/2024/03/2…
The revolving door of senior personnel between regulatory agencies and the companies they’re supposed to regulate means that the agencies don’t do their jobs.
The FAA has been overlooking problems with Boeing planes for years and we’re seeing the damage in headlines now.
Likewise, while vaccines are safe and powerful enablers of public health, Big Pharma lied for decades about the safety and efficacy of opiods, so it’s reasonable for people to disbelieve everything Big Pharma says.
Few of us are qualified to judge the safety of vaccines, medications, buildings and airplanes, but we can look at the regulatory process and see if it’s sound. And that process is broken. Corrupt.
Facebook and TikTok aren’t to blame here, the fault lies in the failure of government.
If the Biden Administration has been tackling this problem, I’m not aware of it. That doesn’t mean I support Biden’s re-election less, because Biden’s done a lot of good and in areas where Biden has failed, Trump would be a thousand times worse.