Tim van Opijnen | The White House is being dismantled - literally and figuratively
The United States is currently gripped by “Make America Healthy Again”. That means beef-tallow-fried chips in goodie bags and the encouragement of distrust in science, columnist Tim van Opijnen observes. “While the administration celebrates beef tallow, a very different kind of ‘health initiative’ is taking place in Minnesota: the murder of Renee Nicole Good.”
To live in America right now is to be battered by headlines that would have once defined a decade, now compressed into a single afternoon. But amidst the cacophony of executive orders and geopolitical imperialism, the administration has carved out a lane for a surreal brand of comic relief: the “Make America Healthy Again” movement. It is a glittering sideshow designed to distract us from the fact that the White House is literally and figuratively being destroyed.
The absurdity was on full display at a recent MAHA summit in Washington. If you want to understand the intellectual seriousness of this administration, look no further than the swag bag handed out to attendees. Inside, guests found a biography of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a packet of creatine, a bag of chips fried in beef tallow, and a roll of mouth tape. The tape is intended to promote “nasal breathing,” though one couldn't help but wish it had been applied, liberally and immediately, to the speakers on stage.
Sick
The atmosphere was less a medical conference than a revival tent for the conspiracy-minded. When Christian Angermayer, a psychedelics investor, urged the audience to “follow the science,” he was met with audible groans. By now it is clear that in this new order, science is a buzzkill. To be fair, Americans are sick. We spend nearly twice as much on healthcare per capita as the Netherlands, yet we die younger and live sicker. This profound structural failure demands economic reform and universal healthcare for every American; instead, RFK Jr. last week gave us an upside-down food pyramid that encourages Americans to eat even more meat than they already do.
The administration’s answer to our health crisis is a chaotic blend of non-scientific ancestral diets and influencer-driven skepticism where the savior is the salesman. Enter Bryan Johnson. In a sane world, Johnson would be a fringe curiosity. For MAHA, he is a philosopher-king. The tech centimillionaire took the stage to preach the gospel of “not dying,” a quest he pursues by injecting himself with his teenage son’s plasma—a detail that lends him the air of a vampire shopping at Whole Foods. Johnson sells a “Blueprint” stack of supplements for $333 a month. But the rubes buying the vitamins can’t afford the blood boys or the team of thirty doctors monitoring his every breath. He offers a democratized solution while living a plutocratic fantasy.
Murder of Good
It would be funny if it weren’t government policy. But the laughter dies when you look away from the circus. While the administration celebrates beef tallow, a different kind of “health” initiative is taking place in Minnesota. I am speaking of the murder of Renee Nicole Good. Renee was a mother of three. When she was stopped by ICE agents, she had stuffed animals in her glove compartment and an elderly dog trembling in the back seat. She was not a cartel leader. She was a frightened woman, an American citizen.
In the video, which is agonizing to watch, you hear her final words to the officer aiming a weapon at her. “That’s fine dude, I’m not mad at you.” she says. Moments later, as she tries to drive away, she is shot through the head while her wife looks on, and the agent mutters: “Fucking bitch.”
The administration has branded this mother a “deranged leftist,” the standard epithet used to dehumanize anyone on the wrong side of a government bullet. This is the two-step of the current era: distract us with mouth tape while the state grinds human beings into dust.
We are told to believe that MAHA will bring us health and that Renee Nicole Good was a threat to making us great. But we would do well to remember May 1970. After the Ohio National Guard gunned down four unarmed students at Kent State University, 58 percent of Americans initially blamed the students. But that callous reflex eventually gave way to horror. It became the watershed moment that turned the tide against Nixon’s war. The execution of Renee Nicole Good could be this regime’s Kent State. They can spin the narrative, but the mask has slipped. The facade is crumbling, and this is where the American people finally, unequivocally must say: No more.
Tim van Opijnen is Professor of Paediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, United States, where his laboratory focuses on developing novel antibacterial therapies. He contributes a monthly column to Folia on conducting research in Trump’s America.
