Returning To The Dark Ages

Union County, North Carolina is making headlines today because county leaders have finalized plans to ban fluoride in the drinking water. Despite every dentist in the county protesting the decision, county residents claim that since the CDC got COVID-19 wrong, they probably got fluoride wrong too. 

Even though fluoride has been in the drinking water since the 40s and offers well-documented protection against tooth decay, the facts don’t matter. Alex Jones said it turns the frogs gay and that carries infinitely more weight than the CDC to some people. Inevitably, they will next ban the paths of airplanes over Union County for fear of contracting chemtrails. 

While the Alex Jones clip is what made it famous, the anti-fluoride movement was started by rich liberals on the West Coast and slowly seeped into conspiratorial wings of the right. The conspiratorial movements like fluoride and MMR vaccines causing autism started on the left but were picked up and ultimately blamed on the right. 

While it’s fun to laugh at the idiocy of people who actually believe this stuff, I worry that this is the beginning of a return to the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages was a period that coincided with the fall of the Roman Empire when significant societal advancements were lost and culture moved backward. I think this may be happening again. 

One of the basic advancements that we take for granted is the eradication of polio thanks to the polio vaccine. This deadly disease that claimed the lives of countless children and rendered others paralyzed was practically eradicated thanks to Dr. Jonas Salk’s first vaccine used in 1955. But now, thanks to conspiratorial actors on the left and disseminated to the right, polio is on the rise again in this country and around the world. The people who have not lost their minds are fighting against the unknown. “There are no cases of smallpox so how do we know the vaccines work?” scream the conspiracists. “Kids don’t have significant tooth decay, so how can we be sure fluoride works?” they ask.

I fear we are returning to a dark age because a growing number of Americans are willfully turning their backs on what works. For every doctor on the right who claims the MMR vaccine causes autism, a doctor on the left will advise you that it is medically beneficial to mutilate yourself if it means your sex and gender align. 

The bottom line is there are anti-truth movements on the left and the right but the progressive elite in this country are claiming their quacks are right. The progressives got so much wrong about COVID and now openly embrace the pseudoscience of transgenderism that the pseudoscience of the right is rearing its head now too. Both sides have doctors and scientists who tell each side what they want to hear, regardless of truth. Meanwhile, the government is failing at its basic responsibilities and seeding more distrust as its arrogant experts and elite use the discord to control. All of this is the product of a growing idolatry in the country, the worship of self by both sides.

This doesn’t end well.