Views from Crestmont Drive

• White evangelicals still see Trump as ethical and honest, which to me calls into question their moral compass;
• Trump’s 2026 budget is more for the military and less for everything else, a typical Republican proposal;
• Separation of church and state is anti-Catholic bigotry?
• RFK Jr doesn’t believe in germ theory… which explains a lot;
• And by the way RFK Jr is profiting from the anti-vaccine lobby;
• Thoughts for today: How all this fits together;
• RFK Jr and the fallacy of “doing your own research.”

I’ve seen this same Pew survey cited elsewhere (e.g. here). And the observation is a familiar one.

Friendly Atheist, Hemant Mehta, 2 May 2025: White evangelicals still see Trump as ethical and honest, but atheists know better, subtitled “A new survey shows that atheists are far more critical of Trump’s lies, corruption, and incompetence than white evangelicals”

100 days into his term, Donald Trump’s support is dropping even among many of his most fervent supporters. The reasons are obvious. He hasn’t done much of anything he campaigned on, and the stuff he has done is idiotic and destroying our country.

According to a new Pew Research Center survey, though, there’s one group of voters who continue standing by his side: White evangelicals.

Roughly 80% of them voted for Trump in 2024, representing 20% of the electorate, and that’s about the same number that supported him in the two previous presidential elections.

And today? 72% of white evangelicals approve of how Trump is doing, the highest percentage of any religious group in the country.

So is this simple tribalism? Trump and his team represent evangelical goals? Or does it mean that as self-righteous the evangelicals make themselves out to be, they actually have very poor moral sensibilities? That would explain why they worry that the world, or at least classroom and courts, would be morally adrift without having lists of rules (the Ten Commandments) posted on the walls to remind everyone what’s good and what’s bad. The implication is that otherwise they’d have no idea.

It just goes to show you that no amount of needless cruelty or massive lies will lead conservative Christians to waver in their support for Trump. Once you’ve convinced them to accept things on faith, they’re all in, no matter how much evidence there is to the contrary.

The piece goes on with analogous statistics from the “religiously unaffiliated.” Which run the opposite direction.

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Stories coming out about Trump’s proposed 2026 budget (which isn’t his to control, but he has ideas) betray the usual Republican priorities: more for the military, and cuts to everything else in the name of fiscal prudence or anti-wokeness.

NY Times, 2 May 2025 (via): Trump Proposes Slashing Domestic Spending to the Lowest Level of the Modern Era

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About that anti-Christian bias.

Slate, Mark Joseph Stern, 30 Apr 2025: The Supreme Court Seems to Think the Separation of Church and State Is Anti-Catholic Bigotry

During oral arguments on Wednesday in one of the biggest religion cases in generations, it became clear that the Supreme Court appears all but certain to compel Oklahoma to establish and fund a Catholic charter school, opening the floodgates to mandatory taxpayer support for religious education across the country. Indeed, the Republican-appointed justices took turns accusing the state of engaging in unconstitutional discrimination against religion by declining to admit a church-run academy into its public school system. Their position, if adopted, would transform U.S. public education, striking down restrictions on religious charter schools enshrined in federal statute as well as the laws of 46 states and the District of Columbia. It would bury what remains of church–state separation, forcing every American to subsidize the indoctrination of children into faiths they may not share. And it would further enfeeble secular public education, diverting billions of dollars away from inclusive public schools toward religious academies that openly discriminate against those outside their faith.

Whereas of course Christianity (including Catholicism) seem not to realize, like fish in water, that American society is *saturated* with Christianity. They take the mere acknowledging of anything not Christian as being a bias against them.

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This isn’t today’s news, but a look back at RFK’s 2021 book …

Ars Technica, Beth Mole, 30 Apr 2025: RFK Jr. rejects cornerstone of health science: Germ theory, subtitled “In his 2021 book vilifying Anthony Fauci, RFK Jr. lays out support for an alternate theory.”

Apparently he doesn’t believe in germ theory. This is like being a flat-earther.

Germ theory is, of course, the 19th-century proven idea that microscopic germs—pathogenic viruses, bacteria, parasites, and fungi—cause disease. It supplanted the leading explanation of disease at the time, the miasma theory, which suggests that diseases are caused by miasma, that is, noxious mists and vapors, or simply bad air arising from decaying matter, such as corpses, sewage, or rotting vegetables. While the miasma theory was abandoned, it is credited with spurring improvements in sanitation and hygiene—which, of course, improve health because they halt the spread of germs, the cause of diseases.

Not to mention the lesser-known idea called “terrain theory”… The writer notes that RFK promotes “miasma theory” in his book but actually gets it wrong. Further, he thinks germ theory is a notion used by the pharmaceutical industry and scientists in order to sell modern medicines.

In all, the chapter provides a clear explanation of why Kennedy relentlessly attacks evidence-based medicines; vilifies the pharmaceutical industry; suggests HIV doesn’t cause AIDS and antidepressants are behind mass shootings; believes that vaccines are harmful, not protective; claims 5G wireless networks cause cancer; suggests chemicals in water are changing children’s gender identities; and is quick to promote supplements to prevent and treat diseases, such as recently recommending vitamin A for measles and falsely claiming children who die from the viral infection are malnourished.

In short, every malady is due to something other that infections, according to RFK. The writer notes that experts who read that chapter of his book saw how everything about RFK suddenly added up. All his wacky theories.

Understanding that Kennedy is a germ theory denialist and terrain theory embracer makes these attacks easier to understand—though no less abhorrent or dangerous.

“He holds these beliefs like a religious conviction,” Offit said. “There is no shaking him from that,” regardless of how much evidence there is to prove him wrong. “If you’re trying to talk him out of something that he holds with a religious conviction—that’s never going to happen. And so any time anybody disagrees with him, he goes, ‘Well, of course, they’re just in the pocket of industry; that’s why they say that.'”

The essence of a conspiracy theorist.

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There’s also this.

Washington Post, Donald G. McNeil Jr., 2 May 2025: RFK Jr.’s view of autism is wrong — but profitable, subtitled “The study he hopes to conduct within a year is unlikely to refute the strong evidence against his ideas.”

Isn’t that what he’s accusing Big Pharma of doing?

The anti-vaccine lobby is a business. It holds lucrative sales conferences. Serious science reporters are routinely denied permission to attend and, if caught sneaking in, are escorted out. (See Anna Merlan’s account of being kicked out of an AutismOne conference in 2019 or this excerpt from Seth Mnookin’s 2011 book, “The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science, and Fear.”)

It goes on in some detail about how Kennedy is cashing in, if only via referrals to legal services looking for someone to sue.

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Thoughts for the day:

So how does this all fit together? A little knowledge, as they say, is a dangerous thing. We live in a complex world that our human natures, evolved in primitive times, have difficulty understanding. Most people don’t bother trying, not sincerely. They fall back on religious and community myths. Further, conservatives tend to think poorly of other people, being suspicious or paranoid, and this fits neatly with the Christian conception that people are bad by nature unless they’ve been “saved” by Jesus. In fact, while there will always be some psychopaths and sociopaths among the human population (the variables of human nature are too many to neatly line up all the time), most people are cooperative and honest by nature, at least if given the opportunity to be. Otherwise humanity would not have built the modern world, full of complex systems that require large groups of people to collaborate and trust one another. This is met by suspicion by the conservatives, who assume that such groups are out to take advantage of them, and must by nature be evil. Yet why wouldn’t big groups take advantage of their customers? Some have tried. Society’s answer: government regulation and guidance: watch-dog agencies to ferret out cheating, advisory agencies to vet which private companies deserve government support. And what is happening right now, in 2025? The Trump administration is doing its best to do away with all those watch-dog and assistance organizations. They’re woke, or socialist, or something; what they mean is, they’re preventing the wealthy owners of organizations from making even more money, never mind the short-cuts they use to do so.

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Also this.

Washington Post, Monica Hesse, 2 May 2025: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. shows the fallacy of ‘doing your own research’, subtitled “Has he even looked into the origins of the phrase?”

Beginning in the 1990s, it was

a catchphrase mostly for the woo-woo set of America — the Elvis-is-alive crowd, the Fox Mulders, QAnon — until this week when Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said it in an interview with Dr. Phil.

The context was vaccines (it’s always vaccines with that guy), and the advice was directed to new parents. “Part of the responsibility of being a parent is to do your own research,” he responded to a woman who asked a question related to vaccine safety. “You research the baby stroller, you research the foods that they’re getting, and you need to research the medicines that they’re taking as well.”

No, I would say, no. The modern world is too complex, everywhere you turn, to “do your own research” about anything beyond situations that depend on subjective consumer choices. Which car do you like? Fine, do your “research”. How to file a lawsuit or select a treatment for your bad heart? No. Consult a specialist.

Reading on, I see the article makes virtually the same point.

It probably goes without saying, but just in case: Researching a vaccine is substantially more complicated than researching a stroller. You research strollers by typing “best strollers” into Wirecutter and buying whichever one has cupholders. You research a vaccine by getting a PhD in immunology or cellular and molecular biology, acquiring a lab in which you can conduct months or years worth of double-blind clinical trials, publishing your findings in a peer-reviewed academic journal, and then patiently navigating the government and industry regulations that are required to make sure your vaccine is safe and effective.

Unless, of course, what Kennedy meant by “do your own research” was “faff around on the internet until you find someone saying something you like,” in which case, sure. You can probably knock that out in an afternoon.

And

“Do your own research” is a way of saying that scientific theories are in the eye of the beholder. The problem is not that the phrase is lying about the truth, it’s that the phrase is implying there is no such thing as the truth. There’s only what you can find online and what I can find online, and how you can build those tidbits into a house and I can build them into a flaming port-a-potty.

Which is another emerging theme of late: conservatives and conspiracy theorists will burn out eventually by running into the reality of reality. You can’t just make things up and expect the world to respond in kind. The best you can do is hope you’ll survive inside a fantasy bubble. Religions have been doing this for thousands of years. But it’s becoming more and more difficult in the complex modern world.