Steve Benen & associates continue to puzzle over the behavior of far-right conservatives when it comes to medicines:
But in the same segment, Rachel also answered the next question: why in the world would anyone [horse dewormer ivermectin as a cure for Covid]? Because some conservative media outlets — including each of Fox News’ primetime hosts — have told the public that ivermectin works in response to COVID-19.
As Rachel explained on the show, however, there’s been one significant study touting ivermectin as a coronavirus treatment, but it was ultimately withdrawn because its data had been manipulated. In the meantime, the FDA, NIH, World Health Organization, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and even the company that makes ivermectin have all warned people not to take ivermectin for COVID.
The misguided chatter about hydroxychloroquine was problematic enough. This really isn’t helping.
But it’s not the fact that Fox News hosts are recommending ivermectin that brings it plausibility; they are not that powerful on their own.
But, as it comes from these hosts, they act as authentication that ivermectin is the approved medicine for the far-right conservative in good standing.
The far-right doesn’t want to be part of the mainstream; they have their own philosophy, their own theology, and because philosophy, theology, and medicine are an interconnected tangle – at least for them – they believe that when the movement has decided which medicine is good for them, based on their own version of medicine, they’ll take it. They want to believe that their philosophy of life, their way of getting things done, is just as good as the mainstrea’s.
From my perch, though, the right has a problem. Science, or better stated The study of reality, has proven difficult to manipulate for far-right conservatives. They’ve railed against evolution (a couple of years ago my oldest friend put on his MAGA cap and confidently proclaimed evolution violated the Second Law of Thermodynamics), they’ve protested that Covid-19 was just the flu with a new name, and these have all been in vain as they’ve continually been proven wrong, much like the Flat-Earthers.
And, for our purposes, illness is an attribute of reality, indifferent to clashes of human philosophy or theology. Because far-right conservatives want to prove, in competition with the mainstream, that their philosophy, their description of reality, is as good or better, ivermectin and other hoax cures will continue to flourish.
And this will cost the right more lives, more illness – and perhaps a few adherents will stop adhering and drift away.
