The most important aspect of the MAGA agenda is MAHA - Make America Healthy Again. As I wrote - here it comes, folks; first of the week - a mere decade-and-a-half ago:
What's worse than debauching your finances? Debauching your human capital.
No one who walks down a typical American Main Street would bet the future on the USA. Don't take it from me: stick your late grandfather in an HG Wells time-machine and fly him from 1950 to now. He would be horrified; the single most salient fact about the United States is staring you in the face. Granted, in the big crime-ridden cities, the picture is obscured somewhat by the fact that everyone under fifty seems to come from somewhere else, so among the sickly natives are legions of trim Pushtun "translators" from the outskirts of Jalalabad and svelte CCP bagmen with supersized attaché cases en route to Hunter Biden's art dealer. But in the unknown, unfashionable rural towns the truth is harder to avoid: this is a profoundly unhealthy society.
Which is odd. Because Americans are the most thoroughly medicated people on the planet, and pay more for the privilege than anybody else. Despite that, on every metric - from life expectancy to childhood obesity to psycho-trannies on the rampage - the results are a disaster.
And yet your elected representatives are in no doubt what the real problem is:
That's the senior Senate Democrat. In case you're wondering how the ol' two-party system is tootling along in this brief interlude between elections, here's the second-most senior Republican:
So how about going for a soi-disant "independent"?
Bernie Sanders: Everybody in This Room Took Big Pharma Money, 'Are They All Corrupt?'
Do you really want an answer to that, Your Serene Senatorial Highness?
Ah, but surely if Big Pharma had corrupted one hundred senators and thousands of doctors and county hospitals, there'd be something on the news about it? Well, as RFK Jr and I discussed on The Mark Steyn Show four sodding years ago, Kennedy was told by the late Roger Ailes that, in non-election years, three-quarters of Fox News income comes from Big Pharma - for all those "Warning: Side effects may include chronic flatulence and homicidal ideation" products that are conspicuous by their absence from media in, say, France or Albania. Both of which, per the most recent stats, have higher life expectancy than the US. Albania only just, but not unimpressive considering that everybody chain-smokes untipped Turkish cigarettes and accessing the health system requires swimming to Italy. The US has the highest annual medical costs in the world: twelve-and-a-half grand per capita. Albanians live longer - for just four hundred bucks per capita.
I first spoke about this - here we go again! - thirty sod-bollocking years ago on a panel moderated by Mrs Thatcher. After my speech, she remarked drily, "I'm glad I didn't have dessert last night." It's not quite that easy, but it is the most obvious fact in society: look at the kids at your county fair. That's a mass tragedy: if you suffer from chronic disease as a child, good luck having a healthy adulthood. It ought also to be a national scandal, but, however you vote, Schumer, Barrasso and the ersatz-independent but really same-old-same-old Sanders are committed to keeping Americans heading deeper and deeper down the death-spiral.
Good luck, RFK.
~We had a busy weekend at SteynOnline, starting with Mark's column on what they think of you. On Saturday there was the latest edition of Steyn's weekend music show, while Rick McGinnis's movie date was Claudette Colbert in Since You Went Away. Our marquee presentation was the launch of Mark's special twentieth audio serialisation of his highly prescient demographic bestseller, America Alone - along with a bonus pop-culture footnote.
If you were too busy this weekend standing in line for your thirty-seventh booster shot, we hope you'll want to check out one or three of the foregoing as a new week begins.