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MAHA MADNESS: BOB KENNEDY’S CRUEL NEW GOSPEL OF ‘FITNESS’  
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Thom Hartmann
September 1, 2025
Hartmann Report
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_ If we let Bob Kennedy, MAHA madness, and his billionaire patrons
redefine America as a place where only the strong survive, we will
lose not just our health but our souls. _

, Elias from Pixabay

 

Former Republican strategist and operative Rick Wilson called out
[[link removed]] Bob Kennedy as a
“heroin addict, sex addict, anti-vaccination lunatic and aspiring
architect of millions of deaths” who’s dedicated to replacing real
scientists with “radical eugenicists.”

AND WHY WOULD KENNEDY BE DOING THIS?

Dr. Demetre Daskalakis — one of the top scientists and physicians
who quit the CDC in protest over the anticipated replacement
[[link removed]] of
Dr. Susan Monarez with an anti-vax crank — was unambiguous
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“I really hear the echoes of the word, ‘superior genetics.’ He
referred to very high members of this administration and their
improving health status. And said, well, that person has superior
genetics… That is eugenics. Wake up. This is a red flag.”

AND, DASKALAKIS WASN’T CONDEMNING KENNEDY FOR SOME OBSCURE RANT OR
POLICY ABOUT CUB BEARS, SAWED-OFF WHALE HEADS, OR RESEARCH ANIMALS. HE
WAS, INSTEAD, HORRIFIED THAT THE SENIORMOST TRUMP ADMINISTRATION
HEALTH OFFICIAL IS AGAIN PARAPHRASING HITLER, THIS TIME IN THE
FŪRHER’S INSISTENCE THAT GERMANY COULD ONLY BECOME STRONG IF THE
STATE EMPLOYED EUGENICS TO PREVENT THE WEAK AND HEREDITARILY ILL FROM
REPRODUCING.

Kennedy — the guy in charge of our entire nation’s health policies
and their implementation — was, the CDC doc told MSNBC
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explicitly boosting the idea of “weaker” Americans dying so those
left will create a genetically superior America. As Dr. Daskalakis
said:

“So, fast forward to West Texas and measles, where he says, you
know, getting the infection is fine, really, because only the strong
will survive.”

AND IT WAS ALL WRAPPED IN A LEVEL OF WEIRD THAT LEFT DOCTORS AROUND
THE WORLD AGHAST. AT A MARATHON PRESS EVENT THIS WEDNESDAY IN AUSTIN,
BOB KENNEDY, STANDING BESIDE TEXAS GOVERNOR ABBOTT AS MAHA‑INSPIRED
LAWS WERE SIGNED, CLAIMED
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HE COULD DETECT SERIOUS ILLNESSES IN KIDS JUST BY GLANCING AT THEM:

“I’m looking at kids as I walk through the airports today, as I
walk down the street and I see these kids that are just overburdened
with mitochondrial challenges, with inflammation, you can tell from
their faces, from their body movements, and from their lack of social
connection, and I know that that’s not how our children are supposed
to look.”

Kennedy — an attorney with no formal medical training — is
dressing up an old poison in new clothes and calling it the MAHA
movement. It’s not about health, though, not really. It’s about
resurrecting the old, toxic doctrine of social Darwinism and giving it
a fresh coat of populist paint.

THE MESSAGE, STRIPPED DOWN, IS THE SAME ONE PLUTOCRATS HAVE ALWAYS
USED TO JUSTIFY THEIR PRIVILEGE: IF YOU’RE RICH, POWERFUL, AND
HEALTHY, IT’S BECAUSE YOU’RE “FIT.” IF YOU’RE POOR,
STRUGGLING, SICK, OR BROKEN, WELL, THAT’S JUST NATURE’S WAY OF
WEEDING OUT THE WEAK.

It’s a twenty-first century neo-eugenics scheme, a moral excuse for
selfishness, and Kennedy and Trump have found a way to wrap it in the
language of health freedom and liberty. But it’s the oldest con in
the book.

MY OLD FRIEND, THE LATE DAVID LOYE [[link removed]] (AND
HIS WIFE, RIANE EISLER [[link removed]]), SPENT DECADES
TRYING TO UNDO THIS EXACT LIE. LOYE POINTED OUT THAT DARWIN HIMSELF
NEVER REDUCED HUMAN PROGRESS TO “SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST.” THAT
PHRASE WASN’T EVEN DARWIN’S; IT WAS HERBERT SPENCER’S. DARWIN
DID PICK IT UP LATER, BUT BY THEN INDUSTRIALISTS WERE RUNNING WILD
WITH IT, TWISTING HIS SCIENCE INTO AN IDEOLOGY TO PROP UP INEQUALITY.

Darwin himself, in _The Descent of Man
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was explicit: it’s not just competition that defines humanity,
it’s compassion, cooperation, and the moral sense. He worried that
“survival of the fittest” was being misunderstood, that it would
be used to excuse cruelty. And Loye was right: Darwin would have
rejected men like Kennedy out of hand, because they’re not standing
up for science or truth but for a brutal pseudo-economic philosophy
that elevates greed above care for others.

THIS WORLDVIEW IS NOTHING MORE THAN A JUSTIFICATION FOR SCREWING THE
AVERAGE AND THE NEEDY WHILE CUTTING GOVERNMENT SPENDING SO MORBIDLY
RICH PEOPLE LIKE TRUMP AND KENNEDY CAN GET MORE TAX BREAKS. IT’S
REAGAN’S GHOST RISING AGAIN, WHISPERING AYN RAND’S CATECHISM OF
SELFISHNESS, TELLING US THAT “GREED IS GOOD” AND COMPASSION IS
WEAKNESS.

And just like Reagan, Kennedy is trying to pass this off as the
“American way.” But it’s not.

THE REAL “AMERICAN WAY” HAS ALWAYS BEEN ROOTED IN LOOKING OUT FOR
ONE ANOTHER. EVEN THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF OUR REPUBLIC, GEORGE
WASHINGTON, WAS PERSONALLY INVOLVED IN CARING FOR THE POOR: HE GAVE
FUNDS 
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THE ALEXANDRIA POOR RELIEF COMMITTEE. THAT SENSE OF _NOBLESSE
OBLIGE_, THAT DUTY TO HELP THOSE IN NEED, WAS FUNDAMENTAL TO THE
AMERICAN EXPERIMENT FROM THE START.

That’s not socialism; it’s basic decency. It’s also
Christianity. The Sermon on the Mount doesn’t say “blessed are the
billionaires.” Jesus didn’t say, “render unto those with the
best lawyers.” He didn’t say, “let the strong crush the weak.”
He said, “whatever you did for the least of these brothers and
sisters of mine, you did for me.” The gospel couldn’t be clearer:
our moral worth is measured not by how much we hoard for ourselves,
but by how we treat the poor, the sick, and the stranger.

Kennedy’s MAHA movement and the post-Reagan Revolution GOP spit in
the face of that teaching. As John Kenneth Galbraith once put it:

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest
exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior
moral justification for selfishness.”

THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT’S HAPPENING HERE. RFK JR. AND HIS BILLIONAIRE
ALLIES ARE RECYCLING THE SAME FRAUDULENT MORALITY USED BY THE ROBBER
BARONS OF THE GILDED AGE, THE SAME POISONOUS REASONING THAT TOLD
FACTORY OWNERS IT WAS FINE TO WORK MEN AND WOMEN TO DEATH BECAUSE IF
THEY COULDN’T HACK IT, THEY WEREN’T “FIT.” THE SAME WARPED
LOGIC THAT DEFENDED CHILD LABOR, STARVATION WAGES, AND OPPOSITION TO
SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE.

And it’s been accelerating since the Reagan Revolution. Reagan
idolized Ayn Rand’s brand of ruthless individualism, elevating
selfishness as a civic virtue. He gutted government programs for
working people while slashing taxes for the rich, and in the process
rewrote the American social contract.

Ever since, Republicans and their wealthy patrons have been trying to
drag us back into a society where only the wealthy thrive while the
rest are left to rot. Reagan sneered at government itself, calling it
the problem. But what he really meant was that government that works
for the people is a problem for the morbidly rich who don’t want to
pay for it.

KENNEDY AND THE PEOPLE HE’S INSTALLING AT THE CDC AND THROUGHOUT OUR
PUBLIC HEALTH SYSTEM ARE NOW RUNNING THE SAME SCAM, DRAPING THEIR
PROJECT IN THE RHETORIC OF “HEALTH” WHILE SELLING THE SAME
POISONOUS BREW OF DEREGULATION, DISINVESTMENT, “INDIVIDUAL
RESPONSIBILITY,” AND CRUELTY.

Just look at the results. The United States today has the worst life
expectancy
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the developed world. Our people die younger, sicker, and with more
preventable disease than citizens of countries that see healthcare as
a right rather than a privilege. In Japan, in Canada, in most of
Europe, people live longer and healthier lives because their
governments take seriously the responsibility to ensure access to
healthcare, clean food, and safe living conditions.

Here in the U.S., the rich buy themselves concierge doctors and
organic diets while millions of working families can’t even afford
insulin. That’s not “fitness.” That’s systemic cruelty.

DARWIN UNDERSTOOD THAT OUR SPECIES DIDN’T SURVIVE AND FLOURISH
BECAUSE THE STRONG CRUSHED THE WEAK, BUT BECAUSE WE CARED FOR EACH
OTHER, BECAUSE WE DEVELOPED THE INSTINCTS OF SYMPATHY AND COOPERATION.
DAVID LOYE CALLED IT “DARWIN’S THEORY OF LOVE,” AND RIANNE
EISLER DOCUMENTED ACROSS HER MANY BOOKS HOW SOCIETIES ACROSS HISTORY
EMBRACED EGALITARIAN PRINCIPLES AND SO OFTEN REJECTED THE KIND OF
BRUTAL PATRIARCHY THAT TRUMP AND HIS FOLLOWERS CELEBRATE.

Anthropologists tell us that when early humans tended to the sick,
shared food with the injured, and supported the elderly, that was when
civilization began to take root. Dr. Margaret Mead told us she saw the
beginning of civilization in a healed human femur from hundreds of
thousands of years ago, something that only could have happened if the
entire tribe had cared for its wounded member.

THAT’S THE EVOLUTIONARY ADVANTAGE THAT MADE US WHO WE ARE. STRIP
THAT AWAY, AND YOU DON’T HAVE A HEALTHY SOCIETY: YOU HAVE A JUNGLE
RULED BY PREDATORS.

And that’s what Kennedy and his MAHA movement — and the entire GOP
for the past 44 years — appear to want: a jungle where the predators
can get tax cuts while the rest of us lose healthcare, pensions, clean
air, and safe food. They want to call it “natural” when kids get
asthma from polluted air or cancer from toxic pesticides. They want to
say it’s “survival of the fittest” when working people die ten
years earlier than their wealthy peers because they spent their lives
exposed to poisons in the workplace or because they couldn’t afford
a doctor’s visit.

THAT’S NOT NATURAL LAW. THAT’S MAN-MADE CRUELTY FUNDED BY THE
MORBIDLY RICH AND JUSTIFIED BY PSEUDOSCIENCE.

We can’t let them get away with it. We can’t let this neo-eugenics
movement masquerade as patriotism or health reform. America was built
on the promise that “We, the People” look out for each other, that
we form a government to promote what the Constitution calls
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general Welfare,” not to serve as a handmaiden for the rich.

WASHINGTON KNEW IT. LINCOLN KNEW IT. FDR KNEW IT. EVERY GENERATION
THAT HAS BENT THE ARC OF HISTORY TOWARD JUSTICE HAS KNOWN IT. THE
QUESTION TODAY IS WHETHER WE’LL REMEMBER IT IN TIME.

Because this is not just about RFK Jr., or Trump, or Reagan’s long
shadow. It’s about what kind of country we want to be. Do we want to
embrace the morality of Jesus, of Washington, of Lincoln, of Roosevelt
and LBJ, who all understood that caring for the vulnerable is the
essence of civilization? Or do we want to embrace the morality of the
jungle, where selfishness is recast as virtue and cruelty is excused
as “fitness”?

SHOULD AMERICA CONTINUE TO BE THE ONLY DEVELOPED COUNTRY IN THE WORLD
WHERE HEALTHCARE IS A PRIVILEGE INSTEAD OF A RIGHT? OR ARE WE TRULY
CALLED — BOTH BY OUR FOUNDERS AND OUR RELIGIOUS LEADERS — TO BE
OUR BROTHERS’ AND SISTERS’ KEEPERS?

David Loye dedicated his life to rescuing Darwin from the distortions
of men like Kennedy, and to reminding us that our evolutionary destiny
is not competition to the death but moral progress. We ignore his
warning at our peril. If we let Bob Kennedy, MAHA madness, and his
billionaire patrons redefine America as a place where only the strong
survive, we will lose not just our health but our souls.

_Thom Hartmann is a NY Times bestselling author of 34 books in 17
languages & nation's #1 progressive radio host. Psychotherapist,
international relief worker. Politics, history, spirituality,
psychology, science, anthropology, pre-history, culture, and the
natural world._

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* eugenics
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