Trumpists Break the Left’s Monopoly on Healthy Living

As it has in the past, the New York Times published a recent article that attempts to drive a wedge between the factions of the wide tent movement formed by the alliance between Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

The health-conscious crusade has gained g-force momentum under RFK Jr.’s MAHA banner, uniting concerns about everything from pesticides and soil health to vaccine schedules and the three letter agencies’ conflicts of interest. But the Times can’t help attempting to sow division where there really is none.

The piece by Lisa Miller, titled “How the Right Claimed Crunchy,.” insists that what used to be considered a “lefty worldview” — eating whole foods and avoiding toxins — has been transformed into a faction of mothers who are more selfishly concerned about “health freedom.” Those are the Times’ quotes, not mine. As if “health freedom” is not a real concept.

This is how the liberal media rolls. When faced with a development that counters their well-worn narrative, rather than try to understand, they shame or mock. They use derogatory names like “anti-vax” or “conspiracy theorist.” They put things in quotes insinuating they are not valid concerns.

Miller claims in her bio that she “values truth-telling above all.” If that were the case, she wouldn’t be trying to pit those of us who care deeply about the state of our nation’s health, or lack thereof, against each other. She would see chronic disease as the mortal threat to our freedom and self-governance that it is and support every effort to get to the bottom of it.

Besides, conservatives have not laid claim to anything. We’ve simply insisted on uncovering the truth of what’s in our food. We want to know what’s in the vaccine and if the proper clinical trials have been run. We require transparency when it comes to the revolving door of high paying executive jobs and top-level positions at the NIH or CDC or FDA. Many of us are still concerned about the environment and soil health. We just don’t think the current carbon neutral ESG model properly addresses it, because as any good farmer will tell you, carbon is absolutely necessary for healthy soil, and thus, nourishing our food.

The concerns about health run the gamut and cross the political divide.

As I’ve mentioned before, those who express such apprehensions could care less about being labeled “left” or “right.” We’re too focused on doing what’s right for our bodies and our families, and most importantly, our children.

The Times article paints patriotic Americans — read anyone right of the far left — as selfishly individualistic and contrasts them to the more communal preferences of the left leaning crunchies of old. “There is an individualism at the heart of the crunchy realm,” Lindsey Smith Taillie, associate professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina, says.

I agree with Professor Taillie. But that individualism is one that seeks freedom from the overbearing nanny state, not from each other. We want to be more engaged with the private realm, including our families and our communities, than with our politicians.

I’ve walked both sides of the political aisle. I’ve lived as a lefty and a righty, so to speak. I still have what some might consider far left friends and we have similar ideas around health and nutrition. I’ve been around people who enthusiastically voted for Trump and others who did so with reluctance and only because “Bobby,” as many of his acolytes like to call him, was almost certain to have a top spot in the health bureaucracy.

The far-left can’t grasp that the right has welcomed with open arms the healthy living that the left once monopolized. Conservatives were always supposed to be the evil corporatists in smoke filled rooms, plotting over how to take advantage of innocent, unwitting consumers aided and abetted by corrupt fat politicians.

The new era of conservatives is far less elitist, and far more inclusive. The Trump victory and his subsequent cabinet picks reflect that. There is a new energy afoot in the more populist conservative movement, one that feels more like home for someone such as me who still has a lot of crunchy in my conservative. As usual, the New York Times completely misses the mark and will likely continue to do so, until they can put aside their partisan invective.

READ MORE from Jennifer Galardi:

Good Health Depends on Us, Not the Government

The Mainstream Media Ignores You

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