The horseshoe theory of politics posits that the political spectrum isn’t a left-right continuum but is instead shaped like a horseshoe, with the extreme right and left coming together at the end.
The rise of QAnon has proved, definitely, that this isn't a theory but a fact.
This screenshot below is a typical Q-facing account. It was run as an Instagram story by a lovely woo-woo person I am acquainted with who makes a living, partly, by holding “sound bath” events.
Where to even begin? Is anyone out there claiming “lab meat is good?” It doesn’t even exist in any economically viable way! And if you’re going to eat meat, grass-fed is the best option. That’s not particularly controversial. But really, cattle are an undisputed cause of global climate change, so yes, cow farts are bad (though cow belches are worse), but what does that have to do with pesticides?
In fact, no one claims pesticides are good, hence the rise of organic agriculture. They are a necessary evil at best.
What’s wrong with oat milk? As for raw milk, knock yourself out if you have access to the fresh stuff, even if salmonella is a risk. I don’t see anyone giving much of a shit if people want to drink it.
And then there’s the hate for sunscreen, which is a new one for me … and I thought I was up to date on all their crazy. Luckily, Rolling Stone posted a good story on that crowd a week ago.
“Think about it for a minute,” [one “wellness” influencer with over a quarter million followers on Instagram] wrote. “They [pharmaceutical and health care companies] need you to believe that the sun is bad.” He included a pair of images from a TikTok video that made a similar point, suggesting that corporate interests have invented the myth of “dangerous” ultraviolet radiation from the sun in order to sell you a product — in this case, topical creams and sprays that prevent sunburn and skin cancer — that you don’t really need. It’s all a scam! Go forth and sizzle to a crisp!
Big pharma makes plenty of cancer treatments from people who don’t protect their skin from the sun, while the aesthetic effects of sun damage on skin are quite real (if anyone cares about premature aging).
Thing is, this woo sound bath practitioner is a lovely person who would likely be happy to hang a “hate has no home here” sign on her lawn while unironically buying into antisemitic Rothschild conspiracy theories. She plies her trade on a beach she clearly loves, one that will cease to exist in a few decades if she continues embracing pro-climate change ideology. Her “spiritual wellness” is now predicated on buying into every anti-pharma, anti-environmentalism, and anti-common sense conspiracy.
I haven’t seen it, but I’d bet my first-born child that she has either embraced Robert Kennedy Jr., or will do so as soon as she learns about him. He might be the ultimate horseshoer, running as a Democrat while last seen embracing a podcaster who claims that “Hitler was a Rothschild,” and “Hitler and the Nazis were 100% completely and utterly set up.” And that’s just a routine day for that a–hole. There’s a reason conservatives love him, and it’s not because he’s trying to ratf— the Democratic primary. (He’s getting nowhere.) It’s because they agree with his dangerous conspiracy theories, and plenty of left-wing liberals now do so as well.