Diseases such as measles, rubella and polio could become endemic to the US again if vaccine rates decline, according to researchers at Stanford Medicine. Even at current immunization rates, researchers predict that measles may become endemic again — circulating in the US — within two decades. 🦠💉🇺🇸

Read Full Article

#VaccinationMatters #PublicHealth #ImmunizationAwareness #EndemicDiseases #ProtectOurChildren

A question of definitions: What is fascism?

Gonna start off by saying that this is a HOTLY contested academic subject, and that my take is in no way authoritative. It's easy to see why it's such a cause for argument too, as the "fascistic-ness" of many regimes labelled as fascist has been disputed, and while those regimes often have common qualities (emphasis on nativism, almost messianic leader worship, etc.) they've varied significantly on policy. The hard principles of ideology for fascism, I would argue, are not what's relevant to labelling a movement fascist or what defines it as such. A better endeavor then, would be to define the fascistic impulse, as I will attempt to do in the following post.

What is the fascistic impulse?

The fascistic impulse, in my mind, is when anti-intellectualism reaches its natural coupling with an emphasis on aesthetics, due to the anti-intellectual's tendency toward surface level interpretation. Fascism, as it derives from the fascistic impulse, is an ideology driven by this pairing, one in which the perception of strength, order and unity supersede any policies intended to create such. This allows for extreme variance and agility in politics, so long as the necessary signification is performed, as the fascistic anti-intellectual impulse discourages deeper investigation of substantive policy. As such, you can have both hyper-capitalist fascism as well as fascism implementing the language of the left, even to the extent of co-opting some of its policies, although rarely those that meaningfully disrupt the social order.

It's also why fascism is so naively obsessed with culture wars and loathes modern art to the extent it does. Fascism is unwilling to engage with art on a conceptual level, but needs image to maintain its legitimacy. Therefore, art that requires investigation and interpretation (i.e. conceptual art) operates in direct opposition to the fascistic impulse. It's also why I believe that many have predicted that ai art is bound to become the new aesthetic of fascism: It is art *never* created with meaning or depth by virtue of the medium and, as such, is the perfect vehicle for maintaining the fascist system.

Another thing worth mentioning is fascism's frequent conflation of Freedom and License, to use John Milton's terms. This, paired with anti-intellectualism, is one of the reasons fascism has been so effective in America in particular, in my mind. Freedom (defined here as an absence of oppression) is inherently anti-hierarchal. License (defined here as the ability to do what one pleases) only reaches new heights in hierarchy, as it grants the ability to influence not just the self, but others as well. The critical lack of distinction between these two ideas is precisely the means by which America, a country rife with anti-intellectualism, has so effectively been inundated with fascism, despite its claims to being "The Land of the Free." When one fails to investigate the substantive meaning of freedom, one almost invariably comes to misconstrue it in a way that makes far too many allowances.

None of these ideas are new, btw, I just have combined them in a framework that feels meaningful for me. If you want a really good explainer on the antagonism between modern art and fascism, for example, see this lovely video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5DqmTtCPiQ&t=2s

Let he who believes textile work is not difficult labor make his own pair of pants

Go and spread the Trump Slump, make memes and cry out loud on twitter

May his legacy be as rotten as his heart and mind