Americans, if you're devastated by the news that RFK has been confirmed as health secretary, if you're afraid that this will result in the death of millions of people, then I have bad news and good news for you from history:
🧵
The bad news is, yes, it is likely that millions will die.
But you can also save millions by learning from the past and being inspired by it.
See, we went through this in South Africa with AIDS-denialist as Minister of Health from 1999 to 2008.
Dear 🇿🇦 South Africans dreaming of a better life in the 🇺🇸 US
I want to share something with you that appeared on my Facebook timeline today.
It was written by a happily married American mother whom I have known online for years via autistic self-advocacy networks.
🧵
Wendy shared it publicly, so I am going to post it verbatim and link to her original post at the end of the thread.
For now, I'm posting it as-is without comment; perhaps I'll add something later.
🧵
“To my non American Friends,
It may be nearly time to have a difficult conversation. I hate to be a burden, which makes this harder, but soon, no really telling how soon, we may need your help.”
“We left the meeting very disappointed because Netanyahu talked about dismantling Hamas as the goal of the war.”
🧵
“We later found out that Hamas had offered on October 9 or 10 to release all the civilian hostages in exchange for the IDF not entering the Strip, but the government rejected the offer.”
🧵
“There is no doubt that Netanyahu is preventing a deal. Netanyahu knows that if he goes to elections at this time he won’t be able to form a new government, and he is motivated by cold political considerations.”
To all these UK people who are puzzled about why there's sooo much pneumonia going around in your country, lemme tell you a short story about TB (tuberculosis) in South Africa to help you understand what's going on.
🧵
Tuberculosis and other infectious diseases were a problem we needed to prevent anyway.
But then came a new illness. The new illness had an acute infection stage, after which a person would feel better—kind of like flu.
Man, this is an interesting exchange. Many people are disadvantaged in this kind of situation: most of us don't have the full set of weapons and skills—body language, posture, tone, eye contact, reading the other guy's responses, quick thinking. This guy has… a lot.
The argument wasn't won entirely on logic and words. The squeaky guy was discombobulated and allowed himself to be overpowered. The use of the chair was masterful. This whole scene could be analysed by students in a drama class.
Squeaky was like, “OK, I am not getting a chance to come in with a considered response, so let me just allow this person to go off on a tirade and end up looking stupid”—except his tactic backfired, as the big guy ended up spouting a whole lot of good points—