New book by Mark Meadows states that Trump ordered McDonald's during his hospitalization for COVID dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1… 1/x
The Daily Mail reproduces this graphic of a "typical" Trump McDonalds order 2/x 
Anti-vaxxers often jeer that only the morbidly obese need fear COVID. What they overlook is ... 3/x
... that Trump country has not only made anti-vaccination a cultural signifier - it's done the same with morbid obesity as well. Remember Sarah Palin's mockery of Michelle Obama "Let's Move" campaign? 4/x
In 2007, I published a book outlining a possible future for a more pragmatic conservatism. It urged policies vs obesity as a way to control health care costs. That idea was singled out for special derision as improper and un-conservative 5/x penguinrandomhouse.com/books/56811/co…
What I bumped into then - and what Trump profited from in 2016 - was the way conservatism had evolved from the championing of "ideas" to a defense of "folkways" - including guns under the Christmas tree and fried food on the table. 6/x
I joked about this later in another book, a novel this time. One character explains to another: "The voters will forgive a rich man anything. Unless he collects modern art. Then they think he's making fun of them." 7/x
I'm not the first to make the point that one of Trump's secret political weapons was his garish bad taste, his enthusiasm for the Saddam Hussein school of art and design. 8/x
But we've arrived now at a strange paradox where the conservative argument against vaccination (COVID is only a threat to the fat!) bumps into a conservative folkway (get fat to own the libs!) politico.com/story/2010/11/…
How does that paradox get resolved? Maybe it does not need to be resolved. A politics of impulses and aversions does not need to worry about formalities like consistency and coherence. 10/x
Maybe that explains why so many of the people who gained their first reputations as "anti-woke" have mutated into "anti-vax." 11/x
Define yourself by what you oppose, and you have forsworn your power to think for yourself. If your opponents get something right, then you must get it wrong, always in order to keep your mug brimful of liberal tears. END
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