By The Numbers - part the ninety seventh

As many readers will know, I've grown accustomed to some of Dr. McElhone's adages, high among them: "it is intuitively obvious to even the most casual observer." And, no, I don't attribute that to the Good Doctor. It's been around for ages; I just first heard it from him.

Which brings us to some obvious. Here is a report on MAHA and the attack on vaccination.

But a different way to think about it is this: as another attack on the country's threadbare social safety net by health libertarians whose strategy for making America healthy again appears straightforwardly to mean letting more of the country's weak and vulnerable suffer and die.

I've long since forgotten where it came from, but the gist of Trumpism is just this: cruelty is the point. And also The Rich damn sure ain't rich enough. Which bring us to the other bit of obvious

In some Southern states, such as Mississippi and Alabama, life expectancy is more than half a decade shorter than in Northeastern states, including Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York.

Look by county and the disparities are even starker, with life expectancy over a decade shorter in large swaths of Appalachia than in the upper Midwest. That's about the same as the life expectancy gap between Liechtenstein and Bangladesh.

So, the Rich plutocrats have convinced the victims of their evil that the problem is really the God hating Blue States. Stupid people just never learn. And that's also the point. Boeing has found out the hard way that assembling airplanes in North Carolina with marginally educated knuckledraggers is a lose-lose situation. And, of course, that's just the latest in a continuing saga of FUBAR, all in the name of union busting.

As has been written here a few times: who'll make the neat stuff if Trumpism drags the Blue States down to Shitholeville?