Mrs. Honeycutt Goes to Washington
When all health experts are fired, the zealots and gurus can roam freely
In an NPR article on Moms Across America’s Zen Honeycutt, covered in The Firebreak, the anti-vax activist stated she had given her co-conspirator, Robert F Kennedy Jr, her CV and was ready to go to Washington to serve as a loyal liege to the grand puppet-master of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Zen has built up an interesting fringe army of radical moms, anti-vaxxers and organic food industry interest groups, showing up in militant cells outside of companies and courthouses armed with hand-written protest signs. Her organization, Moms Across America, funds its campaigns and staff by selling a wide range of wildly overpriced naturopath products, from vaccine detox snake-oil, magic potions that claim to remove glyphosate from the body, a whole line of electro-magnetic field protection gadgets, and a collection of supplements that have no active ingredients but promise to deliver perfect health. It is an age-old huckster trick: First you create a fear and then sell them a solution. Facts or reality don’t come into the equation.
A decade of relentless assault on science and technology, endless campaigns against glyphosate, GMOs, vaccines, medicines and processed foods have demonized experts, scientists and industry. There is a rising culture of contempt against anyone with a post-graduate degree in any of the sciences. Expertise, rather, is to be found more in shared community experiences and an intuitive, clannish common sense (however loosely defined). The meteoric rise of the MAHA cult movement is a direct result of the insatiable activist pounding against industry, scientific research, expertise and innovative technologies.
Zen Honeycutt has been the perfect brand ambassador of this de-intellectualization of America.
Zealot Imposter Syndrome
Environmental-health zealots (the cult leaders who themselves drink the Kool-Aid) are used to yelling from the roadside, chasing the regulatory hubcaps and being ridiculed by the establishment. But like the domesticated dog that suddenly actually captures the worn-out rabbit, real power was not something any of them had ever dreamt of. The blank look of disbelief in these charlatan’s eyes as they have been left in control of the country’s entire health system is terrifying.
One of the reasons they are frantically destroying the health structures and introducing their agenda as fast as possible is that, like anyone suffering from imposter syndrome, zealots like RFK Jr still cannot believe anyone would ever give such an unqualified band of activists any real power. They have to do as much as they can, as fast as they can, since it is only a matter of time before they are found out and their game is up.
These activists have made a career of turning campaign failure into opportunity for further outrage. RFK Jr is preparing to set the HHS on fire, leaving in a blaze of glory while complaining that the establishment had obstructed him at every move. He has been so absorbed with being the outsider, the scrapper with no actual responsibility, that he has not realized how he is now the establishment.
Zealots are also very sure of themselves and have no interest in listening to people who may challenge their views. People like Peter Marks, who had led the FDA’s vaccine strategy during the COVID-19 crisis, had to be removed as soon as possible. Junior could not afford to have an actual scientist in the room who would use complicated evidence to counter the agenda his naturopath activists had fed him.
The Zen Way to Civil Service
A government department that shuns expertise and qualifications is the perfect environment for a true believer like Zen Honeycutt to come in and set up office. She has no expertise (check), no scientific degree (check) and a limited risk of her challenging the puppet-master (check). But what HHS post would Zen like to busy herself with (before she decides to use this as a springboard to run for a Senate seat)?
It is not a problem that Zen, who took five years to earn her BA in fashion design, would never be qualified for any existing HHS post. That HHS expertise boat had sailed months ago. RFK Jr will just make up a post for her, to reward her loyalty and to engage her small band of constituents. There is no issue of the impact of external criticism of RFK Jr’s decision to give Zen a director’s post; he has never bothered to listen to any critics in the past.
Perhaps Honeycutt can head the Mom’s Collective Action Unit. She could be the Chief Intuition Officer. Her experience, as a mom, to just know when something is not right, would certainly merit a six-figure salary.
Another option is to put Zen in charge of food additives. All she would have to do is say to companies that they would need to prove that their substances are 100% safe. Each time the regulatory scientists submit a report, she would just have her office conclude that there is still some uncertainty and tell them to go back for more studies. She could play this game for at least a decade.
Or RFK Jr could use Honeycutt’s campaign skills to be in charge of primary school lunches (a post he just picked up from the now nearly defunct Department of Education … you really can’t make this up). That would be easy for Zen. If the food is organic, it’s on the menu. If it is processed or has non-natural ingredients, it’s banned. Of course US school washroom facilities will need some investment until the kids’ digestive systems can adapt to all of that raw milk, lack of preservatives and E. coli laden food.
Zen’s anti-vaxxer mantra: “What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger!” is the ideal qualification to make her a director in RFK Jr’s Department of Health and Human Services.
A year ago, I would have published this on April 1st. That world seems so far away today.