There was a pretty good reason to be scared of nukes when these folks were children in the 50s. The world was quite a different place back then. The US was lagging behind the Soviets, militarily speaking, and Communism was much more expansionary.
Yes, but I think if you asked which country was more likely to "push the button" in the 50s-70s it would have been the US, and the extent to which the US continued invasions after the collapse of the USSR kind of vindicates that.
> The US was lagging behind the Soviets, militarily speaking
I don't think this was ever true except in the least useful measure, raw headcount of conscripts.
Just a small correction, but the anti-vax arguments are very conservative, not liberal.
They may be self described liberal, but their actions certainly aren't.
Anti-Vax people are/were seen the leftist idiots who were anti-capitalist, anti-corpo, anti-the fascist govt, who would rather have died of preventable diseases than perpetuate the medical industry and its capitalist schemes trying to keep us sick to sell drugs and also ban weed.
It's so funny to watch the political sides swap and the doublethink take all of a few days to propogate.
Since antivax is now popular on the right, it has grown into a much larger proportion of the populace. It doesn't help that they now have positions in government.
As a kid I was an anarcho-communist punk rocker but I had a friend who was a christian and his parents were scammy, MLM, right-wing conservative types(think Rush Limbaugh but loonier) who distrusted the government and lied on their taxes. It was obvious how the wings of the political spectrum almost touch at times.
Paranoia and distrust of institutions, mystical thinking, adherence to alternative truth structures.. these are apolitical just as mental illness is also apolitical.
I wish this was true. How many right wing political parties support policies that improve the natural environment? Doing that is the domain of left wing parties, but I’d love to know of any exceptions.
The US EPA was created by Richard Nixon, for example.
Hang on, are we talking about liberal or leftist now?
Because a lot of these hoax "wellness" movements are conservative. Distrusting science and things you don't understand is a conservative mindset.
Do you have examples? People like the Luddites weren't distrusting of technology, they were distrusting of the owners using it to depress wages.
In 2026 this is decidedly a more conservative stance. They installed RFK Jr., who in addition to Wakefield, is the antivax guy. MAHA specifically (can’t believe they actually stuck with that acronym) is overwhelmingly Republican dominated/supported.