Agreeing to a debate on this topic is like agreeing to a debate about whether the Earth is flat. Even if there is no scientific evidence to support such an outdated worldview, the idea that a debate should be had can be enough to sow doubts about the current consensus. The entire upside to the debate strategy rests with the conspiracy theorists.
The second problem with agreeing to a debate is that it is not cost-free. Energy and time spent on defending concepts like, “vaccines are good” cannot be devoted to other questions of public policy. Instead, advocates pushing crackpot ideas get to extend the Overton Window. Even if, for example, the debate about the polio vaccine goes nowhere, it becomes more politically acceptable to say, “sure, some vaccines are important, but surely reasonable people can agree that we should continue to ask questions about health risks to our children from so many vaccines.”
It’s bad enough that we have to contemplate the whole hard-won world of medicine coming undone, especially at the hands of a president who managed to evade public opprobrium for badly mismanaging a once-in-a-century pandemic. But the federal government’s role in protecting us from financial predators is likely to take a huge hit in the coming administration as well. Beyond the typical Republican obsession for letting plutocratic tax cheats get away with murder, the incoming Trump administration is fairly well bought by the scammy cryptocurrency industry, whose cash investment in our recent election cycle should have earned more concern from the political press.
As The New Republic’s Matt Ford noted, the crypto oligarchs have some pretty specific demands:
What do they expect to get in return for these campaign donations? A more favorable regulatory and law enforcement environment, for one thing. Leading crypto figures know that all those pesky regulators and investigators in Washington—the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, the Justice Department, and so on—could bring their party to an end. Trump has even pledged to make the U.S. a “Bitcoin superpower,” whatever that means. For now, it means installing pro-crypto figures atop the SEC and other key agencies.
The unholy grail for the crypto industry may be to get their casino more deeply entangled with the real economy and, as Ford writes, “to get the federal government—and, by extension, all Americans—to be the ultimate bag-holder by directly buying cryptocurrencies with taxpayer dollars.” We’re probably now at the threshold of the first big crash of the cryptogrift industry and the first big government bailout of these crooks. If you remember how well the last round of government bailouts helped restore everyone’s faith in the system, well, hold on to your butts.
