The American issue and the politicization of public health

The synthesis of populism and anti-intellectualism has created a beast1 of political influence in the United States. In order to fully appreciate the efficacy of this doctrine, one must comprehend the startling nature of American political discourse today. The so-called “culture war”2 between right and left, conservative and liberal, Christian nationalism and secular multiculturalism, has hijacked the sphere in which policy and funding considerations are meant to address issues facing the nation. Today, it is not unusual to see widely popular bipartisan legislation killed on the house floor in service of a political agenda–a power grab at the expense of the American people. The highly polarized relationship between the country’s two relevant parties has laid the groundwork for a political conversation dominated by contentious social issues rather than real policy approaches. Allow me to call upon my reader’s own experience to illustrate this point: reader, when was the last time you heard the name of a proposed bill, let alone what it intended to address? In contrast, when was the last time you heard a member of one of the main parties violently attack the ideology of their opponents?

This current reality showcases how incredibly potent the strategy of presenting oneself as a representative of the common people’s interests whilst simultaneously railing against peer-reviewed scientific authority is. While appeals to the common man are pervasive across partisan lines, the modern Republican party – headed by the new president – has managed to combine their populist appeal with an intense campaign not only to discredit, but also to vilify empirical, non-partisan research institutes and national health organizations such as the CDC3. Notably, the president has implicitly christened himself a higher authority than qualified medical professionals, labeling his administration’s top Covid-19 advisors (Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx) as being: “two self-promoters trying to reinvent history to cover for their bad instincts and faulty recommendations,”comforting his loyal flock in assuring that they were “fortunately almost always overturned.”

The Covid-19 pandemic response serves as perhaps the most visceral demonstration of the immediate threat posed by this political doctrine. For instance, from March 1st to April 30th of 2020, the president wrote 11 tweets touting “alternative” remedies for Covid-19 prevention and treatment. Among these remedies was a chemical called hydroxychloroquine – a substance found to not effectively treat Covid-19. There was also chloroquine phosphate – an additive used to clean fish tanks – which is highly toxic if consumed in more than minimal doses. At least one man died after ingesting this chemical following Trump’s advice. Furthermore, Trump openly mocked President Joe Biden for his continued use of masking and social distancing measures – directing his scientific skepticism at a political opponent and thus beginning the association between mask mandates and political divide. In this way, President Trump united his constituency by advertising nearly baseless medical advice4 and instilling a conscious association between trusting medical authority and being like a political adversary. The President once even accused a reporter of trying to be “politically correct” by wearing a mask. Anyone familiar with the conservative discourse on left-wing political-correctness will appreciate the implications of this statement. For those unfamiliar, the President essentially implied that this mask-wearer was only adhering to medical advice so as to reinforce their position within a political camp – to “virtue-signal” their allegiance for one side of the “culture war.” The result? A nearly three times increased likelihood to die from a preventable disease in counties with more than 60 percent support of the president. 

Conceptual underpinnings:

The interplay between populism and anti-intellectualism has been studied extensively in the arena of political philosophy. Evolving out of questions raised in older works such as Machiavelli’s The Prince and Plato’s Republic, discourse on the relationship between honesty and governmental stability have pervaded the academic and practical landscape of statesmanship through the ages. Contemporary scholar Hannah Arendt investigates this debate in her essay “Truth and Politics.”. Citing Spinoza, she asks if: 

“the seventeenth century was right when it almost unanimously declared that every commonwealth was duty bound to recognize, in Spinoza’s words, ‘no higher law than the safety of [its] own realm?’”5

Of course, in this case, the realm in question does not define the wider United States but rather the contingent of elected officials, capital owners, and voters who are attracted to the modern Republican party’s vision of America. Indeed, there appears to be an increasing cognitive dissonance within the “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement. Take as an example the ideals of Christian morality touted by conservatives as central to their political project. These tenets are consistently debased by their figurehead, a man subject to countless civil and criminal investigations over his career for conduct most unbecoming of a classical conservative American. From being found civilly liable for sexual assault to hush-money payments for an extramarital encounter with an adult-film star, President Trump has repeatedly shown how incoherent his claims to be a champion of the values of his constituency are. Anti-intellectual sentiments enters the picture to protect the president in light of clear evidence. The conservative electorate has been primed by Trump’s rhetoric to preemptively discount conclusions from established authoritative sources. Allegations of a “deep-state,” a “swamp” that must be cleared, allows the president to associate trusted legal, scientific, and medical institutions with a shadow cabal of bad actors seeking to stem the rise of “the greatest movement in the history. . . [of] the United States,”6… conveniently putting into question the integrity and trustworthiness of all sources of accusations against Trump. 

The supremacy of opinion:

Arendt, for her part, identifies a salient trend in recent history whereby “unwelcome factual truths are tolerated. . . consciously or unconsciously” by being “transformed into opinions.”7 The dual strategy of populist rhetoric and anti-intellectual priming allows the MAGA movement to leverage the status of Donald Trump against the empirical findings of legal scholars and scientists. Advertisements of unproven Covid treatments turn from reckless factual inaccuracies to opinions, backed up by the fact that “many doctors think it is extremely successful.”8 In a similar vein, adjudication by American courts turn from legal fact to “a made up charge by a corrupt judge who is just doing the work of the Biden/Harris Injustice Department.”9

Spreading conspiracy and mistrust, ambitious actors in positions of power within the movement can nullify clear-cut evidence to accumulate political capital. A self-fulfilling cycle is born of this strategy, whereby every consecutive report of executive misconduct reinforces MAGA members’ view of themselves as marginalized freedom-fighters and of Trump as a persecuted beacon of truth. While the manipulation of the electorate is by no means unique to Trump or the Republican party, this aggressive campaign of academic skepticism marks a serious turn in American politics–a clear-cut demonstration of political-actors’ willingness to not only take advantage of uninformed voters, but also to actively cultivate their ignorance.10

I leave the reader with a quote from the chapter on the nature of the American executive from Project 2025, the Trump administration’s presidential transition plan – one that the president ardently denied was connected to his platform during his campaign. Vought is currently the appointed director of the Office and Management and Budget in the new Trump White House. Beyond the scope of this article, I implore the reader to explore the plan’s perspective on unitary executive theory.

“In its opening words, Article II of the U.S. Constitution makes it abundantly clear that ‘[t]he executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.’ . . . Sadly, however, a President today assumes office to find a sprawling federal bureaucracy that all too often is carrying out its own policy plans and preferences—or, worse yet, the policy plans and preferences of a radical, supposedly “woke” faction of the country. . . This challenge is created and exacerbated by factors like . . . the pervasive notion of expert “independence” that protects so-called expert authorities from scrutiny.”11


– Russ Vought, “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise”

Edited by Sofia V. Forlini

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and they do not reflect the position of the McGill Journal of Political Science or the Political Science Students’ Association.

Featured image by Tyler Merbler

  1.  As in astonishingly powerful, effective, and maleficent. ↩︎
  2.  A social struggle co-opted by actors for political gain. See this definition. ↩︎
  3.  Center for Disease Control, a federal government organization responsible for research and consultation on the health of residents in the United States. ↩︎
  4.  There was some early confusion on the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine but in tandem with calls to distrust authoritative sources on the virus, this conduct has clear motivation. Even if this drug proved effective, there is salient context in a national leader using social media to circumvent trusted medical advice. ↩︎
  5.  Hannah Arendt, “Truth and Politics,” in Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought (New York: Viking Press, 1968), 228. ↩︎
  6. President Trump: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/oct/29/donald-trump-proclaims-maga-greatest-political-mov/ ↩︎
  7.  Hannah Arendt, “Truth and Politics,” in Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought (New York: Viking Press, 1968), 236. ↩︎
  8.  President Trump: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-doubles-defense-hydroxychloroquine-treat-covid-19-efficacy/story?id=72039824& ↩︎
  9. President Trump: https://nypost.com/2025/01/04/us-news/trump-rages-at-nyc-judges-e-jean-carroll-in-truth-social-post/ ↩︎
  10. See https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/18/trump-education-policies ↩︎
  11.  Emphasis added by author ↩︎