During my life, I've been involved with numerous marginalized groups opposed to something horrific being done by the establishment (including many that had nothing to do with medicine). Throughout that, I've seen those groups (many of which I deeply believed in) fragment and fracture again and again. As such, I've put a lot of thought into why this always happens and became much more selective about confronting these conflicts since it's rarely productive to engage with them.

One of the few things that still gets to me is when I see people I know are remarkably dedicated to a cause (and frequently made significant sacrifices for it) be torn apart by the people they're trying to help. This is in part because I feel its unjust, but more because I know so many instances of idealistic leaders who genuinely wanted to do the right thing, but gradually had their hearts close down (hence becoming like typical politicians) because of all of the attacks they'd received over the years. As such, while there have been a lot of people I've wanted to defend due to the vitriol they've received, the only people I've directly spoken up for were Calley Means and Robert Malone.

Note: years ago, I knew someone who worked in Libya's government for decades with Gadaffi (a highly eccentric dictator who was known for diverting Libya's oil wealth to its people and creating one of the highest standards of living in the region until NATO took him out in 2011). One of the things he shared with me was that in his younger years, Gadaffi was very idealistic and eager to do all he could for Libya, but after surviving numerous failed assassination attempts, gradually became much more bitter and closed down.

Recently, an unexpected announcement shook the MAHA community—Trump's November Surgeon General nominee Nesheiwat (who MAHA briefly protested for a few days due to her past COVID vaccine promotion and then forgot about) was replaced with Casey Means. After hearing about this, my first thought was a huge sigh of a relief which was immediately followed by "oh dear, this going this is going to stir up a lot of drama."