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.

…

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 1^st. That world seems so far away today.

David Zaruk is the editor of Firebreak, and also writes under the pen-name The Risk Monger. David is a retired professor, environmental-health risk analyst, science communicator, promoter of evidence-based policy and philosophical theorist on activists and the media. Find David on X @Zaruk