Remember the Obvious.

Diet culture regularly leads people to ignore the obvious and choose to chase fashion. I have read we’re in the middle of a protein craze. People want more protein, shove it in anything. Protein water, protein beer, protein toothpaste.

Diet is no big mystery. As long as you aren’t trying to formulate a meal plan so you hit exactly 100% of your RDAs or something crazy like that, eat moderately, eat diversely, fruits and vegetables, some carbohydrates, some protein, some fat, some cholesterol, drink water.

But people want to eat lots of fat, lots of sugar, overdo it. So they need a diet. Salad doesn’t cut it. The diet industry shoves them from fad to fad. Eat lots of grapefruit. Eat more probiotics. Eat these berries they are superfoods. Eat protein.

But this post isn’t about diet. It’s about the things that are obvious and yet keep getting ignored because of a broken media system that craves novelty, noise, a crowd. Craves putting people on their ass so that it can help them up and then sell them whatever the advertiser-du-jour wants to sell them.

Most Americans could look at any political issue (if presented actual data by a neutral party) and make a reasonable policy recommendation. If it’s taxes and spending? They would look at see we need both restraint in spending and taxes, and strike a balance.

If they look at healthcare, they would copy from other wealthy nations and recommend nationally negotiated drug prices, lower administrative costs, more pay for nurses, replacing fee-for-service billing with headcounts-and-outcomes payments to providers, and generally moving to a universal single-payer system that isn’t reliant on employer-provided health insurance coverage.

And on diet, they would know they need a mix of foods, fewer calories with more nutrients. Some protein. Some salt. Some fat. Some fiber. Not too much of anything.

So some of the ignorance of the obvious is mere ignorance. They haven’t looked or don’t know where to look. But a lot of it is that they’ve been given a runaround long enough they forget there are obvious truths they could look to. Their media environment lies to them.

It doesn’t help when we’ve got known quacks in positions of power. People who deny the obvious. Like the secretary of Health and Human Services (Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.), who denies the obvious benefits of things like vaccination and water fluoridation. People who deny the obvious humanity of immigrants, like the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (Kristi Noem). People who deny the poor and sick vital aid, like the Secretary of State (Marco Rubio). People who deny the obvious necessity of due process, like the Attorney General (Pam Bondi). People who deny the obvious need to reduce carbon pollution, like the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (Lee Zeldin).

It doesn’t help when the president does nothing but spew and sell slop. On tariffs, for example: “Trump’s tariffs may mean Walmart shoppers pay more, his treasury chief acknowledges:” “Yet Walmart does not appear prepared to ‘eat the tariffs’ in full, as [Donald John] Trump has insisted the company and China would do.”

It feels like the media that has eyes to see should spend more time pointing at the obvious. It’s hard to do, because it seems so self-evident, but the United States of America started by declaring the obvious: all men are created equal, endowed by their creator by certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And even before that Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense, in which he sough to outline some obvious facts to shape the thinking of his fellow man where perhaps they had failed to note them.

I hope soon the obvious will come back in style. We have a great opportunity in welcoming immigrants orderly, in helping other nations to develop, in turning to a better healthcare model, in eating reasonable diets, in respecting rights, in avoiding quackery. And we still have the choice to deal with climate change and keep it from being more of a nightmare than it will be if we continue to drag our feet. It may take time, it may be difficult, but it beats vibe-governing, it beats the slop of ChatGOP, ChatFOXNews, and the other medicine shows. That much is obvious.