What is wrong with these idiots?

I promised myself I’d stop asking that question about midway through the dreary 2016 presidential campaign because there is no real answer to it beyond “everything,” which is both general and inadequate. However, sometimes, the casual cruelty and reflexive stupidity of our current government is such that it is the only question worth asking.

From The New York Times:

Based on decades of research, the resolution says that mother’s milk is healthiest for children and countries should strive to limit the inaccurate or misleading marketing of breast milk substitutes.



Then the United States delegation, embracing the interests of infant formula manufacturers, upended the deliberations.



American officials sought to water down the resolution by removing language that called on governments to “protect, promote and support breast-feeding” and another passage that called on policymakers to restrict the promotion of food products that many experts say can have deleterious effects on young children.



When that failed, they turned to threats, according to diplomats and government officials who took part in the discussions. Ecuador, which had planned to introduce the measure, was the first to find itself in the cross hairs.

Bullying a tiny country over the issue of breast-feeding. So much damned winning!

Health advocates scrambled to find another sponsor for the resolution, but at least a dozen countries, most of them poor nations in Africa and Latin America, backed off, citing fears of retaliation, according to officials from Uruguay, Mexico and the United States.



“We were astonished, appalled and also saddened,” said Patti Rundall, the policy director of the British advocacy group Baby Milk Action, who has attended meetings of the assembly, the decision-making body of the World Health Organization, since the late 1980s.



“What happened was tantamount to blackmail, with the U.S. holding the world hostage and trying to overturn nearly 40 years of consensus on the best way to protect infant and young child health,” she said.

Of course, it’s simply another giveaway by this administration*, and by the political party it represents, to the corporate powers from which they subcontract the job of running the government.

Getty Images

And, as in all things, we must assume that the president* knows nothing about the stakes here, because he knows nothing about anything.

During the deliberations, some American delegates even suggested the United States might cut its contribution to the W.H.O., several negotiators said. Washington is the single largest contributor to the health organization, providing $845 million, or roughly 15 percent of its budget, last year.



The confrontation was the latest example of the Trump administration siding with corporate interests on numerous public health and environmental issues.



In talks to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Americans have been pushing for language that would limit the ability of Canada, Mexico and the United States to put warning labels on junk food and sugary beverages, according to a draft of the proposal reviewed by The New York Times.



During the same Geneva meeting where the breast-feeding resolution was debated, the United States succeeded in removing statements supporting soda taxes from a document that advises countries grappling with soaring rates of obesity.

At least they're consistent.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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