RFK, Jr. and Stanley Kubrick appear to share a concern with fluoride. But only one was likely joking. Photo by Canva/Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images/Archive Photos/Getty Images

By PJ Grisar November 4, 2024

It should come as little surprise that vaccine skeptic, carrion collector and Donald Trump’s promised health minister RFK Jr. has announced plans to remove fluoride from America’s drinking water. But maybe not for the reasons you may think. It could stem from a factor far more essential.

Kennedy’s stated rationale, conveyed on X (formerly Twitter) Saturday is that fluoride “is an industrial waste associated with arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease.” (Most of these claims, at the levels approved for American taps, don’t carry water; there is evidence that suggests a link between IQ drop in children and the mineral at higher quantities, though experts say more research is needed.)

While Kennedy’s proclivity for junk science is, along with his penchant for carpooling with roadkill in various states of decay, a defining feature, there is another thing we must consider.

Kennedy is a Kennedy, born at the height of the Cold War to a father who early in his career worked personally with Joseph McCarthy. And, when the younger Kennedy was around 10, he may have seen a film that warned of the dangers of fluoride, and its potential ties to Communism.

You’ll recall that in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 satire Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, the character of Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper (played by Sterling Hayden) has a lengthy diatribe about the risks of fluoridation.

“Have you ever seen a Commie drink a glass of water?” Ripper asks diffident RAF officer Lionel Mandrake, one of a madcap trio portrayed by Peter Sellers.

For Ripper, there’s a good reason why Russkies stick to vodka. Water is the source of all life — a good chunk of the Earth and our bodies are composed of it.

“As human beings, you and I need fresh, pure water to replenish our precious bodily fluids,” Ripper explains, while gunfire thunders offscreen.

Ripper, who is uncommonly concerned with his “essence,” drinks only distilled or rainwater — the reason is, of course, fluoridation, which is “the most monstrously conceived and dangerous Communist plot we have ever had to face.”

Before Ripper, whose companionable conspiracies and raspy vocal inflections share something of the gruff gusto of Kennedy’s, can elaborate, a bullet flies through a window. He then continues to discuss fluoride — “foreign substances introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual” — while preparing a machine gun.

To be making proclamations about the unproven hazards of a water additive that simply strengthens teeth in moderate levels — while Flint, Michigan, only just reached the level of potable water — in the last days before a crucial election is akin to what Kubrick presented us: bonkers when more clear and present threats are bearing down on us.

(More directly this election cycle, Trump has used clips from Full Metal Jacket in campaign videos, seeming to approve of its portrayal of the military and wanting to return to its example. Kubrick’s daughter Vivian, who wrote the score for the film, is a QAnon believer and Trump supporter who claimed her father “would very much approve of saving America” in an X post that tagged Trump, General Michael Flynn, Alex Jones and RFK, Jr. Kubrick and Kennedy, it would seem, prove that even your family being the source of endless conspiracy theories is no bulwark against believing in a few yourself.)

With Trump’s warnings of an “enemy from within,” which include “the fascists, the Marxists, the communists,” it’s not completely unfeasible that Kennedy may have more in common with Ripper than an aversion to unwanted chemicals.

I mean, if water can, as Alex Jones has claimed, turn frogs gay as part of some leftist agenda, Kennedy or Trump may at some later date claim the water’s being tainted by the enemy. And, as history teaches us, when there’s a conspiracy about wells being poisoned, Jews inevitably shoulder some of that blame.

Trump, who said Kennedy’s pledge “sounds OK” and speaks of wanting the “cleanest water” while rolling back water protections, seems to stick mostly to Diet Coke. Even when he made an enemy of the soft drink giant back in 2012, it didn’t stop him from indulging.

“The Coca Cola company is not happy with me,” Trump tweeted, “that’s okay, I’ll still keep drinking that garbage.”

Understandable. No one wants to have to answer to the Coca-Cola company.

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