RFK, Jr. Goes to Washington
...and into the donkey's den
Bill Bonner, reckoning today from Poitou, France...
"Oh, Jake," Brett said, "we could have had such a damned good time together."
Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly pressing Brett against me.
"Yes," I said. "Isn't it pretty to think so?"
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. testified before a Congressional committee yesterday. The committee was supposed to be looking at censorship. Then, House Democrats wanted to censure Kennedy by disinviting him. They claimed that there are some views that shouldn’t be heard at all. They are “beyond the pale,” they said.
“The Pale” refers to the area around Dublin still under English control in the 14th century. Beyond it were the ‘wild Irish.’ Kennedy’s family came from New Ross, Ireland, which was beyond the pale.
As we will see, Kennedy is ‘off the reservation’ in more ways than one…and poses a threat, not just to Democrats, but to Republicans too.
Into the Donkey’s Den
USA Today:
'Idiotic, bigoted messaging': Dems grill RFK Jr. during House hearing on censorship
House Democrats slammed Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. during a hearing on Thursday over his comments promoting a false claim that suggested COVID-19 was "ethnically targeted" to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people.
"Distortion of the truth has consequences," Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., said. "It's not censorship to try to correct that record."
It is hardly worth mentioning that Kennedy is neither a Ku-Kluxer, nor a neo-nazi, nor a homophobe. He’s not even a real anti-vaxxer. Each time you read a headline, you feel entitled to dismiss him as just another fringe politician with kooky views. But each time, when you look at what he actually says, you get a different story. On the issue of vaccinations, for example, the candidate has been vaccinated. He says all his children were vaccinated too. But that doesn’t stop him from wondering if vaccines are really as safe and effective as their manufacturers claim.
Kennedy wonders about a lot of things. About whether Sirhan Sirhan really killed his father, for example…and about whether it was just a coincidence that his uncle was assassinated right after he had vowed to smash the CIA “into a thousand pieces.” (Charles de Gaulle came back to Paris from the funeral and reported privately that the CIA had killed him.) RFK, Jr. has even begun to wonder about how to solve the problem of inflation…he’s proposing to tie the dollar to bitcoin!
“Baseless… bizarre… unproven…”
But the Establishment doesn’t like wondering. It claims to have The Truth…and nothing but the truth…final and definitive – on everything from the Kennedy assassination to the efficacy of lockdowns and face masks…to the causes and cures of heat waves and cold snaps. So, the politicians and the press label him a bad guy in the headlines…and hope that he will go away.
What we are looking at here is a rare and instructive example of politics…and megapolitics… playing out on the same stage. At the superficial, political level, the plot is simple…and the characters act their assigned roles with their customary lack of grace or charm. So it was that Senator Wasserman Shultz characterized Kennedy’s wondering about the Covid -19 vaccine as “baseless conspiracy theory….bizarre, unproven…” and so on.
Rep. Connolly suggested it was ‘hate speech.’
Democrats want to win the next presidential election so they can enjoy four more years of payoffs to their favorite lobbyists and pet projects. But their champion, Joe Biden, is a very flawed hero. He is an aging hack who seems unable to wonder about anything. Even most Democrats don’t like him.
But the upcoming race for the White House may be a close call. And the last thing the Democrats want is for someone to cut into Biden’s votes. According to the polls, 16% of Democrats favor Kennedy. If they actually vote for RFK, Jr., they will tip the election towards the Republican challenger, who will likely be Donald J. Trump.
That is why House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called the Kennedy campaign a “living, breathing false-flag operation…run by right-wing political operatives who have one objective: try to take down President Joe Biden.”
Over the past few weeks, the media – most of it controlled by Democrats…with reporters and columnists who overwhelmingly identify as left-of-center – has tried to knock Kennedy out of the running. Labeling him an anti-semite, they believed, would eliminate Jewish support. Tagging him as a racist, should keep the blacks away. And the ‘conspiracy theorist’ brand should make him unacceptable to the middle class. Or so they hope.
This is just ‘politics.’ Tawdry, fraudulent and dumb. The rockheads of both parties, armed by their polling consultants, aided and abetted by their friends in the media, will fight it out. The surprise could be that Kennedy takes more votes from the Republican candidate than from the Democrat. We will see.
Contra Deep State
More interesting to us, is the battle beneath the surface…the war that will determine the real future of the USA…in the rich vein of megapolitics.
Both political parties have betrayed the nation. The Republicans betrayed their principles. The Democrats betrayed their voters. Republicans used to be ‘conservatives,’ appalled by federal power grabs and unbalanced budgets. But their last president – Donald Trump – grabbed more power than any president ever had – confining people to their homes in a bogus ‘national emergency.’ And he also ran the most unbalanced budgets in America’s history, with a deficit well over 10% of GDP. For their part, the Democrats used to be the party that was open to wondering. It favored peace abroad and progress at home, counting on a strong base of working-class voters for its electoral support. Now, turning its back on the families it used to represent, it is dominated by war mongers, billionaires, and non-binary wokistas.
Today, neither party represents ‘The People.’ Both are instruments of the transcontinental elite. Regardless of their blather on the ‘culture issues,’ they both support the two things that will ruin America and its middle class – inflation and war.
Poor RFK, Jr. is not just running against Joe Biden, but against the Deep State…the military/industrial/spook/medical/university/media complex – the Establishment…and the grand viziers of both political parties. That’s where the fight really matters; it’s the battle between ‘The People’ and their corrupt elite. It’s the fight his uncle and his father took up more than half a century ago…and lost.
Maybe RFK, Jr. will have better luck. Wouldn’t it be nice to think so?
Regards,
Bill Bonner
I would add the third-world peasant invasion across the U.S. southern border to war and inflation hurting the American middle-class, especially if these big-govt.-supporting third-worlders are ever legalized. And Pres. Trump did not lock down the U.S. during the pandemic. He left it to the 50 state governors to decide. He was, unfortunately, a big spender.
I’m loving a RFK/ Gabbard ticket. Even though Vivek has a good message he will not out Trump the Trumpster. We need the deep state dismantled period. This may be our only remaining shot at it. And if RFK can mess up Biden chances then all power to him.