Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – About Things That Matter

Post-Election Thoughts on Trump Pro & Con

I’m not yet sure what to think about last Tuesday’s election results. Surprisingly, I find myself ambivalent and guardedly hopeful.

On the one hand, I feel strong foreboding about the Trump victory. I have nothing but painful memories of his last term. It was tough to wake up each day to the crudity, mendacity, stupidity, self-promotion, and sheer ignorance of the man. As a result, like many others, especially at the beginning, I experienced great relief returning to a kind of normalcy under Joe Biden.

But then as that “normalcy” kicked in, I found that horrifying too. Distressingly, there are those billions and billions and billions spent on a war in Ukraine whose reasons were impossible for me to understand. How was Ukraine our concern? I mean, most Americans can’t even find it on the map. Additionally, by all accounts its government is incredibly corrupt. Historically, it has been consistently associated with Nazism. Ukraine seemed far from our business, especially when we have so many problems at home.

I’m referring to huge income gaps between rich and poor, to decaying cities, roads and bridges, low minimum wage, lack of universal health care, college loan indebtedness, rampant homelessness, and incoherent immigration policy. Why did the Biden administration find it so easy to find billions for Ukraine, but not for us and our problems?

Then came the genocide in Gaza! At the very least, it revealed the hypocrisy of Democrats ostensibly concerned with women’s rights, and racism, but supplying weapons to kill mothers and their children in Gaza. Clearly the administration felt differently about Palestinian women and children than about their American or Ukrainian counterparts. Isn’t that sexism? Isn’t that racism? Isn’t it politically suicidal?

Mrs. Harris promised more of the same. During her ineffective campaign she repeatedly refused to distance herself from anything Genocide Joe continues to implement in the Middle East. Doesn’t that make her a genocider too? Of course it does!

But won’t Trump just give us more of the same as well? Probably. But maybe not.

So, to clarify my own ambivalence about Tuesday’s election results, I decided to make a list of Trump’s pros and cons. Here’s how it came out:

Trump’s Negatives

There are so many! But here’s the short list:

In general, he’s crude, superficial, and uninformed.
He’s a pathological liar, e.g., about immigrant crime rates and their eating pets.
His only true accomplishment during his first term was to give gratuitous tax breaks to the world’s richest people.
He totally mishandled the COVID 19 outbreak. As a result, more Americans died than citizens of any other developed country.
His punitive policies against Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba have increased the immigration situation he decries.
More specifically, he repeatedly tried to overthrow the Venezuelan government ridiculously installing U.S. puppet Juan Guaido to replace Nicolas Maduro.
He’s a climate change denier
He’s a champion of the fossil fuel industry’s super polluters.
He exhibits no understanding of the dangers of nuclear war. (Remember his wondering “If we have nuclear weapons, why can’t we use them.”)
Like Biden and Harris, he’s anti-Palestinian and an enthusiastic supporter of Israel’s genocide.
He blames U.S. unemployment and low wages on immigrants and the Chinese rather than on the decisions of his capitalist friends to offshore American jobs.
He thinks that tariffs hurt the Chinese, when they are covert taxes on American consumers, while increasing inflation and funneling the surcharged money to Washington.
He’s disrespectful of women and has been convicted of rape by a jury of his peers
He was a friend of Jeffrey Epstein.
He encouraged the January 6, 2021, assault on our nation’s capital.
He’s likely to incorporate into his administration neanderthals like Mike Pompeo and Marco Rubio.

Trump’s Positives

Believe it or not, there are a few. Here’s the longest list I can think of:

Trump’s disliked and vilified by the Washington establishment and the mainstream media. (Indicating that he can’t be all that bad).
His landslide election has exposed widespread discontent with the economic and political status quo.
He’s a loose cannon. He and his MAGA followers form the closest thing to the third party that America requires.
His “party” has succeeded in uniting large swaths of previously hopelessly polarized population segments who somehow realize that they have more in common with each other than what drives them apart – including women, African Americans, and Hispanics.
He promises to incorporate into his administration anti-big-pharma, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., war critic, Tulsi Gabbard, and Putin interviewer Tucker Carlson.
He’s willing to negotiate an end to the Ukrainian war.
He’s highly skeptical of NATO.
His vice-president is J.D. Vance has been described by Robert Barnes as “the most war skeptical and pro-labor Republican office holder in the last 50 years.”
Beyond that and unlike the Biden administration, he’s proven willing to dialog and “deal” with America’s designated enemies including North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
He promises to open sealed government documents (and their can of worms) on the JFK assassination.
And (most importantly) his election may drive neo-con Democrats to repudiate their efforts to out-Republican Republicans and to reappropriate their identity as Roosevelt New Dealers.

Conclusion

Well, there you have it – the pros and cons of Trump’s triumph as I see it. What do you think? Am I being naïve and too optimistic? Am I whistling past the graveyard? Can you add to my lists? Do you care to refute my reasoning?

Putin’s A Killer Who’s Guilty until (impossibly) Proven Innocent

The man’s body has hardly been identified as Yevgeni Prigozhin’s, and already The Economist and virtually all western mainstream media already know who killed him.

Here’s The Economist’s headline on the matter: “Prigozhin’s death shows that Russia is a mafia state. A healthy country uses justice to restore order. Mr. Putin uses violence instead.”

The follow-up elaborates: “As we published this editorial, it was not certain that Yevgeny Prigozhin’s private jet was shot down by Russian air-defences, or that the mutineer and mercenary boss was on board. But everyone believes that it was and that his death was a punishment of spectacular ruthlessness ordered by Russia’s president Vladimir Putin. And that is the way Mr. Putin likes it.”

Really? You mean we don’t know:

What caused Prigozhin’s jet to crash,
Or if Prigozhin was on board,
Yet, EVERYONE believes that the plane was shot down,
By order of the “ruthless” Vladimir Putin
Who The Economist somehow knows is pleased by the turn of events.

Yes, that’s what The Economist says.

And all that passes for sober analysis. Wow! No wonder Caitlin Johnstone can write with perfect logic that we westerners are “More Propagandized than Chinese People.”

Of course, until the completion of a proper investigation (that can take months), there are many other possibilities to explain this apparent final chapter in Prigozhin’s colorful life:

His plane might have crashed because of technical failures. Yes, that’s possible!
As a master of deception and disguises, Prigozhin might not have been on board. We will not know if he was until DNA tests have been completed.
And even then . . ..
Ukrainians might have brought the plane down,
Or the CIA in one of its covert operations,
Or disgruntled Russian military personnel,
Or unhappy Wagner minions
Or one of his many, many enemies other than Vladimir Putin.
Or the plane might have been shot down after misidentification by Russian air defenses,
Or. . ..

But even more importantly, using the standard of non-evidence embraced by The Economist to establish the mafioso nature of the Russian state, how are we to characterize our own “United” States in view of its much better documented assassinations and assassination attempts of heads of state and public figures such as:

Fidel Castro of Cuba (600 CIA plots)
Patrice Lumumba of Congo (1961)
Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic (1961)
Salvador Allende of Chile (1973)
Achmad Sukarno of Indonesia (1975)
Muammar Ghadaffy of Libya (2011)
Malcolm X of the United States (1965)
Martin Luther King of the United States (1968)
Robert F. Kennedy Sr. of the United States (1968)
President John F. Kennedy of the United States (1963)

That’s just the short list of “punishment of spectacular ruthlessness” allegedly ordered by “our” own government – again, on much sounder evidence than the absolutely pure speculation of the mainstream western press.

By The Economist’s and other mainstream media standards of proof (i.e., pure speculation), is ours then a “healthy country” that “uses justice to restore order?” Or is the U.S. a “mafia state” much worse than Russia?

Clearly, The Economist has once again shown beyond doubt that it is just another propaganda rag along with all those others who voice certainty about designated enemies long before evidence decides the case?

The rag’s yellow journalism underlines its own bias by ignoring much better reasons for identifying our own country as a criminal enterprise that makes Cosa Nostra seem benign by comparison.

Draw your own conclusions.

Williamson & RFK Jr. vs. Biden & Harris = Democracy vs. An Unelected Bureaucracy

Readings for 4^th Sunday of Easter: ACTS 2:14A, 36-41; PSALM 23: 1-6; 1 PETER 2: 20B-25; JOHN 10: 1-10

This 4^th Sunday after Easter is sometimes called “Good Shepherd Sunday.” That’s because in today’s final reading (Jn. 10:1-10), Yeshua identifies himself in those terms, and the responsorial from the Book of Psalms (23:1-6) is the very familiar selection that begins with the words, “The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.”

What often goes unrecognized in such readings are their highly politicized meanings. In Jewish tradition, they describe the qualities scripturally idealized in Israel’s leadership. All of them, “The Book” says should be “good shepherds” at the service of their flocks.

The readings are particularly relevant this week when our incumbent president has declared his intention to run for a second term. His declaration has raised questions about the nature of American democracy.

In addition, he is described by many as running “unopposed,” despite strong challenges from two fellow party members, Marianne Williamson, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK).

In fact, Williamson’s domestic agenda offers a clear alternative to Biden’s. The same is true of Kennedy’s foreign policy directions.

Taken together Williamson and Kennedy suggest an interesting president-vice president duo.

With that in mind, let’s break convention by evaluating Biden and his opposition in the light of today’s liturgical readings.

Biden’s Candidacy & Democracy

Yes, just last week, octogenarian Joe Biden declared that he wants to be U.S. president for another four years.

Given concerns about his declining mental capacities (and even his biological continence), that’s quite breathtaking.

Nevertheless, it’s okay with the New York Times (NYT). Their morning-after editorial reminded readers that

“Strange as it may sound, the American government can function without a healthy president. The U.S. marched toward victory in World War II while Franklin Roosevelt was ailing in 1944 and 1945. Four decades later, the government managed its relationship with a teetering Soviet Union while Ronald Reagan’s mental capacities slipped. In each case, White House aides, Cabinet secretaries and military leaders performed well despite the lack of a fully engaged leader.”

In other words, it’s all happened before. So, don’t worry. It’s somehow the American way. There are historical precedents for governance under incompetent figurehead presidents who willy-nilly have surrendered power to unelected bureaucrats.

And there should be no debate about it.

I mean, it’s also fine with NYT editors that Biden’s simple declaration was enough for the National Democratic Committee (NDC) to decree no need for presidential debates on the Democratic side.

And this despite those two other declared candidates for Democratic leadership, viz., Marianne Williamson and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Currently, Williamson is polling in double figures. And if a primary between her and Biden were held today with voters under 50, she would win by a landslide. RFK’s numbers are similarly on the rise. He’s polling at 14% — well above several of Trump’s rivals considered to be legitimate candidates and worthy of debating him.

Nonetheless, no voice for Williamson and Kennedy. No debate. That’s democracy American style.

And by the way, all of this takes no account of the fact that even a clear majority of staunch Democrats though somehow approving of Biden’s first-term performance, wish that the old man would forgo running for a second term.

He’s just too old.

Biden vs. Williamson

All of this raises questions about “American” democracy. Is it really a democracy? I mean apparently, we’ll vote for some old white guy who may well be losing his mind. However, in the end, we’re just choosing neocons like Jake Sullivan, Victoria Nuland, and Antony Blinken and anonymous “White House aides, Cabinet secretaries and military leaders”?

What a shame – literally!

In terms of today’s readings, we already know the neocon agenda. It has nothing to do with care for people. They ignore us completely. Their agenda is spelled out clearly by NATO and in the declaration of The Project for the New American Century composed by Victoria Nuland‘s husband, the arms merchant, Robert Kagan. Domestically their program comprises tax breaks for the rich, privatization of public services, and market deregulation. That’s Neoconism. It’s unjust. But old Joe’s promise is that his version will be less painful than the Republicans’ outright fascism.

Internationally, Biden’s neocon program is:

Amerika Uber Alles – i.e., the superiority of 4.1% of the world’s population over the other 95.9.
No tolerance of economic or military rivals.
Forever wars.
Bombing, sanctions, and regime change for the West’s former colonies who dare chart their own paths.
In general, keeping the Russians out, Americans in, and the Germans down.
Unconditional support for Ukraine

That’s It.

Now compare that with Williamson’s domestic policy. Most prominently, it calls for:

Medicare for all.
Transformation of our nation’s primary and secondary schools into “palaces of learning.”
Universally free college education.
Government sponsorship of a serious national conversation about race and reparations.
Empowerment of labor unions.
Infrastructure spending consonant with a Green New Deal.
Redirection of military spending into social programs such as housing and mental health services.
Demilitarization of the nation’s police forces.
Establishment of a cabinet level Secretariat of Peace.

And then there’s RFK Jr.’s foreign policy that is stronger than Williamson’s which I’ve criticized elsewhere. RFK’s approach calls for:

Facing the fact that Ukraine is losing its war with Russia (suffering casualties seven or eight times as great as their opponent).
Prioritizing diplomatic solutions to the war.
Establishing strict controls over the Military-Industrial Complex (MIC).
Defanging the CIA as responsible for most of the world’s international problems.

Today’s Readings

Keeping such differences in mind for purposes of comparison, consider today’s readings as they centralize the primacy of Jesus’ “Way” over the policies advocated by the Democratic neocons and the Republican fascists.

Today’s selections present the ideals that should move people of conscience regardless of their attitudes towards transcendent faith. Please note that the ideal is not the lesser of two evils.

ACTS 2: 14A, 36-41: Jewish Peter continues last week’s first Christian sermon: Peter says, “The crucified Jesus whom you mistakenly executed achieved the full Christ-consciousness the world has been waiting for.” When the crowd heard this, they asked, “What then must we do?” Peter answered: “In the Spirit of the Christ, reject the world’s values and join us in the reformation of life dictated by our own holy faith.” Thousands of good Jews said “yes” that very day.

PSALM 23: 1-6: His listeners’ “yes” was premised on a traditional Jewish understanding of God: The Divine One is an accompanying kind Good Shepherd – the traditional symbol of a king. The divine order leaves no one in want, but provides food and drink, housing, rest, comfort, refreshment, courage, protection for everyone without distinction.

1 PETER 2: 20B-25: In a later letter Peter elaborated: If the world hates and hurts you for trusting such a God, know that you must be doing something right. You’re actually following in the footsteps of Jesus. Remember how they insulted him and that he remained nonviolent even when it cost him his life. Such awareness will keep you whole and on the right path blazed for us by our beloved Good Shepherd.

John 10: 1-10: An even much later reflection on Jesus as Good Shepherd: Jesus often used strange imagery to confuse his enemies. For instance, he referred to himself as a shepherd and to foreign occupiers (“strangers”) as sheep rustlers. In today’s reading, he calls himself the “gate” of the sheepfold, but also the “gatekeeper.” In the spirit of Psalm 23 (above), he speaks of his friends as his “sheep” and the purpose of his shepherding as protection and fullness of life for them.

Conclusion

On this Good Shepherd Sunday, it’s time for Americans to say, “enough is enough.” We must open our eyes to the fact that Joe Biden is a mere out-of-touch figurehead. He’s a sheep rustler — not our friend.

Arguably, his foreign policy is worse than Trump’s. He’s surrounded by unimaginative warmongers whose only concern appears to be the welfare of Wall Street and its Military Industrial Complex (MIC).

Choosing to support the Democrats and its confused “leader” and his unimaginative, undemocratic agenda is suicidal.

It’s time to support genuine alternatives. Marianne Williamson and RFK Jr. provide them. At the very least, we’ve got to push to get the three candidates up on the stage for a series of real debates. That’s doable.

That in itself would represent a decisive step towards democratic process currently denied us by our system hijacked by the DNC.