The world has been haunted by human violence since time immemorial. There are untold millions (billions?) of people all over the world who have been scarred by it in all its forms. There are two basic responses: one is to try to return that violence with violence and defeat one’s enemy; the other is, in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s words, to “not seek to defeat or humiliate the opponent, but to win his friendship and understanding” through a non-violent response. Politicians usually embrace the former, while those who are called dreamers advocate the latter.
Between these two, there are various mixed responses, with sane political leaders calling for mutual respect between countries and an end to aggressive provocations leading to warfare, such has occurred with the United States provoking the war in Ukraine.
We have entered the time when the destruction of all life on earth through nuclear war is imminent unless a radical transformation occurs. If the word imminent sounds extreme, it is worth considering that there will be no announcement. The time to speak up is now. It is always now.
Great literature speaks to the issue of violence at the deepest levels.
Homer’s Odyssey is the classic case of violent revenge. At the end of the story, Odysseus, who was scarred in youth by a wild boar, finally returns home from the Trojan War after ten years of wandering. Doubly scarred now by the horrors of war with its horrendous slaughters (see The Iliad), he arrives at his home disguised in a beggar’s rags. His nursemaid from childhood recognizes him from the scar on his thigh. In his house he finds scores of suitors who are hitting on his wife Penelope. He is enraged and steps onto the threshold, rips off his rags, and systematically massacres every last one of them. Flesh and gore swim in the blood-drenched room, while in the courtyard twelve unfaithful serving maids hang from their necks. This is the quintessential western story of revenge where the wounded hero kills the bad guys and the violent beat goes on and on.
It appeals to our lesser angels, for while Odysseus’s rage is understandable, its consequences leave a toxic legacy.
But there is another response that draws on another tradition that is symbolized by Jesus on the cross, executed by the Roman state as a subversive criminal. He didn’t die on a private cross, for his crime was public. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi are famous exemplars of non-violent resistance in modern times, as they too were executed by the state. Non-violence seems, on the surface at least, to be less effective than violence and contrary to much of human history.
If it is, however, we are doomed. For we have nuclear weapons now, not bows and arrows and spears. We have nuclear weapons hitched to computers. Digital weapons of multiple sorts and mad leaders intent on pushing us to the brink of extinction.
The United States’ instigation of the war in Ukraine against Russia and its push for war with China are current prime examples. They are part of the continuing vast tapestry of lies that Harold Pinter spoke of in his 2005 Nobel Address. He said, in part:
The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven. . . . The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them.
This is still true, as John Pilger has just warned us in a powerful article: “There Is A War Coming Shrouded In Propaganda. It Will Involve Us. Speak Up”
The rise of fascism in Europe is uncontroversial. Or ‘neo-Nazism’ or ‘extreme nationalism,’ as you prefer. Ukraine as modern Europe’s fascist beehive has seen the re-emergence of the cult of Stepan Bandera, the passionate anti-Semite and mass murderer who lauded Hitler’s ‘Jewish policy,’ which left 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews slaughtered. ‘We will lay your heads at Hitler’s feet,’ a Banderist pamphlet proclaimed to Ukrainian Jews.
Today, Bandera is hero-worshipped in western Ukraine and scores of statues of him and his fellow-fascists have been paid for by the EU and the U.S., replacing those of Russian cultural giants and others who liberated Ukraine from the original Nazis.
In 2014, neo Nazis played a key role in an American bankrolled coup against the elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, who was accused of being “pro-Moscow.” The coup regime included prominent “extreme nationalists” — Nazis in all but name.
The U.S. led support for this war must stop. Who will stop it?
Homer told us something quite important once upon a time, as did many poets, artists, and writers in the twentieth-century. They warned us of the monsters we were spawning, as Pilger says: “Arthur Miller, Myra Page, Lillian Hellman, Dashiell Hammett warned that fascism was rising, often disguised, and the responsibility lay with writers and journalists to speak out.” He rightly bemoans the absence of such voices now, as writers have disappeared into post-modern silence, a part of the cultural war on dissent.
On a subtler and more personal note than Homer’s tale of revenge, we have the testimony of Albert Camus who was part of the Resistance to the German occupation of France during WW II. At the beginning of his beautiful, posthumous, and autobiographical novel, The First Man, Camus tells us about Jacques Cormery (Camus), who never knew his father, a French soldier killed in World War I – the misnamed grotesque War to End All Wars – when Jacques was eleven months old. Years later, when he is forty years old and horrors of WW II have concluded, Jacques visits the cemetery in France where his father is buried. As he stands over the gravestone in this massive field of the dead, silence engulfs him. Camus writes:
And the wave of tenderness and pity that at once filled his heart was not the stirring of the soul that leads the son to the memory of the vanished father, but the overwhelming passion that a grown man feels for an unjustly murdered child – something here was not in the natural order and, in truth, there was no order but only madness and chaos when the son was older than the father. The course of time was shattering around him while he remained motionless among those tombs he no longer saw, and the years no longer kept to their places in the great river that flows to its end.
The tale continues, as did Camus’s, who always supported the victims of violence despite harsh criticism from many corners, from the left and from the right. He wrote a famous essay, “Reflections on the Guillotine,” against capital punishment, based on his father’s nauseating experience of seeing a man executed by the state. After hearing this story from his grandmother, he would regularly have ”a recurrent nightmare” that “would haunt him, taking many forms, but always having the one theme: they were always coming to take him, Jacques, to be executed.”
Furthermore, Camus warned us not to become murderers and executioners and to create more victims, when he wrote a series of essays shortly after WW II for the French Resistance paper, Combat. – Neither Victims nor Executioners. He wrote that yes, we must raise our voices:
It demands only that we reflect and then decide, clearly, whether humanity’s lot must be made still more miserable in order to achieve far-off and shadowy ends, whether we should accept a world bristling with arms where brother kills brother; or whether, on the contrary, we should avoid bloodshed and misery as much as possible so that we give a chance for survival to later generations better equipped than we are.
Which leads me to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and his run for the U.S. presidency in this most dangerous time. He is a man not scared into silence despite all the efforts to censor him.
From a very tender age he was scarred by death; is surely a wounded warrior, not one of those who went to an actual war, but one who had a different war forced upon him when he was nine and fourteen years-old, when his uncle and father were assassinated by the CIA. Some repress the implications of such memories; he has faced them and allowed them to spur him to truth and action.
No boar gored him, nor has he slain suitors in his house, because he has taken, not the road of revenge, but that of reconciliation, despite having lost his father and others to demonic government forces. This is the way of non-violence, a path unfamiliar to most of those seeking political office.
I don’t know his inner thoughts about this, but I read his words and actions to decipher where he is trying to take this very violent country. He is a non-violent warrior in the spirit of Gandhi’s truth force or satyagraha. Not a passive non-action, but an active resistance to evil and violence. Not one seeking revenge on all the warmongers and Covid liars (which does not preclude legal prosecutions for crimes), but one who seeks to reconcile the warring parties. To appeal to our higher angels and not the demons urging us to renounce the good, but to the love that is our only hope.
I am not saying he is a pacifist. Such a term muddies the water. He is clearly committed to the defense of the country if it were ever attacked. But he is emphatically opposed to the endless U.S. attacks on other countries. He knows the vicious history of the CIA. He is a very rare political candidate committed to reconciliation at home and abroad. He is waging peace.
Like his father Senator Robert Kennedy and his uncle, President Kennedy, he is anti-war, committed to ending the endless cycle of overseas wars sustained by the military-industrial complex and the corporations who feed at the trough of war spending. He opposes the policies of those politicians who support such endless carnage, which is most of them, including most emphatically Joe Biden. He realizes the danger of nuclear war. He tells us on his website, Kennedy24:
As President, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will start the process of unwinding empire. We will bring the troops home. We will stop racking up unpayable debt to fight one war after another. The military will return to its proper role of defending our country. We will end the proxy wars, bombing campaigns, covert operations, coups, paramilitaries, and everything else that has become so normal most people don’t know it’s happening. But it is happening, a constant drain on our strength. It’s time to come home and restore this country. . . . We will lead by example. When a warlike imperial nation disarms of its own accord, it sets a template for peace everywhere. It is not too late for us to voluntarily let go of empire and serve peace instead, as a strong and healthy nation.
Those are very strong words and I am sure he means them. But he is opposed by demonic forces within the U.S., what former CIA analyst Ray McGovern aptly calls the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-MEDIA-Academia-Think-Tank complex (MICIMATT). They run the propaganda shit show and will throw lie after lie (have already done so) at Kennedy and exert all their pressure to make sure he can not fulfill his promises. Their propaganda is endless and aims to hypnotize. Pinter described it thus: “I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self-love.”
It is this self-love and American exceptionalism that Bobby Kennedy will have to counteract by emphasizing the humanity of all people and their desire to live in peace. He will have to make it very clear that the U.S. government’s involvement in Ukraine was never humanitarian, but from the start was part of a plan to disable Russia. That is was an effort to continue the Cold War by pushing closer to Russia’s borders.
Only fools think that revenge and violence will lead to a better world. It may feel good – and I know the feeling – to strike back in anger, but it is only a vicious circle as all history has shown. Revenge only brings bitterness, a cycle of recriminations and reactions. Reconciliation is the way forward, but it can only become a reality by an upswelling of resistance of good people everywhere to the lies of the war-loving propagandists who are leading us to annihilation.
RFK, Jr. can not do it alone. He can lead, but we need a vast chorus of millions of voices to resist, in Pilger’s words, “the all-powerful elite of the corporation merged with the state and the demands of ‘identity’.” If not, democracy will remain notional. Kennedy is so right to say that the U.S.A. cannot be an empire abroad and continue to be a democracy at home. Silence must be replaced with resistance and his words made real by millions of people opposing the killers.
Writing in another time of extremity, but writing truly, Camus, said:
At the end of this tunnel of darkness, however, there is inevitably a light, which we already divine and for which we only have to fight to ensure its coming. All of us, among the ruins, are preparing a renaissance beyond the limits of nihilism. But few of us know it.
So let us fight with words and actions. As MLK, Jr. told us about the U.S. war against Vietnam: “There comes a time when silence is betrayal.”
History tells us of these atrocities being repeated over and over again. Our Nation as a whole must learn to listen and react in a calculated manner. We must stop our madness of starting wars that will never end.
It’s all about the passing away to oblivion to the righteous Kennedys who represent the wealthy deep state, the ruling capitalist class who desperately cling to power at the emerging socialist-minded people. They (the wealthy ruling class of capitalists) want to cling to power behind a patina of righteousness (the worship at the altar of the Kennedys as Ed Curtin does). But the appearance of Putin and Communist General Secretary Xi Jinping, which leads true socialism sow confusion among liberal-minded pro-capitalist people with their Belt and Road Initiative.
If you have been riding in a dry, parched desert and are tired, hungry and dying of thirst when you finally reach an oasis will you curse it for only offering water and a few dates?
We have all been living in this desert. Ed has been offering us sustenance and hope. It may not be all that you wanted. But what he offers is beautiful and life-affirming. The system thrives on anger, bitterness, and rage. Let’s stop feeding the beast.
The system thrives on “hope” as much as any other authoritarian tool it can muster.
The real issue, for me, is that the system is not just some bad thing, it’s the entirety under which we’ve lived. False (much of it rhetorical and obfuscating) hope doesn’t rid us of this, it simply allows it to go on.
I’ve loved Ed’s musings, and when he was more nuanced with some of his critical thinking some of the best (I’ve shared it for some time).
This (2 major endorsement and 2 interviews, not to mention his many outlets) simply, a perpetual ode to Kennedy, is not that. For me, aside from “Kennedy” is a form of surrender.
Art, Thank you…..a thought I’ve had recently….how can activists stand together, yet not even say hello to each other. No conversations, NO questions, what might be possible? We cannot enable authorities any longer to lead us anywhere. We need to walk hand in hand, side by side!
Hear, hear Joseph
This is one-hour talk features Andrew Pek, appointed COO at Children’s Health Defense in February. Pek was the Global Head of Innovation for Pfizer Consumer Healthcare from 2002-05. After that he consulted for seventeen years with DxD Partners. His client base included prominent multinational banking and pharmaceutical firms.
https://www.youtube.com/live/s8__r9dWCQs?feature=share
Information is good, and analysis is good, and critiquing
ing is good, and trusting no one with money, is good.
This is reflective of Kennedy, Ed.
Pharma-Banking Consultant Lands in CHD Executive Suite
Stop the bullshit, Paul. You applied for a job with RFK, Jr.’s Children’s Health Defense and are pissed off. Resentmeny is not appealing.
Oh, no, Ed. I needed a job, and I am a journalist, and so I applied and did my duty. The job was not about RFK, and I thought I’d be an asset. You know, they wanted me on toxics, environment, pollution.
Nothing about backing or bashing RFK or pharma.
Now now, thanks for the working class shout out. I do not resent CHD or RFK. Are you kidding? I am a communist, dude, and nothing the democrats and/or republicans have served up as hell in my neck of the woods is good.
So, you are now telling the world that my points are illegit because I applied for a journalism job that happens to be with CHD?
It was clear I was applying for science writing, which I have done.
Now, if I sequestered myself from everything American and USA, then I’d have a hard time taking Benjamins for anything I do.
Now, if I got the job, and then this happened (see belo), I’d say adios, CHD.
Goddamn, Ed, now you are an armchair psychiatrist?
Enjoy your man, his CHD.
https://youtu.be/gFRUHxhneGA
And, alas, I am done with you and your attack on me. What pathetic treatment of a commentator who doesn’t have the gobsmacked disease for any of these multimillionaire charlatans.
Sad,
“I am a communist [i.e. a thirsty totalitarian]”, and personnel is policy. So it does not matter what you imagine your “science writing” credentials and skills to be. You’re so radioactive that CHD and RFK would have be foolish and desperate to hire you for anything, even stuffing envelopes for the next fundraiser. And now, thanks to so-called AI, one can obtain tweakable science writing without associating directly and publicly with a thirsty, burrowing commie.
Red Herring.
Are you just dead? Ahh, radio …. active, that should be up RFK’s alley since he wants nuke energy to bring about this digital dashboard/social impact Brave New World.
I’ll take a Communist Mayor over probably all of your yokels, Allan . . . .
+–+
“Grigny isn’t often in the news for good reasons. The poorest city in France, this banlieue south of Paris is marked by massive unemployment and abandoned housing estates. For much of French media, Grigny is the very image of a “no-go zone”: one of its sons, Amedy Coulibaly, murdered four people at a Kosher supermarket in the 2015 terrorist attacks.
Yet there is also a fight to save the city from its plight — led by local mayor Philippe Rio, a member of the French Communist Party. In 2017, he organized the “Appeal from Grigny,” signed by hundreds of other mayors calling for investment in the banlieues. His innovative social programs and a COVID response based on locally issued emergency food vouchers this year saw him handed the biennial “best mayor in the world” award.
The prize given by the World Mayor Foundation hadn’t gone to a Communist before (and even this time around it was co-awarded to Rotterdam’s mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb, a member of the Dutch Labour Party). But Philippe Rio’s administration has also had a wider impact in his homeland, especially through its lifelong education programs and its success in geothermal energy production, which has slashed residents’ bills.
+–+
Yeah, totalitarian.
PHILIPPE RIO:
I’ve been a member of the PCF since 1995 — since the last century. I’m often asked what it means to be a Communist. But I remember why I joined the party back then — and looking at France, today I’d have twice as much reason to join a movement whose guiding star is indignation against injustice.
I am myself a product of municipal-level communism. I’ve never been around what’s happening at the “top” of society, but rather the work of all those invisible activists — blue-collar workers, employees, and public servants — who devote their free time to helping others live better. It was they who trained me up in the life of associations, first of all on the sports field, which is about the people who give their time and money to helping you play in a football match.
We don’t exactly have oil to tap. But we do have geothermal energy, and we do have a totally different vision.
In this context, you experience magnificent things, even if you come from a poor background like mine. My dad was an unemployed worker, my parents experienced the downgrading of the working class, and sometimes there wasn’t even much to eat. So I had the food aid and the Secours Populaire [a grassroots solidarity initiative], including from the Communist town hall.
RE;
https://jacobin.com/2021/11/grigny-best-mayor-banlieue-suburbs-philippe-rio-french-communist-party
+–+
It’s probably too long for a knee-jerking funny guy like you, but give it a spin:
Selling RFK Jr. On Next-Gen Nuclear Part 2
https://www.youtube.com/live/GD8hM7PmF1Q?feature=share
Aww, you’re offended by a reminder of the failures of 19th century foolishness as it played out during the 20th century. You poor thing. How could anyone fail to see that your filthy ilk wanted only justice?
I decided to put in my two cents, when sh*t has gone this far off the rails.
Ed, you’ve disparaged Art, and Paul, and Tracey.
But, what you have failed to do, entirely, is address the points that any of these folks have made.
Tracey has raised some interesting questions about Kennedy’s history.
I would think that it would be incumbent upon you to prove those things false, or interpret them in a light that may be more favorable to RFK Jr.
Instead, you shoot the messenger, and ascribe nefarious motives to their analysis.
I thought you we smarter than that, Ed.
Guess the jokes on me.
The U.S. government is run by Britain and Rome. There is nothing American about it. Thousands if not millions now know this. The deniers don’t matter anymore. Within a few short years they will have no choice but to accept it and deal with it. The “U.S. Government” is fraud and identity theft all rolled into one. It’s not one but two incorporated entities masquerading as the American Government. The self governing American Federal Republic has not functioned since the so-called Civil War because reconstruction was never finished or started for that matter. What I am trying to get across is the U.S. government is an imposter. It’s not the American government and representative government is not the American system of self-governance. The chickens have come home to roost but the truth has stood there silent and glaring all along. It had only to be noticed by a few wise and aware souls. Now that truth is spreading. They don’t work for us or our Country.
‘‘Napoleon went forth to seek virtue, but, since she was not to be found, he got power.’’ -Goethe
Man of Destiny?
It is conceptually incomplete to say nuclear war is imminent unless a radical transformation occurs without any more information than that.
Social Change is a radical transformation. It is change to both economic and political institutions. And it’s happening now, in USA. [And this phenomena, central theme of RFKjr Patriots Day Boston speech announcing his candidacy for president.]
Camus draws bright red line between crimes of passion; and everything else — in which executioners are what he called them in The Rebel.
Othello on the one hand; Iago, Lady MacBeth the other.
Joan of Arc was crucified by the very society she saved from British rule; and five centuries later, sainted by same institution that burned her to death.
Nuclear War doesn’t scare people into “doing the right thing” since the essence of Nuclear War — more precisely, threat of it: grounded in the absence of reason. . . a hail mary as it were.
And if it did, we wouldn’t be in this predicament circa 2023 AD.
Covid vax hoaxers, covid pandemic hoaxers, Russiagate hoaxers, 911 hoaxers, war mongers in general. . . . all belong to the same family. Camus once observed executioners of the “right” and the “left”: belong to same family.
-30-
I’m not sure what’s happening, Ed, in your line of thinking, and alas, not sure this will be posted. Too bad. Here, a few tidbits from Twitter, Michael Tracey.
+–+
Of course RFK Jr. was neck-deep in all kinds of Russiagate conspiracy nonsense. Have any of his new cult followers bothered to actually research the guy?
Has anyone ever endorsed Hillary Clinton more consecutive times than Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.?
RFK Jr. pilgrimaged to Israel in 2019 and declared “The United States is no longer a democracy” because of Donald Trump.
RFK Jr. wanted to make absolutely, emphatically certain that no one ever thought he endorsed Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Democratic primaries.
“Leave a message at 916-445-2841 thanking Gov. Newsom for his humane instincts and fearless leadership,” urged RFK Jr. in 2019.
(I know, why bother looking at anything a presidential candidate did all the way back in 2019 — practically the Middle Ages)
In his godawful 2018 book, RFK Jr. continues his family dynasty’s decades-long mythology project of ludicrously trying to argue that JFK only “reluctantly” escalated the Vietnam War — utter BS. Read Sy Hersh for how the Kennedys have manipulated the press on this since the 1960s.
RFK Jr., like the rest of his incredibly overrated family, is one of the most outlandishly unearned beneficiaries of nepotistic privilege literally in all of US history — but that’s now wiped from the record by his new cult followers who first heard him on YouTube two months ago.
RFK Jr. upon the death of John McCain in August 2018: “McCain was always kind to me. He was a leader in climate for a decade and was not scared to cross the aisle. He also was a voice of sanity and morality… People are mourning the loss of the Republic.”
As he explained to Oprah in 2007, RFK Jr. spent decades sucking up to every prominent Democrat in the country (his “friends”) in hopes of leveraging his family name to get appointed to some high office, especially his father’s old senate seat in NY. A true lifetime of sycophancy.
Sort of odd that RFK Jr. claims he discovered his son was fighting against Russia in Ukraine last year when he looked at the (26-year-old) son’s credit card bills (?)
“Putin is a gangster, he’s homicidal, he’s a thug, he’s one of the worst people alive today,” RFK Jr. declared.
If he has access to his 26-year-old son’s credit card bills, does that mean RFK Jr. was paying for the son to fight against Russia on front-line combat missions — purportedly as a machine gunner and a drone operator? Nice photo shoots, too. Great lighting.
Anyway, looking forward to the evidence of RFK Jr.’s brave opposition to lockdowns in March/April/May of 2020. You know, when the “stay-at-home” orders were actually still in effect. Because the factual record shows he was touting lockdowns at the time for “slowing the spread”
And the hits just keep on coming. Here is RFK Jr. in the ancient times of 2014 demonstrating his commitment to civil liberties by inveighing that those who disagree with his apocalyptic climate theories ought to be thrown in prison
RFK Jr. at the 2004 Democratic convention: John Kerry has been the best champion, must be sent to the White House to preserve the dignity of this nation and “live up to the promises of our culture”
of the Robert F. Kennedy Ripple of Hope Award, at a gala honoring Hillary’s “commitment to social change” in NYC — December 2014. Past winners of the award had included Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Bono
2022 recipients of the Robert F. Kennedy Ripple of Hope Award included Brian Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America; Prince Harry and Meghan, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex; and — wait for it — Volodymyr Zelensky, the President of Ukraine. Proceedings were emceed by Alec Baldwin
July 2016: RFK Jr. says the rise of Trump is “scary” because it reflects an “atavistic” urge in the US population for a “violent” leader
“I’m solidly for Hillary,” he declared. “I think Hillary is going to be a very, very good president”
You’d be hard-pressed to find a more consistent, long-term champion of Hillary Clinton than RFK Jr.
January 2009: Obama “couldn’t have gotten a better choice” for Secretary of State
Recall, Hillary became the most virulent hawk in the administration. RFK continued endorsing her
January 2017: RFK Jr. complains that the GOP is bringing back the “darkest days” of redbaiting and McCarthyism.
February 2018: RFK Jr. laments the absence of McCarthyist “zeal” in targeting the “Russian sympathizers” who had allegedly infiltrated the US government under Trump.
Recipient of the 2016 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Ripple of Hope Award: Joe Biden. Earlier this month, Biden was reported to have called RFK Jr.’s mother Ethel to wish her a happy 95th birthday. So there couldn’t be too much bad blood between the families, don’t you think?
https://twitter.com/mtracey/status/1652153120967868422
Paul,
I don’t know who Michael Tracey is, but he if he believes Seymour Hersh about the Kennedys, he should do his homework, for he is living in La-la land. Like Chomsky, his hatred for all things Kennedy is irrational and false in its particulars. He might want to ask what motivates those two. Perhaps Tracey might begin with the work of a real researcher and scholar, Jim DiEugenio.
https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/sy-hersh-falls-on-his-face-again-and-again-and-again
https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/sy-hersh-falls-on-his-face-again-pt-2
Ed I think you’re devotion to the Kennedys has exceeded a closer examination, not just of RFK, Jr. (and aside from Hersh I think there’s much more to explain regarding Tracy’s post) but of the entire system and mythological history of US of A.
It’s not just Kennedy. It’s the entirety of what we were born into, who rules and has ruled since the coup that took place during the Constitutional congress and the elimination of the Articles of Confederation; making this an elite/oligarchical system of which Mr. Kennedy is aligned.
Ed and Art — Tracey is just a guy trying to dig into things, a journalist, not one of the beautiful people.
Hersh bad, then, who is good? Sure, Chomsky is a rotten one, and Hersh also believes in magic, building seven just came tumbling down like the walls of Jericho.
Try the young generation out for a different flavor. Another 69 year old guy, Kennedy, stumping?
Look, I’ve said that Kennedy was a fine fellow in SPokane, but a fine fellow, well, I even got idiot G. Gordon Liddy attempt to joke about my question to him when I was a teacher at UT-El Paso and he did his dog an pony show. I laughed, for a sec, and then I told him he wouldn’t last an hour with my students who came from the barrio, and those still with the Banditos.
But listen to Tracey.
The Grayzone’s Anya Parampil is joined by journalist Michael Tracey for a live discussion of his trip to the Polish-Ukrainian border, where journalists alike have been blocked from receiving information about the network of US bases and escalating presence of American troops as President Joe Biden clamors for regime change against Moscow.
https://www.youtube.com/live/wiGvQ6UGRIA?feature=share
NATO escalates the Ukraine proxy war (w/ Michael Tracey): The Grayzone’s Aaron Maté and Max Blumenthal interview Michael Tracey live from Madrid, where NATO meets to plan a major escalation in the Ukraine proxy war and admit Sweden and Finland as members. Guest: Michael Tracey. https://mtracey.substack.com/ Support Pushback: https://www.patreon.com/aaronmate
https://www.stitcher.com/show/pushback-with-aaron-mate/episode/nato-escalates-the-ukraine-proxy-war-w-michael-tracey-204583341
Art and Paul,
I don’t intend to debate you guys here after this reply. If you wish to trash RFK.Jr. that is your prerogative. There is a certain hopelessness and bitterness in your opposition to him. You both seems to dislike him in part because of his name, and Paul because he is wealthy. I sense a chip on your shoulders. That the history of this country from its founding has very ugly aspects is not his fault. Here is a man who calls for the end of empire, the closing of overseas bases, reconciliation to avoid nuclear war, the freeing of Assange, etc. In my article I quote from his website what he will do if elected. He has been a long term dissident – https://www.globalresearch.ca/superlawyer-robert-barnes-real-history-robert-kennedy-jr/5818024
Finally a candidate comes along who says things no one else has said, yet you guys need to bash him, as does Tracey, as if all you will accept is a perfect person. Have you forgotten why the CIA killed his father and uncle? Do you not know why the mainstream media hate and trash him, the media that are controlled by the CIA?
I stand by him fully and unequivocally. Yes, the system is corrupt, but your cynicism about a man trying to change things in a desperate time – a very courageous man – is very disheartening, to say the least. Hopelessness does not change anything.
This much I will say: we do not need a martyr.
Christ, if we, us schmucks, can’t look deeper at RFK, then how the hell will the guy stand up to the millionaire classless folk in MSM?
His family’s criticisms?
Thanks again, Ed, for your armchair psychiatry, and the chip on the shoulder allusion is so blatantly bumbling that it seems to be a default for Americanos like you who believe in a president who will do good? Yikes.
Sometimes we are left without a very good or a very reasonable course of action – as in expecting a fair, balanced and “democratic process” to unfold over the next election cycle – when one can make a convincing argument that we haven’t lived in a “democratic country” since the entire top tier of progressive leadership was assassinated within a five year period when I was just a kid. So sometimes, with knowledge of the vast corruption at play, and of the powerful forces behind it, we are left with simply throwing reason and expectations and even “outcomes” to the wind and simply deciding to – do the right thing. This feels like one of those moments.
And so I’ll support a decent, principled and humane human being in RFK Jr. for president – since by possessing those very traits ruling elites realize him to be uniquely unqualified to continue “business as usual” for our blood soaked empire of madness. So clearly we know going in that we will be forced to watch the countless scores of those morality-free howling jackals in the form of MSM and media pundits join the fray as they attack, twist, and blatantly lie about RFK Jr’s every word – as they are of course are already doing. When friends, and family and neighbors repeat those MSM lies about RFK to my face – I’ll correct the record for them – not because I believe doing so will change their minds, or the eventual “outcome” in our completely corrupted theatre of the absurd political system – but because it’s “the right thing to do” – and sometimes that is all we have.
There’s a story Catherine Austin Fitts tells that describes anecdotally how this take over happens whereby war becomes “acceptable”.
CAF is before a group of a hundred Christian folks and begins her talk with a question: How many of you are against these endless wars? All of the audience raises their hands. Now, she asks: How many of you would like to see our military spending cut significantly (in half)? Only one person raised his hand. She then asked: Why when you want these needless wars to end are you will to spend over half of the US discretionary budget for such operations?
The answer came back: our pensions depend on investments in defense spending.
For a detailed view I recommend: The Trillion Dollar Silencer: Why There Is So Little Anti-War Protest in the United States by Joan Roelofs
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-trillion-dollar-silencer-joan-roelofs/1141001899
Some brave souls are resisting:
https://winteroak.org.uk/2023/05/02/adieu-to-the-illusion-of-democracy/