Saturday, August 31, 2024

Bobby's Bounce: RFK Jr’s Lesser-Evilism

 

Oops. I didn’t see that one coming.

So, let’s talk about RFK Jr.’s decision to help Donald Trump win the presidential election.

Because, to be clear, Bobby is not just—excuse me, not even dropping out of the race. He could have done that, correctly denouncing the Democratic party’s anti-democratic legal and electoral tactics that made it impossible for his campaign to compete within the party or as a third party, and, indeed, denouncing the whole duopoly-enforced structure of American electoral politics that makes it impossible for any non-duopoly candidate to succeed. If he were really interested in building the possibility of a progressive third party, he could have stuck with his very recent critique of how  “President Biden[/Harris], President Trump offer no solutions” and ended his campaign without transferring allegiance to either of the duopoly parties or candidates. He could have approached Jill Stein—as he apparently did both Kamala and Trump—and tried to negotiate agreements on highlighting issues that were important to him in return for urging his supporters to vote for her.

Instead, he is re-positioning himself and his campaign as supporting elements of the campaign of one of the extant duopoly parties—the Trump-Republican Party campaign. He will take himself off the ballot in battleground states, in order not to “likely hand the election to the Democrats,” and he’ll stay on the ballot in “safe” red or blue states where it won’t make any difference. This mirrors the “safe states” strategy of previous “left” third-party candidates, and it defines him as an auxiliary Republican, just as it defined those candidates as auxiliary Democrats. Whether he or they want to admit it, it’s an abdication of any effective third-party building, and a capitulation to one of the two duopoly parties and to duopoly politics tout court.

So, why is RFK Jr. doing this? Why is he abandoning a third-party building effort and any pretense of duopoly non-partisanship, and instead—in an astounding turn for a Kennedy—dedicating himself to the defeat of Kamala and the Democrats, and the victory of Trump and the Republicans? Here’s his campaign-suspending address, with his three reasons highlighted:

I’m 70 years old. I have maybe a decade to be effective. I cannot imagine that a President Harris will allow me or anyone else to solve these problems. After eight years of President Harris, any opportunity for me to fix the problem will be out of my reach forever. President Trump has told me he wants this as his legacy. I’m choosing to believe that this time, he will follow through. His son, his biggest donors, and closest friends also support this objective.

By staying on the ballot in the battleground states, I would likely hand the election to the Democrats with whom I disagree on the existential issues of censorship, war, and chronic disease. 

I want everyone to know that I am only suspending my campaign, not terminating it. My name will still be on the ballot in most states. If you live in a blue state, you can vote for me without harming or helping President Trump or Vice President Harris. In red states — the same applies. I encourage you to do so. And if enough of you vote for me and neither of the major party candidates win 270 electoral votes, I could still end up in the White House in a contingent election. 

But in about ten battleground states where my presence would be a spoiler, I will remove my name and urge voters not to vote for me. 

Three great causes drove me to enter this race in the first place. These are the principal causes that persuaded me to leave the Democratic Party, and then as an Independent, and now throw my support to President Trump.

The cause of free speech.

The war in Ukraine.

The war on our children.

For the sake of argument, let’s interpret RFK Jr.’s action in the most positive way. Let’s stipulate that these are all important—even “existential”—issues (and I think they all are). Let’s stipulate that Kennedy has said good things and done good work on all of them. Let’s even stipulate that he’s sincere in his belief that Donald Trump is going to do something “existentially” more positive about these things than would Kamala Harris. Then let’s note what is one of the saddest sentences I’ve heard spoken by an American politician (and that’s saying something): “I’m choosing to believe that this time, he will follow through.” RFK Jr. does seem to be wishful thinking about his “decade to be effective.”

Let’s then consider his three reasons, leaving aside for the moment the uncited and paramount issue of the ongoing USrael Zionist colonial genocide—a live-streamed holocaust that I and so many others consider a deal-breaker, but about which there is no Democrat-Republican or Kennedy-Trump difference.

Free Speech/Censorship

I agree that “the cause of free speech” is an “existential” political issue, and RFK Jr. has certainly taken good positions on it, including giving strong support to Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. But what is the position of the candidate and party with which he is now allying?

Donald Trump’s position is that “We’re going to keep foreign, Christian-hating communists, Marxists and socialists out of America,” and there needs to be “a new law” for “the ones that are already here, that grew up here.” He preaches to his fundamentalist Christian audiences that: “Together, we’re warriors in a righteous crusade to stop the arsonists, the atheists, globalists, and the Marxists,” and “pledge[s]” to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country."

In  RFK Jr.’s recently stated terms, “it’s a very narrow Overton window” that Trump wants to enforce in America.

What about the global war on free speech that is intensifying with arrests of Richard Medhurst in England, C.J. Hopkins in Germany, and Pavel Durov in France. Is Donald Trump, “his son, his biggest donors, and closest friends,” going to wage the fight against the restriction of free speech on the internet? Is the Trump Republican administration (perhaps with junior member RFK Jr. taking the lead) going to exert the tremendous pressure that is necessary, and could come from the president of the United States, to stop the worldwide assault on freedom of expression through the internet?

It’s a rhetorical question. Here’s Trump, who initiated the prosecution of Julian Assange, urging “closing that Internet up in some way,” and mocking the “foolish people” who say: “Oh, freedom of speech, freedom of speech!”

“And we have kids that are watching the Internet and they want to be masterminds. And then you wonder why we do we lose all these kids? They go over there. They're young. They're impressionable. They go off and they want to join ISIS.  We're losing a lot of people because of the Internet. And we have to do something. We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what's happening. We have to talk to them. Maybe, in certain areas, closing that Internet up in some way.  Somebody will say : ‘Oh, freedom of speech, freedom of speech!’ These are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people. We've gotta maybe do something with the Internet, because they are recruiting by the thousands.”

If RFK Jr. doesn’t understand that the Trump Republican camp considers him one of the “foolish people,” he’s proving that he is.

And let’s not forget that a—perhaps the—main reason for censorship on the internet and in political and media spaces in general, in the U.S. and throughout the Western world, is to protect the Zionist project.  The establishment doesn't like critiques of capitalism, but that’s been going on forever and they are not afraid of them yet. They really don’t like critiques of imperialism, which have also been manageable but are now having uncomfortable effects in the context of waning imperial power—especially regarding the Ukraine conflict. But critiques of imperialism alone are not dangerous enough to provoke the omni-partisan US/Euro political establishment to blatantly jettison supposedly foundational free-speech and free-expression policies that have been so useful precisely for maintaining support of capitalism and imperialism.

The present critique of Zionism, however, which has been made possible by the wide and instant availability of historical information and political analyses on the internet that previously had been carefully kept under wraps by media gatekeepers, is extremely dangerous. As I pointed out in a previous essay, to my delighted (and the establishment’s dismayed) surprise, during the months of Israel’s horrific slaughter in Gaza, the availability of critical information and analysis has given rise to a recognition that Zionism is colonialism and thus to a determined and growing anti-Zionist movement in the United States. This is a real threat to the Zionist project. I don’t think there has ever been a quicker, more surprising, or more consequential change of attitude on such a fundamental subject, and the thoroughly Zionist American political establishment cannot abide it.

So, one of the main objectives of the current national and worldwide campaign of censorship is to protect the Zionist project by reasserting control over information and analysis—on the internet and throughout society—that might foster anti-Zionist thought in America and Europe.

Thus, Donald Trump, in 2019, issued an executive order applying Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to “anti-Semitic” acts, using the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of “anti-Semitism” that includes “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.” This order, which threatens campuses that allow anti-Zionist protest with loss of federal funding, “generat[ed] concern that it will stifle free speech by those who oppose Israel's policy toward the Palestinians,” because, as the moderately critical Jewish group J-Street said, it "appears designed less to combat anti-Semitism than to have a chilling effect on free speech and to crack down on campus critics of Israel.”

Trump’s Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, standing next to Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, declared the peaceful BDS movement, a “cancer that…we're committed to combating,” and  said the U.S. “plan[s] to identify and withdraw the department's funding and support from organizations linked to the movement.” Amnesty International USA “forcefully objected” to that policy as: “following Israeli government's approach in using false and politically motivated accusations of antisemitism to harm peaceful activists, including human rights defenders.”

Now, Trump is vowing to his donors: “If you get me re-elected, we’re going to set that [pro-Palestine] movement back 25 or 30 years …any student that protests, I throw them out of the country.”

Not only Trump, but the bulk of the Republican party have joined their Democratic colleagues in Congress in passing the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which would enshrine the IHRA “anti-Semitism” definition in law, and is proposing legislation to create campus "antisemitism monitors" who can initiate the revocation of funding for colleges that allow speech and protest tainted with that definition.

Glenn Greenwald has been especially trenchant about Republicans who, having postured as free-speech advocates, complaining about liberals and Democrats censoring conservative speech, are now “sound[ing] exactly like the left liberals who they've been heaping scorn on” when it comes to Israel and Zionism,” and how they conveniently ignore that “the most common and frequent targets of censorship, both on campus and generally, in the United States have long been Israel critics,” including “professors who have lost tenure [and] gotten fired because of it.”

Add those to the numerous proposed federal, and actual (38) state, bipartisan anti-BDS laws punishing citizens and organizations that boycott Israel, and you’ve got an idea of the “existential” difference between the Trump/Republican and Harris/Democrat parties on “free speech.”

RFK Jr. is going to have at least as hard a time fighting for “free speech” while supporting Trump and the Republicans as he would with Harris and the Democrats. It’s only because he shares with Trump the bipartisan “Israeli Exception” to the free speech (and every other) principle, that he cannot see how hollow his candidate and party choice on this issue actually is.  He’s going to have a very hard time convincing anyone who doesn’t share that exception that supporting Trump does anything to defend free speech.


War/The War in Ukraine/End the Forever Wars

It befuddles me that anyone thinks Donald Trump is going to end forever wars.

Regarding Ukraine, Trump has made various noises, centered on cost—the Europeans should pay more to support Ukraine—and, of course, on the strength of his own personality, with which he will force both sides to stop fighting within 24 hours of his election. ‘Cause, you know, all it takes is a tough guy to intimidate Putin: “If we had a real president, a president that knew — that was respected by Putin ... he would have never invaded Ukraine.”

Pundits and interlocutors and associates of Trump have also chimed in with various speculations about “Trump’s” plan for ending the Ukraine war. The most specific version comes from Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg and Fred Fleitz, who were chiefs of staff in Trump's National Security Council. Their plan is to tell Ukraine it will not get any more U.S. weapons if it doesn’t enter peace talks, tell Russia that if it doesn’t enter peace talks Ukraine will get more support, and impose a ceasefire on current battle lines during the peace talks. This is a delusional Plan B that’s been floated around for over a year, which anyone who understands what’s happening in the war knows Russia will never accept. It’s a plan Kellogg and Fleitz “presented” to Trump, and to which he “responded favorably,” though they are "not claiming he agreed with it.”

Campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt gave the most accurate statement about “Trump’s” Ukraine plan:  “Any speculation about President Trump’s plan is coming from unnamed and uninformed sources who have no idea what is going on or what will happen.” No one, including Donald Trump, has any idea what “his” plan is for ending the Ukraine war.

In fact, though it is the case that some Republicans and RFK Jr. have expressed reluctance about continuing the expensive Ukraine war, with the latter framing that within a more general “antiwar” attitude, no one in the U.S. political establishment wants to recognize that there is no “plan” for ending it that does not involve the accepting the decisive defeat of the Zelensky regime, NATO, and the U.S., and/or going to war with Russia.

Here's RFK Jr.’s plan to end the Ukraine war, based on “our mission to help the brave Ukrainians defend their sovereignty”:

We will offer to withdraw our troops and nuclear-capable missiles from Russia's borders. Russia will withdraw its troops from Ukraine and guarantee its freedom and independence. UN peacekeepers will guarantee peace to the Russian-speaking eastern regions.

Too little, too late. Might have been worthwhile before 2022. The bit about withdrawal of troops and missiles from Russia’s borders is especially nice, if it were part of an overall reconfiguration of the security relationship between NATO and Russia that accepts a much greater drawdown of NATO forces.  But the “UN peacekeepers” guaranteeing the “eastern regions” implies means those regions stay within Ukraine. Nor is there any mention of whether Ukraine’s “freedom, independence and sovereignty” allows it to join NATO. It’s Minsk III+, another frozen conflict scenario. It’s not gonna happen. The “eastern regions”—Crimea, Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson—are now part of Russia, and Trump, Harris, or any American president is going have to accept that and the decisive Russian victory/US-NATO defeat it represents, or fight Russia in a war to reverse it, in the face of enormous pressure that’s going to come from both parties and from the Euro-American establishment to do the latter.

I doubt that Trump, Harris, or RFK Jr. (anymore than his cold-warrior father or uncle would have) will accept the defeat and retreat of the American imperial project that the impending Russian victory in Ukraine represents. And none of them have a “plan” to avoid it.

In other words, regarding the Ukraine war, RFK Jr.’s choice of candidate and party does not make much of, let alone an “existential,” difference.

Regarding “forever wars” more generally, RFK Jr. would do well to remember the series of aggressions that gave rise to that expression, including the (continuing) invasion and occupation of Iraq, the murder of its leader and destruction of the Libyan state, the most prosperous in Africa, the (continuing) attack on and occupation of Syria, etc.

The “forever war” program that the US has been carrying out since at least 2003 was revealed by Wesley Clark in  2007 to involve “taking out” seven countries in five years “starting with Iraq and Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan … and finishing off with Iran.” The purpose of that program was, as I’ve said in a previous article, to “remov[e]—by co-option, regime change, or chaotogenic sectarian warfare and state destruction—any strong central governments that have provided political, diplomatic, financial, material, and military support for the Palestinian resistance to Israeli colonialism. Iran is the last of those, has been growing in strength and influence, and is therefore the next mandatory target.”

Donald Trump knows, and in his embarrassingly forthright way that so discomfits liberals, says the censored part out loud:

“Because the fact is we don’t have to be in the Middle East other than we want to protect Israel. We’ve been very good to Israel. But other than that, we don’t have to be in the Middle East. We don’t need, you know there was a time we needed desperately or we don’t need that anymore. We have more than they do. Isn’t that nice?”

Anyone who is committed to guaranteeing the Zionist project is committed to forever war.

Anyone who, like RFK Jr., demands “unwavering, resolute, and practical action” to support the Zionist colonial project, who renounces the JCPOA and decrees that Israel must but Iran must not have nuclear weapons, and pledges to “provide Israel with whatever it needs to defend itself.. throughout this operation [the Gaza genocide] and beyond,” is someone who is supporting Israel’s constant aggressions against its neighbors Syria and Lebanon, and will support the attack on Iran that is the next and most dangerous “forever war” on the agenda. It’s a war that is Israel’s solution to the existential problem the Zionist project confronts in Gaza—a war Israel is determined, and has been planning since the Trump administration, to get us into.

To ensure the security of Israel and, indeed, the Iranian people, Iran must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. This is non-negotiable. It will require constant vigilance and stringent verification.

The JCPOA is based on outdated assumptions and conditions, and is not appropriate to our time. But I will set my sights on real peace in the Mideast, including between Israel and Iran.

When I am President, we will set a new standard for international behavior. The US bears historical culpability for much of the tension in the region, which is partl+`y the result of our regrettable history of regime change operations, coups, and support for despotic regimes in Iran and elsewhere.

So, with respect to the issue of “forever wars,” RFK Jr. has made no “existential” choice between Trump and Harris; he has lined up with both of them completely on the most urgent “forever war” case—the savage war of Zionist colonialism, the most horrible crime against humanity in recent history; and, in the Ukraine case, he has established a rhetorical, but not clearly substantial difference from whatever delusional “plan” either Trump or Harris has. It could hardly be otherwise. Like the two of them, and despite any appearances, RFK Jr. is a Zionist and is not an anti-imperialist.


The War on Our Children/Chronic Disease

This is the really distinctive, signature RFK Jr. issue. There is no major political figure who has touched this issue; he has embraced it. It formed the bulk of his campaign suspension speech. I agree with him that this is, as he presents it, an existentially important issue. I agree that the corporate capture of health and food agencies, as well as academic and medical institutions, has produced a vast apparatus of practices—from vaccine programs to unhealthy processed food distribution that produces and profits from sickness, starting with children, and is literally killing us. It has also produced a constantly reinforced, nearly impenetrable epistemological mindset in which it hides behind an appropriated and inverted notion of “science.”

[Disclosure: I have had friendly correspondence with RFK Jr. regarding my 2021 article opposing vaccine mandates that he read and praised.]

I also think RFK Jr. has done admirable and courageous work on this issue. It is likely, per his statement, that this is the issue he thinks he can do something really effective about in “maybe a decade.”  He knows there are other people who can and will do effective work on his other “existential” issues. He is confident that he’s the one who has, and can, make some serious headway on this one.  

Kamala and the Dems did not want to hear from him about this. If Trump offers him that last serious opportunity to do something important, why not take it?

Here's the thing, though: Donald Trump, who developed the horrid mRNA gene therapy “vaccines” at Warp Speed, and is still proud of it, does not give one fig about this issue of children’s health and chronic disease as RFK Jr. sees it. Anymore than Trump, who prosecuted Julian Assange and wants to “close the internet in some way” is really concerned about free speech.

RFK Jr. is, kind of desperately, looking to find a reason to believe. I don’t know what, if any, deal he made with Trump, whose “philosophy of leadership could not be further apart,” and who is notorious for using and discarding people. If he did not get some firm commitment for something like HHS Secretary, then RFK Jr. can expect to be discarded the moment Trump gets the votes he wants and the pushback that will surely come from his pharma-invested donors or, you know, Bill Gates, who told Trump to turn his back on RFK Jr. in 2016, and whom Trump is now going to consult about closing the internet.

Let’s consider the best case, that Trump actually gives RFK Jr. HHS (and doesn’t abolish it), a perch from which he might be able, and will try, to radically reform the corporate-captured agencies. Trump and RFK JR. will then come under tremendous pressure from those pharma-captured donors, and all the pharmaceutical companies, and all the pharma-captured bureaucrats who’ve been counting on those cushy deferred-bribe jobs at those companies, and all the pharma-captured and funded establishment politicians and media who despise both of them and despise and understand nothing about RFk Jr.’s project.

To carry out the radical reform RFK Jr. seeks would require having strategic political depth for the project—broad public support and loyal support from a president who himself understands and is committed to the project, speaks up forcefully on its behalf and stands up to its detractors, and is willing to mobilize people and resources to support it. I am not describing Donald Trump, who is pushed around by his ruling-class cronies and tough-guy militarists, who get from him what they want—the Donald Trump who was going to withdraw American troops from Syria. To the point, I’ll let Whitney Webb ask a few questions

https://twitter.com/_whitneywebb/status/1828469152534720719

Given all the hype about the RFK Jr. team up with Trump, and what it means for healthcare, I have some questions.

Many funders of Trump, such as Joe Lonsdale and Elon Musk as well as JD Vance himself, have major investments in biotechnology, gene therapies and companies deeply invested in mRNA and DNA vaccine technology. Trump stands by Operation Warp Speed, which produced mRNA vaccines of dubious efficacy and safety, some of which were made with the help of companies tied to Lonsdale's VC, among others.

Will RFK JR. be opposing the use of these technologies as he seeks to tackle the chronic disease epidemic in the US in a future Trump administration? Will he allow the "health" DARPA, ARPA-H, to continue to operate? Will he allow the Peter Thiel and Joe Lonsdale co-founded Palantir to continue to collect and analyze Americans' health data (and genetic data) with no meaningful oversight into how they use that data and if they share it w other government agencies they contract for like the CIA?

I agree that there is a major healthcare crisis in the US, but identifying the problem is one thing - will these experimental technologies be used or promoted as part of the solution? I think it's important to know and it seems like not many are asking these types of questions.

Maybe things will be different this time. Maybe it’s worth it for RFK Jr. to give it the old college try. I would be happy to be wrong, but I think Trump, if he doesn’t jettison RFK Jr. before his inauguration, will fold under the attacks on any RFK Jr. project, which is not his, his son’s, his biggest donors’, and his closest friends’ first, or second, or fifth priority. RFK Jr. will go the way of erstwhile Trump favorite, Anthony Scaramucci.

So, I’m betting RFK Jr.’s decision to support Trump as an ally for the War on Our Children/Chronic Disease project is a naïve gamble that won’t take a decade to wash out. He would have done better sticking with “President Biden[/Harris], President Trump offer no solutions,” and continuing to build a politically independent movement for health reform—an issue that has been gaining momentum since the Covid debacle—rather than allying with one of the parties whose failure to solve anything will end up tainting him and his project.

Don’t misunderstand. I am not horrified by RFK Jr.’s traitorous apostasy to the Democrats, about whom I could not care less. I am more surprised, but no more disappointed, by RFK Jr.’s embrace of the Trump campaign than I would have been by his embrace of Kamala’s. I consider the American electoral system an insult to me as the citizen of an ostensible democracy. I have not the slightest interest in figuring out which of the two deal-breaking genocidal duopoly candidates is the lesser evil. But those who do should realize that RFK Jr. is not the only longtime Democrat who will find that to be Donald Trump.

RFK Jr. has just done the lesser-evil thing that so many are calling for. He has made the same kind of lesser-evil choice one might make as an abortion-rights supporter who was offered a chance to work for that issue in one of two genocidal campaigns and administrations—if genocide is not a total deal-breaker for you. If you want to vote for Hitler versus Himmler (and that’s the kind of choice we’re faced with—unless, for some reason, you find the Palestinian holocaust you’re watching live-streamed less disturbing than the one you read about) because Hitler has a better position on reproductive rights or whatever, go right ahead. But accept that that’s what you’re doing and do it with the requisite great humility. No one for whom genocide is not a deal-breaker because of their (more?) important issue is in a position to judge anyone else who makes the same kind of choice for theirs.

Whatever he or his detractors might say, I find RFK Jr.’s lesser-evil choice neither terribly transgressive nor existentially important. It demonstrates, rather, that he’s an ordinary establishment political actor whose roots in American political and socio-economic establishment are as deep as can be, and who acts on the ordinary establishment assumptions about imperialism, Zionism, and the duopoly. He was never threatening to revolutionize the American polity, only to reform aspects of it.

He’s just taken one of the lesser-evil paths that keep us in those woods.

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Posted by The Polemicist (Jim Kavanagh) at 8/31/2024 07:24:00 PM
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