Will familiarity of RFK Jr. save us all?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Does anyone really know what we are looking for in our president? Seems downright ethereal, the qualities that we try to seize upon. Or to purportedly seize upon. Oh, and we talk like we know full well. Let's point out that familiarity figures in hugely, embarrassingly. 

What is so difficult about identifying a bright middle-age person and deeming that person suitable to take the nation's reins? But we just can't do it. Come hell or high water, we can't. But the last thing we would do is admit to the shortcoming. 

People are perfectly free to anoint a new generation of leaders. But it happens so rarely. A chorus of concern grows as the prospect approaches of Biden vs. Trump. It is impossible not to like Biden, who regardless of his political positions would appear to have a good heart. It is impossible really to find any virtue in Trump. Yet he is out there as a vessel for so many aggrieved Americans. 

We might remind of the famous movie quote "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore." A '70s movie quote, Peter Finch. Much as I pay attention to cinema, I really never understood how this quote was directed. I did not see the movie, but the notoriety of the quote should have placed its meaning without question. 

You don't need to research to know that the quote could speak for a whole lot of people at any time. You can surmise a meaning just as Ronald Reagan did with the song title "Born in the USA." (He misunderstood it.) 

Finch's line floated in the ethereal quality of political discourse leading to Trump's 2016 election. "Ethereal" because so much of it did not seem tangible, I mean to wrap your arms around. Mike McFeely was one example of someone with a media platform who shot down so much of what Trump was presenting. Yet you could tell from the tone of callers to his radio show that he was under siege. Finally he went off the air. The army of pickup-driving folks from out here in the hinterlands asserted themselves for reasons I don't think even they understood. (We learned from Fargo radio that these folks would park their pickups to block access to electric charging stations.) 

We drift toward familiar ground. In 2016 this was the ethereal quality of anti-intellectualism. In the '60s this was the springboard for the song "Okie from Muskogee." The song assailed the skeptics of the Vietnam war effort. Because, as the lyrics opined, we needed to be willing to fight to help others be free. Merely an echo of World War II? Problem was, that was then, this is now. The hard-hat patriots wanted to coast along with the organic spirit of the immediate post-WWII years. They gravitated to familiarity. 

So, is this why at present, RFK Jr. is having such surprisingly high poll numbers? As much as I seek to digest the news, I'm having a hard time trying to figure him out. I must confess that a part of me wants to root for him. He's no dummy: an environmental lawyer. We can assume that a Kennedy would be a lawyer. He gets over the bar for sound basic intelligence. 

(my comicshop image)

And the poll numbers are likely due to familiarity. As a kid I saw the movie "P.T. 109" at our Morris theater. Cliff Robertson as John F. Kennedy who was RFK Jr.'s uncle. So we got "Camelot" in the early '60s. All too fleeting of course. 

Could JFK have kept the U.S. out of the hellish sinkhole of Vietnam? We do not know. We'd like to think so. What a heroic image he held all the way to his assassination. 

RFK Jr. today assails his own Democratic Party as being "the war party." Is there a subconscious strain of guilt running through him? So maybe he's "over-correcting" now? JFK planted the initial seeds of U.S. entanglement. But it really turned out to be Lyndon Johnson's war. All us schoolkids learned the word "escalation." Wouldn't have learned it otherwise, at least not as a matter of course. 

So RFK Jr. comes right out and says the Democrats are the war party. How objective are politicians on this? Are wars really fought for the stated reasons? Rhetorical question. 

George W. Bush was a war president in spades. He sought to intimidate or maybe even ruin the skeptics. A little insecure about it, George? He got his barking dogs on Fox News to make it a cause, hence it was seen as "conservative." But Laura Ingraham years later publicly said she was "retracting" her support for the Iraq war. We needed more people retracting their support for the Vietnam war. 

Vietnam recedes in time. We have no qualms about developing warm relations with the very people we were fighting. How to explain all this to our children? Can't really be done. Or maybe just quote "Dr. Evil" from the movies: "Let Daddy do his work." The meaning: sometimes when a certain cause or policy seems stupid, just don't bother sifting through it for logic - it's just one of those things. Even when 58,000 young American men had to die in Vietnam. 

I should not even have to be writing about this. I cannot assume any wisdom that might get through the "ethereal" state. Not with the very old political leaders we choose to hand power to. 

Biden would seek a comfortable status quo by making sure the less-well-off have some comfort and security. Whereas, Trump would not give a damn about that. Do I really need to write this? I conceded that "trickle down" had some merit when Reagan tapped it, promoted it. We needed a dose of the true conservative political ideology in 1980. A good dose, probably. But what happened to all that? Look at the present-day landscape with a rock-thrower like Trump leading the GOP. A "naked capitalist?" 

Capitalism is wonderful but government can gum up the works. That, and the Federal Reserve. We hear all about the banking "crisis" now. Such matters can become catastrophic but they may be beyond partisan remedies. Yet our media focuses on the partisan horse races. Ad nauseam. A weary public does not want to think too hard. So presto, we get the most familiar choices of Biden, Trump and some others across the U.S. 

RFK Jr. gets his surging numbers because of his name, you fools. A part of me would like to see him surprise. The good old days of a "President Kennedy" would be back. RFK Jr.'s father did not make it. He was on the verge and then got shot and killed. JFK's Camelot period was too short. 

Poetic justice or destiny now? RFK Jr. is no fool. Can we find some way to understand his oddball position on the vaccines? Can he persuade us there is a "there" there. He must have his reasons - he's had the best education all along. He is very sharp in understanding that you have to at least talk to the whole Fox News crowd (entailing the countless clone-like entities). So he unapologetically does that, tries to impress a populist spirit that is irresistible to us all. 

Politics exists to make our lives better, doesn't it? So wouldn't even Mark Levin find some space to listen to RFK Jr.? Maybe the Kennedy clan has simply learned the essential skills of ascending in politics. It's a craft like any other professional craft, and look at RFK Jr.'s background for appreciating it. Maybe he knows something that so many others do not. Maybe he plunges through the ethereal barriers of getting to people's souls. 

"Ethereal" is defined partly as "immaterial, intangible," and a synonym is "airy." 

William Faulkner famously said "the past is never dead. It's not even past." 

Camelot redux? Re-kindling a past spirit? Maybe so. Maybe I'd feel comfortable supporting RFK Jr. Maybe he could be the true Trump slayer. His vaccine skepticism might appeal to the anti-intellectuals who never liked the government dictates during covid. RFK Jr. may be on to something. Maybe we could do no worse. 

As a cautionary note, a quote from Soren Kierkegaard: "Why bother remembering a past that cannot be made into a present?" Maybe RFK Jr. could save us all.

- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com