Gormless Man Versus Shameless Man
How About Bird Man Instead?
Presidential politics in America, 2024: What grim prospects!
Whatever else Joe Biden is, or will be, he is a status quo president, a man minted during the Cold War, a man who by his own admission has no empathy for the struggles of youth today. It’s hard to see how he wins this fall, especially given increasing physical and mental debility. Biden, who now humbly declares he’s running the world, is tracking toward gormlessness. It’s not a good look.
Democrats today are a thoroughly corporatized party with no populist element. It’s a party of elite interests at a time when people are increasingly turning against elites. It’s hard to see Democrats doing well this fall.
The only thing Democrats have going for them is Donald Trump. Whatever else Trump is, or will be, he’s a man consumed by himself. As was once said of Teddy Roosevelt, Trump has to be the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral, and the baby at every christening. A billionaire populist is surely a contradiction in terms, but Trump does have a knack for selling “patriotic” Bibles and golden sneakers to the proles. Perhaps his superpower is his utter shamelessness.
Both parties, the Red and Blue teams, strangle their rivals, leaving America with no electorally viable options for reform. The old McGovern wing of the Democratic Party simply doesn’t exist anymore. If you want a semblance of a populist platform, you have to vote for fringe candidates like Jill Stein or Cornel West, who have no chance of winning. I don’t follow Libertarian politics, but their candidate, Chase Oliver, has a name that makes one think of bankers. At 38 years of age, he’s youthful, he’s also gay, and he has no chance.
(Anyone who likes hawks and falcons can’t be all bad.)
The one third-party candidate with name recognition is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., but Democrats in particular are erecting every obstacle in his path to block him. Interestingly, imagine how different the Trump-Biden debate would have been if RFK Jr. had shared the stage, instead of being blocked by the corporate media and both major parties. He would have deflected attention from Biden’s disastrous performance. Plus RFK Jr. himself has a medical condition that affects his voice, making it somewhat strangulated. I think if RFK Jr. had been on that stage, he would have been the lead story, rather than Biden, by hitting back at so many of Trump’s lies and distortions.
But Democrats got what they wanted: a stage without RFK Jr., and their chosen candidate had no place to hide his debility.
The corporate media has done its best to attack RFK Jr., reporting on his “brain worm” and also releasing old allegations about sexual assault in the immediate aftermath of Biden’s poor debate performance. I’m no church boy, RFK Jr. responded, which surely is the truth. (Indeed, JFK, RFK Sr., and Teddy Kennedy were also no church boys.)
Since we’re not voting for a church boy, and since RFK Jr. has the cojones to criticize the military-industrial complex, he gets my vote today. Yes, I know he’s pro-Israel, but not, I think, as slavishly Zionist as Biden and Trump. Anyhow, he’s the one candidate with a ghost of a chance at ending the Biden-Trump nightmare, so I’m giving him a long hard look and plenty of consideration as November approaches.
Readers, what about you?
A simple way of looking at this.
1. Who wants four more years of Biden?
2. Who wants four more years of Trump?
Given what we know of Biden and Trump, two men of vast limitations, doesn't RFK Jr. offer more hope of transformative change in favor of the middle and lower classes?
Cornel West is barely a candidate. Jill Stein can't catch fire. RFK Jr., despite his faults, offers better prospects for the future than Biden-Trump.
Again, I'm not definitely committed to RFK Jr. Nor am I loving all his positions. But I know who Biden and Trump are. So I'm willing to consider Kennedy. The man, with all his faults, seems more genuine to me than the Biden-Trump "choice" being rammed down our throats.
I suppose at the broadest view of it, the question of who becomes the next President is similar to who was the Roman emperor when the Visigoths sacked Rome in 410 (Honorius) - the empire is about done and no one is going to save it.
But specifically, I had my doubts about RFK given his stance on Israel - perhaps as Bill noted, maybe not as extreme as Biden and Trump. But the allegations of sexual abuse revealed something his sister Rory had said about him when she did a documentary on his Riverkeeper work: he lies a great deal -and much of what they recorded could not be used because of his lies. She said there is a lot more about him the family is keeping quiet, which could expose other myths about the family.
I don't know what to believe about what she said or if there's any truth to a lot more that could come out about him and the Kennedys, but if any of it even appears true - the MSM would start pulling that thread and not give up - as he's not the favored choice of the elites. We'd then have three freaks vying for the Honorious title. But then maybe everyone would realize no one is coming to save us - and we need to start working locally to do that.