Originally published via Armageddon Prose Substack:
Just as the mantra that “if their power were total, the propaganda wouldn’t be necessary” goes, in the same vein the corporate state media whores wouldn’t be talking about RFK Jr. if he weren’t a threat.
Their preferred strategy has been to pretend he doesn’t exist — until they feel sufficiently threatened to bring out the knives, like when they claimed he was using a secret Nazi code on Twitter to message to his Third Reich followers.
Related: Increasingly Desperate MSNBC Accuses RFK Jr. of Destroying MLK Jr. Legacy
Ron Brownstein, The Atlantic hack, went on CNN in a vain attempt to blacken RFK Jr.’s reputation as an “anti-vaxxer,” drawing once again from that dry well and refusing to acknowledge the man’s wider appeal on a host of populist issues. This guy, the embodiment of boomer elitist rot, scoffs when the other guest mentions championing clean air or water and why that might matter to the flyover peasants.
And here we have “Republican strategist” (lol) Stuart Stevens denouncing RFK Jr. as “pro-polio,” who then accuses him of “supporting Putin” while the diverse human-turtle hybrid Ali Velshi chuckles plastically.
This is a ruse the corporate state media plays often: bring on a so-called “Republican strategist” who is actually just a donor toy to lambast Trump and hope it gets some traction with the base (it doesn’t).
Via The Nation (emphasis added):
“When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced his quixotic presidential run, he tried to present himself as a classic reformer working to effect change from outside America’s rigid two-party duopoly. At the same time, of course, he was using his dynastic family name—a prime legacy of that duopoly—to drive attention toward his candidacy, and the pet issues, such as vaccine denialism and free-range conspiracy theorizing, that came in its wake. Indeed, he told podcaster Joe Rogan last year that the CIA could well be plotting to take his life, just as he believes the agency conspired in the assassination of his uncle, John F. Kennedy.
This unseemly impulse to thrust both himself and his storied family name into the dark machinations of deep-state intrigue, via a platform furnished by one of the mediasphere’s most powerful right-wing influencers, sums up the heart of RFK Jr.’s crusade. His third-party campaign offered followers the vicarious thrill of imagining that they, too, were granted a pivotal role in the drama of history, by powering out of the orbit of the corrupt, bought-out status quo. Their candidate’s success would expose the hollow charades of elite power-sharing once and for all, and redeem the long-suppressed promise of virtuous and honest self-governance.
Now that Kennedy has announced that he’s forsaking the campaign, and endorsing Donald Trump, it’s all too obvious that the hollow charade had set up shop from inside the house. In his official press conference in Phoenix announcing his withdrawal, Kennedy reprised Ronald Reagan’s old stump refrain: that he hadn’t left the Democratic Party; the party had left him. Inevitably, Kennedy’s narrative of the concerted campaign to marginalize him “engineered by DNC operatives” came off more as a more personal and petty complaint than Reagan’s did. It was the lament of an aristocratic heir excised from the family will. Kennedy spun out an account of persecution in which these cunning apparatchiks “deployed DNC-aligned judges to throw me and other candidates off the ballot and to throw President Trump in jail.” Thanks to this Democratic Party animus, Kennedy explained that he wasn’t suspending his entire campaign—just his efforts in swing states that might enhance Harris’s campaign at Trump’s expense…
But the sorry saga of Kennedy’s run reveals more than standard-issue hucksterism. The essence of his appeal stems from a syndrome in American public life that might be called mogul brain—the notion that heroic business leaders possess a unique capacity to heal the nation’s ills.”
A gaggle of Kennedy’s own family members (Democrat operatives) released a letter calling his endorsement a “sad end to a sad story” and a “betrayal” to the Kennedy legacy.
I have firsthand experience — and probably a lot of you do too — getting excommunicated by family in public for wrongthink. It sucks.
Back in 2016, when I still had a Facebook account before it was deleted for COVID heresy, I posted on the day of the election a clip of Hillary Clinton laughing maniacally on live TV after learning that her State Department had killed Gaddafi (look it up; it’s crazy) with the caption to the effect of “is this the kind of person we want running the military?”
For that, a close family member tried to shame me with a vicious personal attack.
I haven’t forgotten it because, beyond the personal effect it had on me, it was the beginning of a sea-change in American politics that pitted family members against each other, mainly liberals attacking anyone and everyone in public, loyalty be damned, for even questioning official narratives like the Russiagate scam.
Ben Bartee is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs.
Follow his stuff via Substack. Also, keep tabs via Twitter.
For hip Armageddon Prose t-shirts, hats, etc., peruse the merch store.
Support always welcome via the digital tip jar.
Bitcoin public address: bc1qvq4hgnx3eu09e0m2kk5uanxnm8ljfmpefwhawv
