Thank you, Dick. I appreciate your ability to distill lots of information and cut through the noise.
Perhaps James Hillman might've said Kennedy's apostasy is not merely political but actually religious, too.
Our new religion seems to be scientism -- the needy, blind, excessively credulous embrace of anything supposedly scientific (evident in our collective resistance to any skepticism of our current vaccine program, evident in the concerning, now-common phrase "I believe in science," and evident in the Anthony Fauci votive candles, revelatory artifacts of our time) -- and Kennedy is an apostate, a heretic, because he asks questions and he doubts and deconstructs the prevailing religious order. His actions are arguably tantamount to someone telling a devout Christian "God is not real" and then telling that Christian s/he may no longer be able to participate in a particular sacrament.
The bitter irony is that asking questions/doubting and deconstructing the prevailing order *is* actually the scientific way. In other words, one could argue the prevailing scientistic status quo is in fact what's heretical. And that Kennedy -- by making room for what Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of the medical journal "The Lancet," calls “the traditional norms of disinterested inquiry and free expression of opinion" -- is the devout one. (“Asking questions has become forbidden in some circles,” Dr. Makary, the new commissioner of the Food and Drug Commission says. “But asking questions is not the problem, it’s the answer.”)
In sum, the vilification of Kennedy, I'd humbly argue, is so curiously extreme not simply because he threatens powerful industries and the powerful political parties in bed with those industries -- he threatens people's faith and their identity, too.
It is Religion isn’t it? Seems a little off key to call RFKJR a Religious figure but of course he is: his challenge to authority, especially the authority of “settled science” when there is no such thing, his candor about Spirituality as his linchpin and lodestar, his frank admission that he begins each day with a prayer to serve and be of help to the most vulnerable, installs him in the company of Religious Leaders, part Kennedy, part King, a voice crying in the Wilderness that there is a better way. In a cruel and ironic twist his willingness to serve, to pray to be commissioned by God for a sacred purpose, has served him up as the perfect scapegoat, sacrificial lamb, whose disgrace and rejection, would prove the righteousness and restore the authority of what have really become false idols, false objects of the most fervid and irrational beliefs.
You're on to something here. We currently are elder/guardians to a 15 year old in California therefore suddenly privy to present-day California state mandated public School curriculum. We've found ourselves taken aback by what they are teaching. The term that best conveys what is causing my consternation is the patent materialism fundamentalism.
I think that scientism is very quickly being seen for what it is - a limited and easily manipulated means of viewing and/or pigeon-holing material phenomena. From my point of view (I'm a former research scientist with a Masters in Science), an increasing number of people are awakening to the immaterial basis of life - consciousness being at its center and far more than electrical impulses flowing down neurons. In my humble opinion Science's days as the central religion of the "enlightened" are numbered thanks to its manipulation by the powers that be. Research into mental telepathy (interestingly involving non-verbal autistic children) challenges the materialism upon which so much science is based.That said, where RFKJr. is concerned, his vilification is understandable only from the perspective of those who truly bought in to the Pandemic paradigm of "vaccines save lives and science is incorruptable," both of which Kennedy and others proved false very early on.
I wish I could respond to each and every one of you, but what I can say is how much I appreciate the many insights you've shared - AND it looks like the tremendous amount of support that RFK Jr. continues to generate has paid off today with the committee sending his nomination on to the full Senate. Let's keep up the good fight for our children and grandchildren's future!
This entry glows and smokes like a sword fresh from the forge as it’s thrust into a basin of water. I’ve been reading Rene Girard. Briefly, his theory is all desire is acquisitive desire, that is, generally we want what others want. This produces envy, rivalry, conflict and finally violence. Rent by the division a society or group reunifies itself by scapegoating a figure whom it sacrifices or murders. (Think the Bacchae, the Gospels, Don Quixote etc.) To my shock and near despair I fear the once great Democratic Party, the party of the Kennedy’s and King, has become a Party populated bottom up and top down composed by people with a single goal: pure power, the grasp and clench of power. But like Sanders in 2016 and Kennedy in 2024 Kennedy exposed the calculus and corruption by power of the entire Party unleashing and exposing the personal competitive furies and rivalries that like sharks lurked ominously just beneath the public surface. Sanders kept his Seat, his wealth, and to some extent, his noble reputation and escaped scapegoat status by selling out. Bobby didn’t. So Democratic power brokers, politicians and partisans have scapegoated him. The attacks are vile, the bitterness boiling, the harangues as perverse and irrational as the taunts and terror of a mob. Hillman’s politics were reactionary, not in political sense, but an aesthetic and psychological one. My Grandmother used to reprove behaviors by sternly saying ‘Don’t be ugly’. That was Hillman’s politics, adversely reacting to anything that was ugly. And the behavior of the Corporate Press (I google RFKJR first thing every morning, so the day regularly starts out with anger) and the Democratic Senators in the Confirmation Hearings was ugly, ugly, ugly. It made me want to turn away as if witnessing some sort of psychological atrocity. It was. Seeing it through a Christian lens about the best I could do is ‘forgive them. They know not what they do’. As some polling showed, which Corporate Media and Pollsters ignored or refused to poll, RFKJR is the one Democrat who could have beaten Trump. That’s the ironic tragedy of it. But, it ain’t over until it’s over. If he is confirmed and accomplishes what all of us supporters are confident he will, 2028 is not that far away. He’ll only be 73.
They know exactly what they were doing. That’s what makes them ugly. But wonderful critique. I know Bobby personally. From the gym crazy enough. Somewhere around 2015 we got into a conversation about vaccines and autism while alternating sets of triceps press-downs. (Wakefield’s persecution, et al) We are casual acquaintances but he did give me his cell # and permission to use his research for “The Real Anthony Fauci” and “Wuhan Cover Up” for my current novel which will be a Covid era tour de force a la Sinclair’s “The Jungle.” I alway tell everyone when his name comes up - and it comes up a lot these days - he’s the smartest person in every room he enters. God Bless this brilliant, imperfect human and grant him the goddam reins!!!
I wonder how these hearings would have went if non of the senators would have been allowed to take any contributions from anyone.
I do think a lot of things coming out of politics are heavily influenced by special interests. But this is not how it should be. The primary focus should always be the people and their well-being.
I wish RFK Jr all the best. He truly is one of a kind who our country and the world desperately need.
I think you're spot-on in your analysis here. This morning I had posted on TwitterX @backtothepeople (Nicole Shanahan initiated X account) #backtothepeople needs a masterclass in the beltway machinations of this congressional hearing. (Amaryllis Fox or somebody?!).; was the opposition [seemed to me utterly disingenuous] just crafting
clickbait for tomorrow's legacy media offerings..
I very much appreciate your unwrapping here, necessarily essentially toward Sensemaking.
The vilification of RFKJR is bipartisan. For example, Bill O'Reilly villified RFKJR on his podcast during the campaign. Similarly, RFKJR has bipartisan support. So the religion RFKJR has rejected is the religion of the medical system rather than the religion of liberalism.
Thank you, Dick. I appreciate your ability to distill lots of information and cut through the noise.
Perhaps James Hillman might've said Kennedy's apostasy is not merely political but actually religious, too.
Our new religion seems to be scientism -- the needy, blind, excessively credulous embrace of anything supposedly scientific (evident in our collective resistance to any skepticism of our current vaccine program, evident in the concerning, now-common phrase "I believe in science," and evident in the Anthony Fauci votive candles, revelatory artifacts of our time) -- and Kennedy is an apostate, a heretic, because he asks questions and he doubts and deconstructs the prevailing religious order. His actions are arguably tantamount to someone telling a devout Christian "God is not real" and then telling that Christian s/he may no longer be able to participate in a particular sacrament.
The bitter irony is that asking questions/doubting and deconstructing the prevailing order *is* actually the scientific way. In other words, one could argue the prevailing scientistic status quo is in fact what's heretical. And that Kennedy -- by making room for what Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of the medical journal "The Lancet," calls “the traditional norms of disinterested inquiry and free expression of opinion" -- is the devout one. (“Asking questions has become forbidden in some circles,” Dr. Makary, the new commissioner of the Food and Drug Commission says. “But asking questions is not the problem, it’s the answer.”)
In sum, the vilification of Kennedy, I'd humbly argue, is so curiously extreme not simply because he threatens powerful industries and the powerful political parties in bed with those industries -- he threatens people's faith and their identity, too.
It is Religion isn’t it? Seems a little off key to call RFKJR a Religious figure but of course he is: his challenge to authority, especially the authority of “settled science” when there is no such thing, his candor about Spirituality as his linchpin and lodestar, his frank admission that he begins each day with a prayer to serve and be of help to the most vulnerable, installs him in the company of Religious Leaders, part Kennedy, part King, a voice crying in the Wilderness that there is a better way. In a cruel and ironic twist his willingness to serve, to pray to be commissioned by God for a sacred purpose, has served him up as the perfect scapegoat, sacrificial lamb, whose disgrace and rejection, would prove the righteousness and restore the authority of what have really become false idols, false objects of the most fervid and irrational beliefs.
You're on to something here. We currently are elder/guardians to a 15 year old in California therefore suddenly privy to present-day California state mandated public School curriculum. We've found ourselves taken aback by what they are teaching. The term that best conveys what is causing my consternation is the patent materialism fundamentalism.
I think that scientism is very quickly being seen for what it is - a limited and easily manipulated means of viewing and/or pigeon-holing material phenomena. From my point of view (I'm a former research scientist with a Masters in Science), an increasing number of people are awakening to the immaterial basis of life - consciousness being at its center and far more than electrical impulses flowing down neurons. In my humble opinion Science's days as the central religion of the "enlightened" are numbered thanks to its manipulation by the powers that be. Research into mental telepathy (interestingly involving non-verbal autistic children) challenges the materialism upon which so much science is based.That said, where RFKJr. is concerned, his vilification is understandable only from the perspective of those who truly bought in to the Pandemic paradigm of "vaccines save lives and science is incorruptable," both of which Kennedy and others proved false very early on.
I wish I could respond to each and every one of you, but what I can say is how much I appreciate the many insights you've shared - AND it looks like the tremendous amount of support that RFK Jr. continues to generate has paid off today with the committee sending his nomination on to the full Senate. Let's keep up the good fight for our children and grandchildren's future!
“Even questioning whether vaccines might need better testing before being jabbed into people’s arms is anathema, breaking a taboo…”
They doth protest too much as vaccines are not tested against neutral placebos but rather a previous iteration of itself.
Don’t tell that to Paul Offit or Bow Tie Hotez as it might upset the grift.
This entry glows and smokes like a sword fresh from the forge as it’s thrust into a basin of water. I’ve been reading Rene Girard. Briefly, his theory is all desire is acquisitive desire, that is, generally we want what others want. This produces envy, rivalry, conflict and finally violence. Rent by the division a society or group reunifies itself by scapegoating a figure whom it sacrifices or murders. (Think the Bacchae, the Gospels, Don Quixote etc.) To my shock and near despair I fear the once great Democratic Party, the party of the Kennedy’s and King, has become a Party populated bottom up and top down composed by people with a single goal: pure power, the grasp and clench of power. But like Sanders in 2016 and Kennedy in 2024 Kennedy exposed the calculus and corruption by power of the entire Party unleashing and exposing the personal competitive furies and rivalries that like sharks lurked ominously just beneath the public surface. Sanders kept his Seat, his wealth, and to some extent, his noble reputation and escaped scapegoat status by selling out. Bobby didn’t. So Democratic power brokers, politicians and partisans have scapegoated him. The attacks are vile, the bitterness boiling, the harangues as perverse and irrational as the taunts and terror of a mob. Hillman’s politics were reactionary, not in political sense, but an aesthetic and psychological one. My Grandmother used to reprove behaviors by sternly saying ‘Don’t be ugly’. That was Hillman’s politics, adversely reacting to anything that was ugly. And the behavior of the Corporate Press (I google RFKJR first thing every morning, so the day regularly starts out with anger) and the Democratic Senators in the Confirmation Hearings was ugly, ugly, ugly. It made me want to turn away as if witnessing some sort of psychological atrocity. It was. Seeing it through a Christian lens about the best I could do is ‘forgive them. They know not what they do’. As some polling showed, which Corporate Media and Pollsters ignored or refused to poll, RFKJR is the one Democrat who could have beaten Trump. That’s the ironic tragedy of it. But, it ain’t over until it’s over. If he is confirmed and accomplishes what all of us supporters are confident he will, 2028 is not that far away. He’ll only be 73.
They know exactly what they were doing. That’s what makes them ugly. But wonderful critique. I know Bobby personally. From the gym crazy enough. Somewhere around 2015 we got into a conversation about vaccines and autism while alternating sets of triceps press-downs. (Wakefield’s persecution, et al) We are casual acquaintances but he did give me his cell # and permission to use his research for “The Real Anthony Fauci” and “Wuhan Cover Up” for my current novel which will be a Covid era tour de force a la Sinclair’s “The Jungle.” I alway tell everyone when his name comes up - and it comes up a lot these days - he’s the smartest person in every room he enters. God Bless this brilliant, imperfect human and grant him the goddam reins!!!
‘forgive them. They know not what they do’
Oh, yes indeed they DO know. They make money off of it, they grift and block transparency.
I wonder how these hearings would have went if non of the senators would have been allowed to take any contributions from anyone.
I do think a lot of things coming out of politics are heavily influenced by special interests. But this is not how it should be. The primary focus should always be the people and their well-being.
I wish RFK Jr all the best. He truly is one of a kind who our country and the world desperately need.
I think you're spot-on in your analysis here. This morning I had posted on TwitterX @backtothepeople (Nicole Shanahan initiated X account) #backtothepeople needs a masterclass in the beltway machinations of this congressional hearing. (Amaryllis Fox or somebody?!).; was the opposition [seemed to me utterly disingenuous] just crafting
clickbait for tomorrow's legacy media offerings..
I very much appreciate your unwrapping here, necessarily essentially toward Sensemaking.
A thoughtful piece, Dick. Can you please share the link to the FEC data?
hi Madhava -
here is link to Open Secrets where much of the statistics came from.
https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/summary?cycle=All&ind=H04&recipdetail=M&sortorder=U
The vilification of RFKJR is bipartisan. For example, Bill O'Reilly villified RFKJR on his podcast during the campaign. Similarly, RFKJR has bipartisan support. So the religion RFKJR has rejected is the religion of the medical system rather than the religion of liberalism.
As truth is the first casualty of war. politics has no place for truth.
What does not kill us makes us stronger. He will win at the end.