Happy Fourth of July.
I’ve been thinking about RFK Jr.’s recent rise. Besides his vaccine opposition and criticism of “big pharma,” positions for which I have sympathy, I find I’m against most of what I hear him say. It just seems to me that he could win, or, at least, that he’s being propped up by voices I generally listen to. Without really paying strict attention, I have the idea in my head that he’s reasonable, likeable; he puts all the other candidates to shame.
Maybe that’s my real problem: What so many laud, and what so many disparage, I don’t. I think people really do find RFK Jr. more palatable than the other candidates—I’d certainly take him over Biden—but he’s not my ideal. In fact, it is his appropriate and reasonable mien which are the most off-putting to me.
I don’t think this is a time for understanding or tolerance; these are not virtues in and of themselves, and that sort of appropriateness seems inappropriate in the context of a blatant hatred of normalcy. The forces warring with family and tradition are to be stamped out, not parleyed with.
The Declaration of Independence was both a separation and a joining. It was a defining: The colonies unified in their severing from the crown. In our own day, I think a definition needs to be given: What are we as Americans? RFK Jr. isn’t it, at least not for me, but I might compromise with him, given the alternatives.
Tale Told 