The Theses of Glendale

To Name it is to Claim it

Credit NBC News

Truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as self-evident. Attributed to Arthur Schopenhauer

You’ve got a nasty boil on your arm. Ugly, inflamed, painful. You look at it, wishing it would disappear. You look away, imagining it gone. Then one day you wake up, confront that boil, and say, ‘What the hell.’ You lance the darn thing, acknowledging the unsightly mess to come, yet buoyed by the prospect of catharsis and recovery.

That’s what happened in Arizona a few days ago when Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. suspended his campaign for the presidency and endorsed Donald Trump. While the latter may have been newsworthy, the former was the noteworthy part, as Kennedy proceeded to list his reasons - in painfully eloquent fashion - for dropping out. 

His cri de coeur began with a detailing of the skullduggery of his erstwhile party -  a party all but synonymous with the Kennedy name - to keep him off ballots and debate stages; to legally stalk and censor him, while the media obligingly piled on by denying his candidacy the oxygen of air time and audience. 

Kennedy went on to call out the Democrats as spendthrift warmongers, indifferent to the capture of the regulatory apparatus by the leviathans of Food, Pharma, Tech, and Finance - just to name a few of the behemoths astride the globalized landscape. Symbolic in the wake of all this gangsterish behavior is the ruin visited upon a populace poisoned by cheap food and lethal “vaccines.” The wolf of the will to power garbed in the sheep’s clothing of protecting democracy.

Kennedy’s address may well have been the most consequential political speech in a generation, but it was really more than just a speech. It was a manifesto, not just outlining the extent of the rot corrupting the political system and oozing from there into the corners and crevices of American life, but, on the upside, signaling a way forward to a healthier, saner, and more meaningful future. Make America Healthy Again - in every way imaginable.

In Glendale last week Kennedy really nailed it.

Joy and Lunacy

For his troubles, Kennedy was, of course, dubbed a heretic and traitor. Family members were called in to express their disgust and do their shaming part. “How dare he…think for himself.”

The Democrats, after all, are running another scorched earth campaign, straight out of the Alinsky/ Lenin playbook. Stay on message. Don’t debate the opponent, bury him. Ask him when he stopped beating his wife. They are a party, after all, commandeered by a collection of geriatric commissars, useful idiots, and, in more than a few instances, outright lunatics, eager to trash the opponent as they proclaim themselves to be agents of joy. 

Perhaps such a high level of delusion and paranoia was in order for a party prepared to re-run a senile octogenarian for president, and then, failing that, put forward an empty-headed figure who, to date, has failed to garner a single primary vote, answer a single question from the press, nor put forth a single serious policy proposal. And most recently, she’s even been getting squirrely about the terms of the one scheduled debate, edging, it would appear, toward the exit. Imagine, running your whole campaign to “save democracy” on “Mute.” That would be a first, something even an Orwell or Huxley couldn’t cook up.

Such a sketchy performance could only proceed with the compliance of a formerly free press swallowed whole by the apparatus of the state to serve as its propaganda arm. It brings to mind the defining mantra of fascism expressed by its very godfather, Il Duce, himself.: “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”

That’s pretty rich stuff for people who are in the reflexive habit of slapping the “f” label on Donald Trump, whose tenure in the White House seemed to lack those features, with the monolithic administrative state doing its best to oppose and exclude him. So beyond hypocrisy, what the Democrats bring to our national psychodrama is persistent denial of reality, and some serious projection summoned from a deep, collective shadow.

Dusk Descends

The guts of Kennedy’s speech called out, finally, the proverbial elephant in the room, namely, that in lockstep with our broken democracy is a citizenry broken in body, mind, and spirit. Our people have been sickened by processed foods, maintained on pharmaceuticals, and consigned to the debilitating twilight of chronic disease. Most heart-rending of all, Kennedy noted, is the parlous state of childrens’ health, portending nothing less than a national security issue. 

This is the ugly truth, the puss, inside the inflamed  boil. And this is what gave Kennedy’s speech its gravitas. In it there was a faint echo of “Ask Not” contained in his uncle’s memorable oratory some 60 years ago.

(As an aside…I was in grade school in Washington, D.C. when Kennedy’s uncle came to Washington. One of JFK’s actions was to institute something called the President's Council on Youth Fitness as Kennedy was concerned about the marginal health of American school kids back then. We were required to do a certain number of pullups, situps, and other exercises I can’t recall. Imagine if JFK were to return to the present day. I fear he would be unable to recognize - not only his own party - but many of his fellow citizens and be heartbroken by the poor health of so many young people.)

More Anxiety Please

When a population is so enfeebled things can go one of two ways. First, people become more pliable, more suggestible, and, therefore, more easily influenced. They become eager, desperate even, to keep grasping the hand that will keep feeding them, even if what’s being dished out is thin gruel.

On the other hand, they reach the breaking point, summon their strength, and push back. They are tired of being lied to and led on. Perhaps that explains why Trump’s unscripted exhortation, “Fight, fight, fight,” in Butler, Pennsylvania last month carried such resonance.

In a sense, the election of 2024 is a referendum on such a choice. We have arrived at the fork in the road. Are the masses too weary, passive, and distracted to reject the steady diet of lies and bullshit so cynically fed them by the managerial class and its party overseers? Or are they prepared to speak truth to that power, reclaim personal sovereignty, and give voice to the authentic self?

Back in 2016, when the country was subjected to its first dumpster fire of an election, some saw the choice as between depression (Clinton) and anxiety (Trump.) The country, in my view, made the least worst choice. The Republic continued to survive - and even thrive by some measures, something the Democrats will never cop to.

And how did the losers respond? By not joining ranks for the good of the country, but by throwing all manner of crap at the winner for the next eight years in order to bury him and regain - and retain - power they considered their birthright.

In 2020 the country faced a similar choice, and this time it (apparently) chose depression. And the result from that choice is manifest in the subsequent degradation of American life on many fronts. This is Kamala Harris’ and Joe Biden’s legacy, which, of course, dictates that she run the Potemkin Village campaign she is currently conducting. Or to mix metaphors: Harris’ is the Oakland of candidacies - which, ironically and fittingly perhaps, happens to be her birthplace.

The 2024 election is the rubber match, the tie breaker that could make or break the country. Me? I’m back for another helping of anxiety, please. The alternative is too depressing to contemplate.