I had an Uncle Gerry and he’d come over the house now and again with some wild tales about “The Old Days” and “WW Two”. He was politically incorrect, sometimes vulgar and had an unusual sense of humor, but we thought he was a hoot and I actually learned a lot from him. He was a “character” and embodied what I think of as an “American original”. He wasn’t the paradigm of virtue, but he worked every week of his life since he was old enough to ride a bicycle, had learned a great trade and had become a world-class expert in every facet of it, had raised a healthy family and made sure his kids were educated and employed. All in all, what was there not to like?
In his youth, he’d been a bit of a rake and his reputation with the ladies would not have earned him any merit badges at scout meetings. Every single one of his War stories involved some fraulein or mademoiselle—often several—and some compromising situation not standard fare for dinner conversation. He was not a world class political thinker, but he had his opinions about every single person who was ever mentioned in a newspaper, and they usually were less than complimentary. More often than not, he turned out to be right.
I can hardly think of Donald Trump without invoking the spirit of my Uncle Gerry. I love them both for the same reasons. And I would hesitate to vote for them as public officials for the same reasons. Not to say that I’d never vote for them. But I’d have to think about it.
As solid as his overall message was—the much lampooned “Make America Great Again”—and as much good as he did the economy (especially in light of the disaster that followed), he let the Democratic machine (and the Republican machine) lead him around by the nose for most of his term and was somehow bamboozled into some of the worst cabinet appointments I can remember in my considerable experience as a casual observer of bad government (until Joe got in and set the bar still lower). His general unfamiliarity with the workings of the federal government, his Devil-may-care attitude towards the rules of the road and his chronic inability to take any kind of advice made his last year in office a courtroom soap opera. As his presidential authority waned and jurisprudent entropy took over the Oval Office, it was clear that he was no longer in charge of anything that mattered and might never have been in charge.
His supporters had undergone the usual lefty media transformation from middle-of-the-road Americans to mentally deficient trailer park reactionaries in their red MAGA hats sitting in the beds of their Ford F-250’s waiting for night to fall so they could break out the white hoods and start a bonfire. The small fraction that understood they’d been marginalized were pretty mad about it, but most of them remained clueless and this status quo remains to this day. Trump has no strategy for pulling himself out of this courtroom reality television series he’s fallen into, and neither the progressive media nor the oh-so incredibly impartial judicial system shows any sign of giving him a weekend off for the next year. His people will still go to the polls for him, but his people will take along very few independents, an increasingly small fraction of Republicans and zero Democrats. And, in the unlikely event of a Trump victory, what difference would it make? His rhetoric indicates he’s learned nothing from his first term. No new policy ideas, no new approach to the enemies in our government on both sides of the aisle who will do absolutely nothing in four years but booby-trap his every step and vilify his every word.
Thus, since no one else is running (unless you count the haggard marionette the Democrats insist they’re supporting again), Robert F. Kennedy Jr seems a viable alternative. Even if you didn’t like him, he’s still worth considering. But, if you actually listen to him for fifteen minutes, you discover that—agree or not—he’s insightful, logical and very interesting for a man who doesn’t have the greatest speaking voice. I am way to the Alt-Right and I can’t even find anything to really disagree with on his environmental positions. As a libertarian, I am thrilled to meet a candidate who is sincere about eviscerating the Deep State military machine and giving the world a chance for real peace.
This is a trained analytical thinker and courtroom boxer who will almost always be the smartest guy in the room. The fact that he’s running for an office that killed his uncle and his father should testify to his courage. When you hear him talking about clean water and bad chemicals and world peace, you know from his record that these are not just talking points his campaign staff handed him to parrot in front of a microphone. This is what he’s been doing with his time since law school.
Whether he has a snowball’s chance in Hell of attaining the Oval Office is anybody’s guess, but I think it’s worth a shot and I am willing to do what little I can to increase his odds of winning. Much as I’d love to see a younger and more politically savvy Donald Trump spend another four years yelling at every passing Democrat, the fact is that his day has come and gone. He still has a lot to say and I’m sure he’ll say it. But his party is every bit the corrupt hulk of a bygone era that the loyal opposition is. Though unburdened by the silly LGBTQ Alphabet soup nonsense, the Republicans are as buried in the Deep State as Uncle Joe and as cozy with the defense contractors as Raytheon’s Lloyd Austin. Neither party can credibly claim moral superiority on any front and not one of them has demonstrated the vision to even understand any of our country’s overwhelming problems, much less to solve them.
Like it or not, we need to let another Kennedy into the White House. It won’t be Camelot and nobody’s going to be singing the “PT-109” but, hey, his wife is cute and his campaign manager is really smart. Who knows? Maybe it’ll be fun.