“All right, we are two nations.”
– John Dos Passos
A couple of months back, I had the distinct pleasure of spending the evening with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. He was in Kansas City for a conference of the Kansans for Health Freedom. After the conference, Kennedy appeared at a campaign event at a suburban restaurant, which is where I met him and had a chance to speak with him at length.
Not only was it the first Democratic fundraiser I ever attended, it was the first campaign event where I actually had a chance to speak one on one with a candidate for the presidency. (I’ve been involved in Republican politics since I handed out leaflets for Barry Goldwater, later serving as my state’s Republican Committeeman.) I can tell you from long experience that the invariable drill for fund raisers is for the candidate to give a stump speech and then pose for photographs. Q&A’s have been all but eliminated, let alone the chance to interact personally with the candidate, face to face.
The event drew about 60 people and was held outside. I was struck by how easy it would have been for someone intending to harm Kennedy just to walk onto the grounds off the golf course surrounding the restaurant. I was “wanded” by a body guard when I checked in at a folding table at the entrance. He had a charming Irish brogue and was apparently from De Becker & Associates, the security firm Kennedy had to hire because the government refuses to give him Secret Service protection.
A week later a suspicious character, carrying two guns and fake U.S. Marshall’s credentials, was arrested at a Kennedy event in L.A. He was immediately released, without any bond required.There could not be a more stark reminder of how heavily the deck is stacked against anyone who dares to speak out against the Deep State.
Knowing the tragic history of Robert Kennedy’s family with political violence, the Biden Administration made a knowing and willful decision to put his personal safety at risk.
The event started right on time-almost a rarity for political functions-and I was able to talk with Kennedy about issues of personal interest to me, as did most of the other guests.
Kennedy spoke for 1 1/2 hours on subjects ranging from the war in Ukraine, government censorship of social media, the immigration crisis on our southern border, the plight of the working class, and the unchallenged power of investment firms like Blackrock, Vanguard, and State Street over every facet of American life.
To give but one example, Kennedy told of the success of the big financial houses buying up single family homes as rental units. Something like 60% of the housing stock will be completely owned in a few years. Individuals are being priced out of the market by financial giants paying cash.
He spoke with passion and conviction, and with a sincerity that was palpable. Many people were moved to tears. He spoke without notes or a teleprompter, in complete sentences and with references that were erudite yet accessible to the average person. I thought right away of his father’s speech in Indianapolis in 1968, the night word of Martin Luther King’s assassination was received. I also recalled Bobby, Sr. giving the Landon Lecture at Kansas State University, where R.F.K. Sr. won over a red state audience at a conservative university with the force of his eloquence.
One of the people in attendance that night had been in the audience to hear R.F.K. Sr. in Manhattan as a student at KSU in 1968. He had RFK Sr.’s signed autograph with the date on a piece of paper of the Landon Lecture, 3-15-68. The 70-plus year old former student, at the dinner with his grandson, gave the paper with his Kennedy Sr.’s autograph to R.F.K. Jr. for him to sign and date. Talk about a powerful moment!
Every day we heard of new efforts by the Biden administration to silence Robert Kennedy by slandering and discrediting him with the full connivance of the American media. Every day we heard of parallel efforts by the Democratic Party to deny RFK, Jr. any chance of even getting on the ballot during the primaries.
This is “open, notorious and hostile” as we say in the law, with no attempt at concealment. Kennedy’s protests have been ignored and the regime’s allies in the press have sought out Kennedy family members to slander and ridicule him. In talking with people who still consider themselves Kennedy Democrats from Massachusetts, I have been amazed at the loathing with which RFK Jr. is now regarded. Yet not one such person can give me a specific policy position RFK Jr. has taken which would so alienate them.
The closest thing to a coherent argument is that his skepticism about government vaccination policies is beyond the pale. My response would be that RFK has recovered millions of dollars suing big pharmaceutical and chemical companies for putting dangerous consumer products into commerce without adequate trials and testing. (He was introduced that night by a lawyer who was his co-counsel in many of these cases.) Knowing the difficulty of bringing and winning such cases, I think he has earned his right to skepticism about big government and big pharma.
I would also suggest that he knows a little more about the topic than a 20-something reporter from the K.C. Star, who relentlessly attacks him as “discredited”, “conspiracy minded” and “debunked” in her article about his visit here.
Driving home that night, I was profoundly moved by Kennedy’s words and his persona. I thought of his courage in fighting the Democratic Party Establishment and his own family dynasty, the closest thing we have had in this country to royalty, just for carrying on what he honestly believes to be his father and uncle’s heritage. I thought of all the people from all walks of life whose lives have been destroyed for protesting a stolen election; from constitutional scholars to national heroes of 9/11 to pizza parlor workers, many sitting in jail without bond and without access to counsel. I thought often of the suffering of the people of East Palestine, Ohio, ignored by an indifferent government. Finally, I heard a not so distant echo of the words of another great American spirit, the writer John Dos Passos:
“They have clubbed us off the streets they are stronger they are rich they hire and fire the politicians the newspaper editors the old judges the small men with reputations the college presidents the ward heelers (listen businessmen college presidents judges America will not forget her betrayers) they hire the men with guns the uniforms the police cars the patrol wagons
All right you have won, you will kill the brave men our friends tonight
America our nation has been beaten by strangers who have turned our language inside out who have the clean words our fathers have spoke and made them slimy and foul
Their hired men sit on the judge’s bench; they sit back with their feet on the tables under the dome of the State House; they are ignorant of our beliefs; they have the dollars, the guns, the armed forces, the power plants.
They have built the electric chair and hired the executioner to throw the switch
“All right, we are two nations” The Big Money, 1936
If Bobby jr is so right why does he have to cheat? Just like a republican, can’t win on policy, so they cheat.
DNC Files Federal Complaint Alleging RFK Jr.’s Super PAC Is Working Too Closely With His Campaign
The Democratic National Committee has filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission, accusing the presidential candidate of a “ballot access scheme.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Democratic National Committee on Friday filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission, accusing presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. of a “ballot access scheme” that it argues constitutes illegal coordination with a super PAC supporting his independent bid for the White House.
The committee alleges that the Super PAC American Values 2024 is working to collect signatures to ensure Kennedy is on the November ballot in key states, but will have to “integrate their expenses” with the campaign in ways that violate federal election rules in order to do so.
That’s because, the DNC argues, many states — including Arizona, Illinois and Michigan — have rules that candidates or their campaigns be the ones collecting ballot signatures, meaning Kennedy’s campaign will have to violate federal rules to meet state requirements.
“They simply cannot comply with federal law and state law at the same time,” DNC legal counsel Bob Lenhard said on a conference call with reporters.
Tim Mellon, a major donor to Donald Trump, gave American Values $15 million last year, according to federal filings. The DNC alleges that those donations suggest that top supporters of the former president are using Kennedy’s candidacy to try and siphon support from President Joe Biden ’s reelection bid.
On the call with reporters, the DNC argued that “Trump and his megadonors are propping up RFK Jr. as a stalking horse.”
The complaint comes amid increasingly Democratic worry about third-party candidates potentially siphoning support away from Biden. Kennedy began his White House campaign last year as a challenger to Biden in the Democratic primary only to later switch to a third-party bid, though, meaning he could also draw some would-be Trump supporters.
In a statement, Kennedy’s campaign called the DNC’s accusations “a nonissue being raised by a partisan political entity that seems to be increasingly concerned with its own candidate and viability.” It also said that it had “yet to receive any signatures from American Values PAC or any PAC” but takes “our FEC obligation seriously and are not permitted to tell PACs what they should and should not do with their money.”
American Values said in its own statement that it has been working independently from the campaign to get him on the ballot in 12 states and dismissed the DNC complaint as “political games.”
“The DNC wants to deny millions of people their basic constitutional voting rights in a relentless onslaught against democracy,” said Tony Lyons, the group’s co-founder. He added that “the Biden administration and the DNC clearly find democracy inconvenient, want to stifle any dissenting opinions and don’t believe that their candidate can win a free, open and fair election.”
Filing complaints with the FEC for improper coordination with campaigns isn’t uncommon. In December, a campaign watchdog group filed a complaint alleging that Never Back Down, a super PAC supporting Republican Ron DeSantis, was coordinating too closely with the Florida governor’s since-suspended presidential campaign.
But Lenhard said the DNC took the unusual step of filing a complaint against Kennedy itself because what was occurring was “striking” and “dramatic” given that some states mandate candidates or their campaigns collect ballot signatures.
“The state law element adds an extra level of legal concern,” Lenhard said.
Longest comment ever?
Filing FEC complaints against your opponents is a common campaign tactic. Kind of like filing myriad criminal charges and civil suits in friendly forums so they have to waste money and energy defending themselves on baseless charges. Why don’t you take an actual position Kennedy has taken or a statement he has made and show why it is wrong? Staff turn-over or DNC lawfare mean nothing as far as the merits of a candidate goes. Or are you prepared to accept as Gospel the latest Special Counsel’s report that Biden is too far gone mentally to be charged with a crime that has a required element of intent? RFK’s real crime is that his candidacy hurts the Democratic ticket- nothing more,nothing less.
Pretty profound. Although I’m moved, I’m not convinced that anyone with deep sniveling progressive roots could change my conservative beliefs. I too was moved by Barry Goldwater at the national Young Republicans convention in San Francisco. I came home to Albuquerque and asked my father’s advice and he pulled out of a drawer a Landon Knox button! Since then I’ve never voted for anyone except a Republican. That’s my story and I’m sticking with it. Maybe RFK Jr. can turn the tide for just thinking Conservatives Republicans. Of which he might well think about converting too.
Yes, we are two nations – rather, a single nation with two governments, a “double government” as described by Bagehot in the 1850s in the UK, and by Prof. Michael J Glennon of the Fletcher School at Tufts University (see “National Security and Double Government”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKsItbj49K0a). Now what – where do we go from here?
“Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of today.”
― Theodore Roosevelt
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr could be a good guy and he could be a Wolf in disguise. Words are words and talk is cheap when a politician or candidate gets up to speak. In the end they say to you what you want to hear while all knowingly knowing that what they say is talk and carrys no promises that will be kept.
Then there is that word Democrat which says it all to me.
This is a truly insightful essay. RFK, Jr. is very different from Biden and Obama. He has more in common with JFK, RFK, Ronald Reagan, and Trump. And that is a good thing. Biden is truly the worst president in the last 100 years.
RFK Jr. is worthy of our support in many ways and for many reasons. Thank you Dwight!
You lost me at deep state. Good gawd.
What if I said “The Military Industrial Complex” or “The Intelligence Community” or “The Permanent Government”or other terms you liberals are still comfortable with?
Go for it, Dwight!
The residential real estate market is ~$100 trillion.
I don’t think the investment houses have $60 trillion of cash to invest. It seems Blackrock was looking to invest $120 billion.
That being said, I think there should be a cap on the # of rental houses any single corporation can hold.
The real cuprits of the tyranny going on and escalating in the U.S. are the mass majority of the American people. They are and have been getting the tyranny that they deserve for allowing it.
When you are as wrong consistently as Dwight is you can see why there is not much left of Bob’s support staff:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13083157/robert-f-kennedy-jr-campaign-chaos-staffers-quit.html
Huh?
Kansas Karl!
I’m trying to follow the logic-such as it is-here. Because I am “wrong” (factually inaccurate? Or just hold different views than you? ), RFK’s staff has a lot of people quitting. I don’t have any role in the campaign,have only met the candidate once,but have found him persuasive. What causal connection is there between me and the challenges Kennedy faces running an independent campaign for president?
Oh Dwight, unable to see yet you blather on.
You wrote a monster piece about how the DOJ was encouraging citizens to turn in to the FBI those who tried to overturn the duely elected government on Jan 6. You whined like a injured dog, yet wait for decades local governments have offered rewards for those who turn in those who do the crimes, you know the TIPS hotline. Yep common practice for law enforment, wait that is for the common crook of color, not the fine white folks trying to overturn legal election results. Your racist bias shines through.
Hunter Biden, all you repubs got your panties in a wad over this one and the truth is the Russion played you all like a drum. Over 5 years of “investigation” by the repubs finest and every witness has disputed the allegations made by the Trump dick suckers. Yep another of your finest bits of nonsense.
Now you want to pimp RFK jr as your new savior, with your track record this is another big ass loser.
So stand guard in your front yard, your failure in politics is showing.
Holy smokes, Kansas Karl, who kicked you out of the bed and in the groin to elicit this mini rant?
OK, look – I’ve known Dwight for a while, so clearly I’m a little biased – but sheesh!
You have him making “injured dog” noises, overturning legit elections, disrespecting that prince among men, Hunter Biden, pimping EFK Jr. and performing fellatio on Donald Trump.
What else are we missing here? Sure you didn’t leave anything out?
Thank the lord, we have an upstanding, even tempered, truth teller like you to help use though our veil of tears!
What do we owe ya?
You miss the whole point of what I said. I never mentioned the cash payments to tipsters to turn people in for January 6th. Why state the obvious? This has been a long-standing practice.What I specifically focused on is the new fad for turning people in for reasons of political revenge and personal retribution.
As for my post on RFK ,Jr.,why don’t you take issue with some position he has taken? Cheap personal insults don’t convince anyone. Finally, what does the arrest of a paid(ahem)informant have to do with anything else in your comment,which I thought was about Robert Kennedy? The FBI should have investigated this witness four years ago,not ignored him.(Isn’t the timing of his arrest interesting?) Yes,people will say anything for money and this is why hearsay is considered unreliable. The bank records showing the unexplained receipt of $25 million by the Biden family from foreign oligarchs are not so easily dismissed.
Some random comment about money without proof is typical right wing “evidence” of the Biden Crime family, yet NO ONE has testified to that effect, or provided actual bank statements, only dick pics of Hunter. I would turn in my brother if he tried to stop the legal transfer of power, and your saying it is for political revenge and personal retribution shows your personal attitude, what would you daddy say about your support of Russia?
RFK jr is just that, a junior trying to make something out of his name, ( his super pac did him no good with the ad to try and connect him and his smarter and sharper uncles), but like most right wingers, just keeps on stuffing his foot in his mouth.
Unwilling to understand that American does it’s best work when it walks down the middle of the street, you follow proven illegal and immoral paths, siding with those willing to overthrow the government on the whim of a narcissistic power hungry wanna be dictator. If you don’t like America as it evolves MOVE, get out find somewhere where your hatred of freedom for anyone other than white privileged morons is celebrated.
The House Committee has received via subpoena thousands of pages of bank statements,cancelled checks,and wire transfer advices reflecting a number of different bank accounts controlled by Biden family members. Some of the critical cancelled checks showing payments directly to Joe Biden have been made public. No one disputes these payments but seem to be relying on the fact that most of the payments were funneled to other family members’ personal bank accounts.However,just because the bribe is paid indirectly to a close family member rather than directly to the official being bribed doesn’t make it any less a bribe. Just ask Senator Bob Menendez,whose wife got “gifts”,including a Porsche, from Egyptian lobbyists. Tell me again , what did the Biden family do to earn this $25,000,000?
At various times in recent years,the US Capital has been occupied by left wing groups ranging from feminists to Hamas supporters. Opponents of Justice Kavanaugh tried to stop his swearing in by forcing their way into the US Supreme Court Building. In 2020 the White House was surrounded by 5,000 BLM demonstrators,many of whom were arrested when they scaled the fence surrounding the building. As obnoxious as they were,these protests were not an attempt to overthrow the US government by force. Nor was January 6th.
You want to know what an insurrection is? On Easter Day 1916 over a thousand Irish nationalists seized a large portion of Central Dublin,including the Law Courts and the Post Office. (There were simultaneous attacks throughout Ireland on six other British garrisons. ) Barricades were set up in the streets and there was heavy fighting between the two sides,including naval gunfire and other artillery used to destroy the Irish nationalists’ strong points. In the end,hundreds of people,including civilian bystanders, were killed in an unsuccessful armed insurrection intended to establish an Irish Republic and drive Britain out of Ireland.January 6th was not an insurrection.
I’m glad to hear that you would turn in your family members for having beliefs different than your own, and justify it by making a capital offense- no pun intended-out of actions which your side takes routinely without a moment’s hesitation. Of the thousand people arrested for January 6th ,more that three hundred were turned in by ex-wives and ex-husbands,as well as former romantic partners. Do you really expect me to believe that this was motivated by anything other than personal spite? Finally, I wanted to point out you can never post anything that doesn’t include an allegation of racism,even though it has nothing to do with the subject at hand. In fact,the entire range of progressive commentary can be reduced to three statements;”Trump is an asshole!”,”You’re a racist!”,and “Where’d you hear that? Fox News?” You’re nothing if not predictable!