Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has the Leftist political and media elites deeply rattled, and that’s utterly delightful.
Imagine this scenario: a wildly unpopular and manifestly incapable president is running, however haltingly, for reelection. Initially he seemed like a lock, but then he encountered an unexpected challenge from a scion of an old American political family, a man who defies all the conventional categorization of political candidates and has set the establishment on its ear by challenging not only the superannuated corruptocrat in the White House but many of that establishment’s most cherished assumptions.
It would make a great novel, but it’s real life, and it’s an exhilarating reminder that America is still a republic, still a place where the elites can be challenged at all, however entrenched they may appear to be. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has not only challenged the elites, he has frightened them to the core, and that’s wonderful to see. The latest indication of how much of a threat they consider him to be comes from the Los Angeles Times, always a reliable organ for far-Left propaganda. The Left Coast Times is so scared of RFK Jr. that on Monday, it proclaimed, “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a threat to your health — and our democracy.”
Now, this is absurd on its face and an insult to the intelligence of the handful of remaining Los Angeles Times readers. The Left has now become so divorced from reality that Times writer Michael Hiltzik would have us believe that a contested Democrat party primary is bad for “our democracy.” But a full-out coronation of Old Joe to serve another four years as the figurehead for the shadowy individuals who are really running things? Why, that would be “our democracy” personified. One candidate, inevitable outcome? Good democracy! Two candidates, unclear outcome? Bad democracy!
For the millionth time, we don’t have a “democracy,” we have a republic. But the key point here is that, once again, Leftists have confirmed the fact that when they talk about “our democracy,” they don’t actually mean anything democratic at all. They are referring not to any kind of democracy, but to their own hegemony. The only “democracy” that involves one candidate receiving the forced adulation of the masses and reelection by acclimation from all those who don’t want to end up in the gulag is the type that is practiced in states such as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, also known as North Korea.
The North Koreans will happily explain to you how the personality cult of Kim Jong Un is the very embodiment of the popular will and thus the quintessential expression of “democracy,” and that’s what Michael Hiltzik and the Los Angeles Times have in mind for the folks at home. “Democracy” means we all learn to love Old Joe, or whomever the elites decide ultimately to replace him with. It doesn’t mean that we actually have a choice between different candidates, unless those candidates all have elite approval, and RFK Jr. decidedly does not.
Hiltzik laments that Kennedy’s “family connection appears to have brought attention to his campaign” and wonders whether “the dazzlement of the Kennedy name will be sufficient to blind voters to his history of promoting spectacularly dangerous health policies through misrepresentations and outright lies.” Misrepresentations and outright lies according to whom? Why, according to those trustworthy people who assured us that Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation, of course!
Hiltzik likewise claims that Kennedy is spreading “misinformation and disinformation.” He recounts that “after vaccine expert Peter Hotez of the Baylor College of Medicine tweeted a link to a comprehensive takedown of the Spotify webcast” of Joe Rogan’s interview with RFK Jr., “Rogan challenged Hotez to participate in a public debate with Kennedy. Hotez has quite properly refused.”
Related: YouTube Goes to Bat for Biden, Removes Jordan Peterson Interview of RFK Jr.
Quite properly? This LA Times piece is elitism on stilts. In Michael Hiltzik’s world, RFK Jr. is wrong about vaccines because the Left’s chosen experts say so, but those experts have no obligation to explain themselves to the masses or defend their positions from challenge. We of the great unwashed are expected to submit meekly and trust the superior judgment of our moral and intellectual superiors. If they had been right about the COVID vaccines, they might have a case. But they weren’t. If they hadn’t lied about Hunter’s laptop, they might have a case. But they did. If they weren’t insisting now that mutilation, psychological derangement, and pharmaceutical dependence must be pushed upon children, they might have a case. But they are.
And so Michael Hiltzik and the Los Angeles Times should be put on notice: the elites they want us to trust blindly have forfeited that trust. And thus they have also forfeited the right to anoint the next president. The American people demand a say in the matter. That’s what really deserves to be called “our democracy,” or more precisely, our republic.
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