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mind that he would make a great one. I've listened to many of his AAR "Ring of Fire" shows, and he is brilliant, passionate and real. There is not a single compromised, corporatized blood cell in his body, in so far as I can tell from listening to many broadcasts and reading what he's written. And I have a pretty good bullshit detector. I lived through all that in the '60s--voting for a "peace" candidate for president, my first vote, in 1964, for LBJ, and getting 2 million slaughtered in Vietnam as my reward. My first political activism was for RFK Jr.'s uncle, JFK, when I was 16. I have seen all of my political heroes assassinated, in the space of five years: JFK, RFK, MLK. And I have been witness to everything since then--the descent of our country into Corporate Rule, and now into Fascism, despite many noble souls fighting against these things--as an activist, public advocate on the environment and political volunteer. I have seen every type of politician--the good, the bad and the ugly--walk across our national stage.
My sense of RFK Jr. is that he is 100% genuine, and very much in the tradition of his father, a champion of democracy and an advocate for the poor, and for the great American progressive majority.
But, my friends, we cannot take another Kennedy assassination. We just can't. The country would be ripped to shreds this time. The forces that took down his uncle, his father and the great Martin Luther King, have been re-empowered within and outside of our government. I have little doubt that they killed Paul Wellstone, who had pledged to lead the fight in the Senate against the Iraq War, and who was clearly headed for the presidency. I also have little doubt that his uncle, JFK, was assassinated for similar reasons: 1) his executive orders, just prior to his assassination, to withdraw the U.S. military "advisers" from Vietnam (and head off that CIA-instigated war), and 2) his opposition to the CIA-instigated invasion of Cuba (in the first months of his presidency). Looking back, I think there is little question about this. And I believe that his father RFK was assassinated for the same reason--he had initially supported the war, and he turned against it, and was clearly going to be elected president in 1968. MLK, killed three months before RFK, had ALSO taken a great political risk, against the advice of those who told him to "stay in his place" and stick to civil rights, and had given a powerful speech against the war.
Bang, bang. Shoot, shoot. THREE powerful leaders who had tried to stop that war.
The war profiteers and rightwing fascists within our government are too powerful right now for an honest president to survive. We have reverted to those days again. During the '70s, the government, and particularly the secret government, underwent reform--as the result of many past crimes, but particularly focused around the U.S.-sponsored death squads in South America, the U.S.-sponsored fascist coup in Chile against an elected government, and the Iran/Contra scandal (and illegal Reagan war against Nicaragua--a war that Congress had specifically forbidden). New policies--for instance, against assassinating foreign leaders--were initiated. The Iran/Contra scandal was exposed, and some of its perpetrators prosecuted (not Reagan, though). Congressional oversight was re-enforced. And the Nixon's "dirty tricks" campaigning, so typical of Republicans now, had also been exposed in Watergate--dirty tricks like burglarizing the psychiatrist's office of antiwar activist Daniel Ellsberg--Rove-style dirty tricks. (Rove got his start with Nixon.)
Now we have an all-out fascist Republican president into pervasive spying, and can there be any doubt what the spying is for? They're spying on antiwar groups and opposition politicians. And what else are they doing, and planting operatives within our government TO DO? That whole Iran/Contra crew is back in power! They've been in power for six years. They've purged all the good guys in the CIA--outed them and purged them--those who believed that their job was to prevent war, not manufacture it. What protections for themselves, and secret operations to insure continued war profits, have they organized within our government?
We need long, long years of hard work on good government before a real representative of the people can be elected as president and survive in office. That is the reality. We will have to endure years of presidents who are primarily beholden to war profiteers and to global corporate predators, before we have a good government again. The notion that ONE MAN can turn this around, because HE is honest and a real representative of the people, is naive and dangerous. And the closer he gets to achieving power, the more danger he is in, and the more danger we are all in, of violent civil unrest, civil war and more junta-type government.
Much as I am an admirer of the Kennedy legacy of government service, and of RFK Jr. in particular, I think he can do even more good in a non-target position. Perhaps as a Senator (although we have Wellstone's fate to consider), or a House member. But perhaps more safely--and even more effectively--in a relatively non-political position, in a relatively benign Corporate Democrat administration. Secretary of the Interior. Head of EPA. Ambassador to the U.N. Maybe A.G. RFK Jr. would be particularly suited to Interior or EPA--and there is MUCH work to be done there--saving the planet! He could be point man, say, in a Gore administration, for addressing global warming. He's been an NRDC lawyer--primary focus on the environment. As U.N. ambassador, he could do much to repair our reputation abroad--just on his family legacy, let alone what he himself might do there to smooth international relations, help the poor, and encourage peace. Another idea: a new special presidential commission on VOTING SYSTEMS! Imagine RFK Jr. heading real reform!
RFK Jr., being who he is, may feel that his courage is on the line, as to running for public office, aimed at the presidency. He will not be the first child to be burdened by a parental legacy. I think we do him no favor by urging him to run for president. I think he would easily overcome the early drug use charges. Youthful drug use is rather minor these days, given the humongous Republican pedophilia and bribery scandals (--not to mention the massive thievery and genocide of this regime). But that isn't the point. There is much more at stake here than whether he could win or not. What is at stake is our national psyche, which I think could be broken right in two by a third Kennedy assassination, and lead to even worse fascist rule and even disintegration of the union.
Maybe I'm an old fogey, and have too much pain going back four decades, regarding the smashing of all my dreams of a just and good country. Maybe a new day is dawning, and I just can't quite believe in it yet. But I think I do have some accumulated wisdom that might be helpful. Our country, and our democracy, are not going to be saved--and cannot be saved--by a hero on a white horse. It can only be saved by collective action of our people. That's what democracy IS. We have to STOP depending on heroic leaders, and start looking to ourselves for the solutions, and for the democratic power to turn this country around. If we expect a heroic leader to arise and to solve this huge disaster of six years of Bushitism, we will fail. Pushing someone to BE that heroic leader is not the right thing to do--especially a man with this family history. Yes, we need leadership--and good leadership. That's how our system is currently set up. But a leader is one thing, and a prince on a white horse is quite another. I can feel it in myself--the desire to resurrect the first Bobbie Kennedy, whom I believe would have stopped the Vietnam War, saved a million lives, and led America back to the path of peace. But that didn't happen, did it? Why? THAT is the question we must ask, and the answer is that it was an impossible task for one man, surrounded by the forces of darkness within our own government, that we, as a people, had not yet dealt with, and were only barely aware of. We must first create a good government, and THEN we can risk putting good people in charge of it.
How do you create a good government with bad, compromised people, beholden to war profiteers and corporate predators? Look to South America. They've done it. It took a decade of hard work--by the OAS, the Carter Center, EU election groups and local civic groups--on TRANSPARENT elections. They STARTED with leaders, maybe not as bad as Pinochet, not exactly dictators, but corrupt and severely compromised by the World Bank/IMF and its corporate predators policies, and by U.S. "anti-drug" (i.e., military) money. And they just kept working on more and more civic strength and better and better election reform. Now a great, peaceful, democratic, leftist (majorityist) movement has swept the continent--in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Venezuela and Bolivia (and soon in Ecuador and Peru)--and is completely unstoppable by assassination. A peoples' movement. Will of the people. The people active and engaged at every level of government. People devoted to constitutional government, of the people, by the people and for the people, and focused on self-determination for their countries and their region. The Bushites might get Hugo Chavez. But they cannot stop this huge movement, in Venezuela or anywhere else in South America; they will only energize it--because Hugo Chavez is merely the most colorful representative of a profound change, at the grass roots level, throughout Latin America (--in Mexico and Nicaragua, as well), that is based on empowerment of the MAJORITY.
This hard work--with TRANSPARENT elections being priority #1--needs to happen here. If the South Americans--with their horrendous history of oppression--can do it, so can we. But we cannot expect it to happen overnight. And we cannot expect a heroic leader to arise and do it for us. That way lies tragedy, and yet more oppression.
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