RFK Jnr – the light on the hill?

There’s a long road ahead and anything could happen, but his candidacy and his approach comes with what seems to be perfect timing.

At this very early stage in Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy Junior’s presidential election campaign, there are promising signs that he could become the first ever independent in the White House.

The prospect of having to choose between Trump and Biden is disheartening to many and leaves the field wide open to a ‘long-shot candidate’.

The Democratic Party refused his bid to nominate as a rival to Joe Biden, so he declared his candidacy as an Independent on the 9^th of October in Philadelphia.

The difficult decision to leave the party his family is so devoted to was not easy. It took considerable courage, but will prove to be, I believe, one of his wisest moves. It is a break from identity politics (by which I mean not just social issues, but being politically identified with one side of politics). It allows him to speak from outside the culture war zone. And that is his unifying message – to listen and bring people together. It’s truly timely, inspiring and reminiscent of his father’s legacy.

Overcoming cynicism will be a one of his biggest challenges. RFK Jnr has been dismissed even by members of his own family as an opportunist and dangerous, because they are entrenched in establishment Democrat views. The Biden administration has moved to censor him on social media for expressing his views on the Covid pandemic. The Trump camp is calling him a radical leftist in conservative disguise.

RFK Jnr worked as an environmental lawyer, suing corporations and government agencies for breaching regulations. He was a heroin addict for 10 years. Remaking himself and redemption is one of his key themes. (Addiction healing centers on organic farms features as one of his many innovative policies.) He is has broken with the establishment, which is why his views are across the political spectrum. There will be a lot of muck-raking of his past. But his honesty is amazing and refreshing.

So far, he has been wildly under-estimated. “A Reuters/Ipsos poll of a hypothetical three-way race between Biden, Trump and Kennedy conducted last week among likely voters found 14% of voters supported Kennedy, with 40% supporting Trump and 38% supporting Biden (CNN, 10^th October). Slowly, people are beginning to see his sincerity and common sense policies shining through.

Initially, his raspy voice is somewhat grating, but his convictions come through. He’s been on the speaking circuit for a long time, which partly explains his ‘disability’, but in fact it’s a neurological condition called Spasmodic Dystonia. He’s quite open about it.

I mentioned his amazing honesty. Here’s an example relating to his solution to mass, unregulated immigration. Peter Turchin, a leading researcher and complexity scientist, points out that the tap can be turned off at the source if businesses were prevented from giving jobs to undocumented immigrants. The problem is many Americans can’t afford the $160 for proper ID (driver’s license or passport). RFK Jnr’s solution is a FREE ID passport to all citizens who want it, issued at Federal Post Offices. It’s not mandatory. This would also be required at polling booths to ensure electoral integrity. Rather than holding onto this proposal to boost his campaign, he is calling on everyone to write to Joe Biden to issue the free ID card BEFORE the next election!

RFK Jnr’s campaign website focusses [sic] on policies that unite people. For example, it avoids gun control, probably preffering [sic] to improve mental health. Although not explicitly opposing untrammelled [sic] economic growth, there is every indication that better measures of well-being such as per capita GDP growth and the Genuine Progress Indicator would be preferred.

RFK Jnr is what Peter Turchin calls a ‘counter-elite’ or ‘elite-aspirant’. Turchin has carved out a career in the field of scientific history, studying the dynamics of societal rises and falls. He has demonstrated with vast quantities of data and extensive analysis what created the good times of the 1950s and ’60s that RFK senior and JFK senior are associated with. He calls it the Great Compression.

In the decades preceding the Great Compression, a group of elites managed to convince their peers to put the good of the whole nation before their own selfish interests. They were able to do this because of the economic and social traumas of several depressions, wars and Great Gatsby excesses. Government policy settings were calibrated to slowly shut down the ‘wealth pump’. (The wealth pump is the system that enables you to get your money making more money for you.) Social services, labour union agreements and corporate regulations were all prioritized to ensure the well-being of the populace. This saw a reduction of the number of elites and their assets. These elites are trans-national, so Australia was influenced as well.

This seems incredible to us now. Indeed, it is a rare example in history of elites voluntarily acting against their immediate interests, but in their wider, long-term interests, whereby they and their offspring benefit from a broad social milieu of trust and connection.

RFK Jnr has allies in the 100s of billionaires across multiple countries who are calling for higher taxation on the super-rich. This makes Robert Reich, a long-term advocate of equality who lambasted him recently for being a Covid vaccine skeptic, quite out of step. Perhaps we have all become too used to incendiary comments.

We are in perilous times. Will they lead us to an epiphany that enables us to recreate the good times?

RFK Jnr wants the USA to set an example to other countries, not assume authority over them. He wants to transform US exceptionalism and imperialist over-reach by reigning in the bloated military-industrial complex. He calls for negotiated settlement in Ukraine and other hotspots, with the aid of the UN. He wants to strengthen his country from within by revitalizing its domestic economy and body-politic.

At least the USA has an industrial base to revitalize. Looking from down-under at the economy he describes, something becomes very apparent. Australia has hardly any local manufacturing left.

Australians imagine we have much in common with the USA, which is true to a point. However, there is a stark contrast between how self-sufficient our economies are. The USA ranks 4^th most self-sufficient in the world according to the 24/7 Wall St Special Report last year by Angelo Young. Australia ranks 18^th. How is this possible given our educated and skilled population, vast mineral resources and varied climates?

It has nothing to do with our comparatively smaller population – the Australian continent is a vast desert compared the US mainland. Australia has become a client nation since the monetarist-inspired privatizations and deregulations of the latter part of the 20^th Century. Conservative governments in the UK and USA led the way on this and the irony that the Australian Labor Party followed suit is testament to the persuasive power of those trans-national elites.

A good example is the car industry. Overseas, governments have supported motor industries which have enabled them to compete internationally. South Korea with its small population and minimal resources has more than two car companies. Ralph Sarich invented the orbital engine in 1972 and the ALP Minister for Industry, Senator Button, later refused to fund its development, saying it would cost the government too much. So, it went to the USA. This was common policy in those days, because the government ignored the social benefits and spin-off industries that are created by these innovations.

The ‘light on the hill’ was a phrase Australian PM Ben Chifley used to pay tribute to the people who made up the labour movement. Its biblical origins come from the ‘City on the Hill’ that is used to refer to America as a ‘beacon of hope’. Chifley, who tried to nationalize banks, didn’t live to see the long, successful years of the Menzies government that protected the middle class. Our light on the hill is more than the labour movement – it is the sum of us working together to be the best we can be.

Whether or not RFK Jnr is successful or even sincere, his projected example should inspire Australians. According to Dick Smith, our elites are less philanthropic than their US counterparts. That may make the challenge greater, but we have fewer people to convince and a collectivist tradition that should make it easier to sell a program that restores institutional fairness.

1st November, 2023 By Simon Cole