Secretary of Pestilence: RFK, Jr, The Pale Rider
Hello again world.
I’m not sure what’s on your docket this month, but we’re going to talk about health access, vaccines, and eugenics. We’ll start with one pressing question: Do I really think RFK Jr. is one of the Four Horsemen?
Answer: Probably not, but he’s definitely applying for the job. By the end of this, you can decide.
He’s a Eugenicist
In case you are one of those lucky people unfamiliar with RFK Jr, Here are some of his highlights: he has suggested anti-depressants increase mass shootings, he commented about sending people with ADHD to camps, he’s made fake claims about Tylenol in pregnancy causing autism, and is a generally terrible person (who once biked a dead bear around Central Park for the lols).
The Secretary of Pestilence has blamed everything possible for autism while simultaneously dismissing and attempting to silence real research that shows vaccines don’t cause autism. (And neither does Tylenol.)
Make no mistake that Kennedy is a longtime grifter. He used to be a solid environmental activist. I actually have and liked one of his early books that focused on the need to preserve ecosystems and turn towards green energy. In the last decade and a half or so, though, he’s become a raving anti-vaxxer, at least a little of that was a for-profit venture. The New York Times and Axios report, that he’s made over $1 million representing anti-vaxx nonsense in court. This is after he single-handedly lead to a deadly outbreak of measles in Samoa.
How did he go from environmentalist to Secretary of Pestilence? There is concerning evidence that cognitive impairment alters political and policy choices and identification, and a worm ate his brain.
A Worm Ate His Brain
The jokes really write themselves here in the Stupid Coup because, I’m serious. Secretary Pestilence’s brain got eaten.
NPR news and other sources report that in 2010, Kennedy was experiencing symptoms of cognitive decline that his family thought was a brain tumor. Doctors found instead, a pork tapeworm larva. The infection is called cysticercosis or neurocysticercosis (if your brain is what is affected as in this case).
Kennedy himself admitted “"A worm ... got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died."
Look, as someone who cares about disability justice, I want to be clear that I’m not making fun of Kennedy for having a brainworm or cognitive decline. I am saying that his actions before that and those exacerbated after it make him a terrible person. And since he has the power to destroy our public health system and our personal health, his crazy is now public domain, not just some private, copyrights, rich kid who thinks his childhood trauma gives him the right to hurt everyone else material.
Family Legacy
The Kennedys have been a longstanding dynasty in American politics. And as a Massachusetts girl, my grandmother used to read me RFK Sr’s speeches. He’s still one of my favorite political leaders. His focus on the youth, on poor communities, on anti-war, and the ways in which he recognized some of his prior political choices were harmful and changed, make his work places I still go when I need to feel inspired towards the common good.
But there has always been a dark side to the Kennedy legacy, whether that is the shady dealing and bootlegging, Nazi sympathizer family patriarch Joe Kennedy Sr., to Jack Kennedy’s notorious womanizing, to Ted Kennedy’s drunken binges that left at least one woman dead. And the following generation, the includes RFK Jr got worse. The veneer of perfect covered a host of crimes.
Don’t get me wrong, there are Kennedy’s in politics that I think are doing a good job. And RFK Jr’s own aunt, Eunice Shriver created the Special Olympics. The commitment to maintaining family privilege didn’t need to come in the form of eugenics, as Shriver showed. You can use your platform and power to lift others up. Unfortunately, RFK Jr took his grandfather’s approach and decided that anything—or anyone—not perfect should be the target of abuse. Just like RFK Jr’s other aunt Rosemary Kennedy was. Rosemary Kennedy was hidden from the public eye and eventually institutionalized (for more on that, you’ll have to check out this week’s episode of Birthzillas: The Podcast, releasing on Thursday where ever you listen to podcasts).
The Hypocrisy Matters
My point is this: when the eugenicists who makes his money off of anti-vaxx propaganda, whose own family refuses to claim him, tells you not to get the vaccine, get it. Remember that he is vaccinated. So are his children. His “don’t get vaccinated” isn’t a reflection of his health knowledge (because he doesn’t have any); it’s a reflection of his eugenics.
In the same way rich politicians tell poor kids to go to trade school while they send their own children to Harvard: it’s not about equality. It’s not about “this opportunity is good for you.” It’s about putting us non-elites in our places with whatever is “good enough” for us.
It’s also about separation and about believing that some people are biologically and other ways superior to others. Anti-vaxx rhetoric at its core is eugenics. And RFK Jr is a eugenicist.
Is Kennedy one of the Four Horsemen? Well, if you look at the government now, we can probably make some comments about who is War, Famine, Death, and several anti-Christs. I think he completes the set. Brainworm Bobby rides again.
