I like RFK Jr plus thoughts on refusing demoralization and possible future mandates

Just say no, thank you

Just Say No Thank You

I think it will surprise no one that I have very high hopes for RFK, Jr. Or at least it will surprise no one who has followed me since my Bernie to Trump transition days in 2016 (on twitter). As a Millennial who voted for Obama twice, Trump twice (after caucusing for Bernie in St Paul, MN — yes, I’m one of the 8% of Bernie supporters who switched to Trump), and floundering in a sea of bewilderment over the past two and a half years of the Biden administration’s devastating policy whims, I finally feel a semblance of inspiration as I watch Robert Kennedy, Jr. fight lie after smear after lie, one podcast at a time. I don’t know if he can win. And if he does, I would certainly bet on the deep state having a grassy knoll contingency plan waiting in the wings. Still, our country is worth fighting for — and our countrymen and women are too*, even the divided and conquered, blue vs red paradigm-entrenched ones. It may seem like a majority because twitter and the news are so uniquely equipped to make people like us — who read, think, and reflect a lot — feel overwhelmed and hopeless every time we turn on the TV or log onto twitter or the internet in general; but in reality, the majority of Americans just want peace and prosperity, as RFK, Jr. has pointed out again and again.

RFK, Jr. checks all the boxes on my political love-map, so to speak — there’s intelligence, strength, articulation, fearlessness, a proven track record of victory in battle, plus a willingness to die on principle. In spades.

Here’s an interesting piece on the man: “What RFK Jr. Gets Right—and What He Gets Wrong:” the author indulges in the flagrant spread of disinformation first, and then, even more interestingly, dog whistles to the deep state, specifically in his closing statement: “To many citizens, Kennedy sounds like a man who can’t be bought and won’t be silenced. Those in power should be listening closely.” You can read the piece here.

Some will say he has no chance. Some will say even Trump has no chance. But this is demoralization banter, and I like to refuse demoralization. Sort of like when someone offers you a tall glass of iced pee when you asked for iced tea. “No, thank you,” I say politely. Lots of powerful people get off on us feeling hopeless, useless, and cynical. The future ought to look bright — for example, every day I wake up and see the Nats Stadium outside my window instead of four feet of snow is a day I’m reminded I am alive and well, that I have already escaped the cold Gitmo known as Minnesota where I grew up, and that I’m living in my future right now in our nation’s capital. Time waits for no one. I recently attended the funeral of my 76-year-old friend here in DC: she was born in 1947, the same year as my mom who died in 2000. As I walked home from the church, I had the thought, “If I live to be as healthy and as long as [my friend who passed away last month], then I have 34 years left on this earth.” So let’s enjoy our health while we have it, and even when we feel disappointed by corruption and deception in our government, let’s put it in perspective and remember how lucky we are to have the rights and privileges we still do have (for example, the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances or the right to gather peacefully to protest body-autonomy violating mandates or to start our own blog and ask our readers to object to abuse of power by their corrupt governors, each enshrined in the First Amendment), especially compared to the torment that citizens in other countries have to put up with. I’d hate to be a practitioner of Falun Dafa in China or an unmarried woman trying to test drive a car before trying to get a car loan in KSA, that’s for sure — or vote. “But why bother? The system is rigged**!” I hear some people pointing out. Maybe it is. And the dark web is for sure filled with animal torture p*rn. And the banks are totally predicated on fractional reserve lending (which I thought had to be a conspiracy theory when I first found out it existed, but lol, no — it’s real). So, ok then, who wants to opt out? Ready to boycott the internet? Live off the land? Go back to bartering? Sounds like a lot of work. I’m going to stay here, and meet reality in reality realm, the emotional space where we feel gratitude for all the good things in our lives, like family, friends, food, indoor plumbing, and refrigerators, and then feel inspired to take action, on the side, to do what we can to ameliorate the bizarrely horrifying things in reality. Why gratitude and inspiration? Because gratitude and inspiration are what we specifically declare when we generally refuse demoralization: we plant the flag of occupation of our own emotional territory, and we plant it with joyful vigilance.

But ok. Fair enough. For those who really feel disheartened, how about this: don’t vote because “it matters” or because “your vote counts.” Vote because the alternative is monarchy. Vote because another alternative is overt tyranny. Vote because the very concept of representative government is fascinating: it’s astonishing to me as a student of philosophy that human beings even came up with it as a thought experiment, to say nothing of the gall and high pain tolerance, I imagine, it must have taken to attempt to see if it worked in practice. And it ought to go without saying that our constitutional republic system of government in the US still has some kinks to be ironed out; what I am saying is, better a flawed system than an overtly oppressive one. Direct democracy, in contrast, is plainly logical, but too time-consuming and tedious to be a sustainable second job for everyone in society to have to work part-time (and really, volunteer), even if the crew was reduced to only those who desired to work that unpaid part time job. What I’d love to see is a Senate and House filled with licensed philosophers who practice reason, in the same way lawyers are licensed to practice law and doctors are licensed to practice medicine: let’s call them elected philosopher representatives instead of philosopher kings. (“Plato argued that the ideal state – one which ensured the maximum possible happiness for all its citizens – could only be brought into being by a ruler possessed of absolute knowledge, obtained through philosophical study” — “[t]he concept of a city-state ruled by philosophers [which] is first explored in Plato's Republic, written around 375 BC.,” read more here.)

When I was young, I used to say often that I wanted to make a difference in the world. My mom would invariably reply, “Everyone makes a difference in the world, Sarah Louise, for better or for worse — there is no neutral effect. And when we don’t vote, we’re casting a weighted ballot for everything to stay the same.” I’m probably preaching to the choir here, but there's another reason we should vote on principle: because we are people who have principles. And the reason we have principles is, once more, because we are people who eschew demoralization. I posit that it is this joyful vigilance that precipitates the intellectual refining of principles: while one’s values and beliefs may change over time as the mind reflects and reasons and draws new conclusions, the emotionally fertile soil of joyful vigilance or joyful skepticism stay at more or less consistent levels and are what allow the seed of a new idea, potentially a mind-changing one, to take root.

I also sometimes vote to make good on my promise to legislators that if they support x-y-z unethical immoral unconstitutional bill, I will vote for their opponent on election day. But at the beginning of the day, I always vote because it ideally would matter, and I am an idealist. In 2016, I found out that the ability to write-in candidates is only allowed in 41 states; ideally, it would be allowed in all 50 states so we can all truly be free to vote for the person we desire to be elected to serve the public, instead of only voting against the person we do not want. Imagine living your whole life always having to choose the thing you dislike least, and never being able to express pure desire for the thing you do want because, of the available options, there’s not one you do, truly, want. Interesting, isn’t it, that our minds and hearts are essentially servant-trained from a very early age to be ever-ready to say “yes, ok” and assent to something we don’t actually wholeheartedly desire? And in fact don’t really want much at all? Almost as if someone wants us to not want to vote enough to show up and cast an actual ballot. And then, to become inured to settling for the reduced pain of apathy, feeling and concluding that doing nothing was what we “wanted,” and then carrying that mindset into every other area of our lives, rendering us essentially ... demoralized.

Imagine living your whole life always having to choose the thing you dislike the least

As I mentioned, my mom used to say that when we don’t show up to cast our physical ballot, it’s the same as voting for everything to stay the same. But I think not voting is actually tantamount to casting a weighted ballot for everything to get worse because of the exponential increase of power and authority accrued (hoarded) by elected officials the longer they stay in office. And then in a way, we tacitly condone the suffering that that abuse of power causes our fellow Americans too: case in point, my friends who complained about Bush II for four years and then didn’t show up to vote in 2004 come to mind. Then again, who would they have voted for? They wouldn’t have voted for anyone. Just against someone. Now, that may not be totally true either: I myself wrote-in a candidate because in Minnesota, they allow write-ins on the ballot. I wrote in Howard Dean because I liked that he got angry during the debates. I believed I witnessed his passion. 

Finally, while we obviously vote with our ballots, we vote with our dollars and our time too and may not realize we’re making demoralized choices in those situations as well. When we spend dollars on items manufactured in a given country, we are voting for the practices of that country’s government, especially their labor laws. We vote with our minutes by spending them on whatever it is we oppose by fighting against it with our time, and spending them on whatever ideals we desire by fighting for them with our time.

When we don’t speak up (talk back) to people in a position of power by calling, writing, or paying a visit to our elected leaders’ offices in order to protest injustice, our silence is a de facto prayer for things to get worse. How? Because our silence guarantees that things will get worse, as though we are praying for further deterioration and then answering our own prayer, ironically. To wit, members of congress have said the most surprising mode of communication they have been on the receiving end of is the handwritten letter. Anyone can email or call; it just takes a few minutes. Writing a letter and putting a stamp on it is old fashioned -- and it takes time.

New mandates may be on the horizon.

I regret to inform you that new mandates may be on the horizon. When the time comes and I suspect it will soon, let’s speak up and invoke our existing rights to privacy and freedom. It’s a numbers game, pure and simple. Math. The more of us who object, the louder the cacophony of truth-tellers and liberty-demanders. The thing elected officials never expect is to hear the promise, not the threat, that we will vote for their opponent, if they don’t do what we want, next election day. (If you click here, and scroll way down, you will see four templates I created for people to use to write their elected officials over the 2021 mandates.)

“It’s a Republic, madam, if you can keep it.” Let’s take action to keep it.

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*Still, our country is worth fighting for — and our countrymen and women are too: this is a big claim and I don’t offer much evidence to justify it in this essay. Suffice it to say, I view the Bill of Rights as a collective national moral compass which guides me as far as how to act as an American, and how to treat other Americans. My patriotism and my moral code are inextricably linked. It feels like Oprah on Favorite Things day, shouting, “and you get the benefit of the doubt and you get due process and you get a jury trial and you get freedom of religion and you get a defense attorney and you get freedom of speech and you get …” you get the picture. It’s not that I assume people are good or worthy of freedom or have earned the fantastic privileges outlined in the Bill of Rights — the opposite. You probably don’t deserve freedom or the benefit of the doubt, but no government deserves to deprive you of it. Tyranny (a government abusing power over the masses, power that we have granted them) is more abhorrent to me than the pain caused by any one person abusing their will by inflicting pain on another person. 

**Rigged: here, I simply refer to the rumor circulating of late that we select, not elect, our members of Congress and our President from a predetermined cadre of establishment-approved candidates.

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