Why RFK Jr is not Fit for Office
A Firebreak Editorial
In the week that president-elect, Donald Trump, named Robert F Kennedy Jr to head the Department of Health and Human Services, there have been many groups standing up to voice their concerns. There are many undeniable reasons why Congress must not approve this nomination:
His radical views against vaccines and reliance on widely debunked pseudo-scientific claims, although frequently dialed down for the media, are immortalized in countless films, speeches, and interviews.
His nonsensical position against water fluoridation (often referred to as one of the ten greatest public health achievements of all time), that it is chemical waste that lowers IQ.
His stubborn reliance on and relentless propagation of fringe scientific theories that have been overwhelmingly rejected by the wider scientific community.
His views that viruses, like COVID-19, target specific ethnic groups is just nutty.
His attacks on processed food, food additives, and the food industry in general has tried to simplify the blame for the increasing trend in obesity rates.
His recent support of raw milk (since pasteurization is a type of “food processing”) is putting many vulnerable people at risk.
His conspiracy theories about how the FDA, CDC and EPA make decisions (ie, in the pocket of industry) has led him to be involved in activist campaigns to bring down corporate business models from crop protection to pharmaceutical industries.
His decision to share stories like his “brain worm” (covered in the Firebreak here), chainsawing a beached whale’s head to take home or the “funny” time he was driving around New York State with a dead bear cub in his trunk, demonstrate his poor judgement and reasoning.
All of these reasons have been well covered in articles, statements and interviews published in the last week and I can only hope that his Congressional interlocuters are well prepared for the hearings.
But these reasons could be explained away as simply a privileged person who has never needed to study, has been misinformed, is a poor judge of character and is not very intelligent. There are many people in positions of power who share such weaknesses and so these reasons do not disqualify RFK on their own. Even the frightening declarations he has made on what he plans to do when in office should not disqualify him since we can assume there are people and checks in place to preserve the department and its agencies (a reality that has frustrated idealistic secretaries in the past).
There is one further reason, however, why Robert F Kennedy Jr is not fit for office, and this needs closer scrutiny.
A Question of Character
Moral character and values used to be a key success determinant for politicians. Social media tribal values have changed the situation such that any attack on any ethical transgressions of a public figure is a rallying call for allies to unleash hard, cold retaliatory aggression.
I won’t get into RFK Jr’s recent infidelity, his lying, his ability to say one thing to one crowd and deny it to another, his past as a drug dealer at Harvard… I am not one to throw stones. However, RFK has one character flaw that could lead to devastating consequences for hundreds of millions of people.
RFK Jr is a relentless zealot. Many activists who are fighting beside him on the same health issues consider his hardened convictions as his strongest point and why normally left-wing naturopaths found themselves identifying as “MAHA” and voting for Trump. But this unyielding, uncompromising character trait is his greatest flaw (and the greatest threat to public health).
Zealots, often sociopathic, will do anything to win and are not concerned about the consequences of their decisions. One particular episode in RFK Jr’s checkered past shows how he was prepared to let America burn if it meant he could advance his agenda.
In 2015, RFK Jr was working with many anti-vax activist groups in California to try to stop SB 277, a bill that would remove the right to vaccine exemption on the basis of personal beliefs. As the campaign was tight, Kennedy teamed up with the radical black activist group, Nation of Islam, and the Church of Scientology to foment outrage in the minority communities. Kennedy and Nation of Islam Minister, Tony Muhammad, toured the US claiming that vaccines were like a Holocaust on minority populations.
Kennedy was peddling a claim, also propagated by Andrew Wakefield, that vaccines were having more severe negative effects on African American children. This was widely debunked by the scientific community, but the argument was picked up and advanced by Nation of Islam’s leadership, with declarations like vaccines being a means to limit black population growth. In short, RFK Jr gave Nation of Islam a new stick to beat mainstream America with, in the hopes that they could advance his small campaign on a state regulation.
The claim that vaccines were designed to harm African Americans fit into a wider argument of medical segregation and the continuation at the CDC of its historically dark research practices (with comparisons between present-day vaccine policy and the Tuskegee tragedy). There are obvious socio-economic reasons why minorities do not benefit from the same quality of healthcare as wealthy and privileged populations, but the argument Kennedy was promoting is that minorities were physically more at risk to the ingredients intentionally and maliciously added to pharmaceutical products like vaccines.
While it is not clear that Kennedy was aware how his claims were wrong, it is certain that he knew that aligning with a radical black extremist group like Nation of Islam, that generating outrage in minority communities, at a time when groups like Black Lives Matter were gaining a voice on the social justice debate, would have added more fuel to the public order fire, one that eventually blew up (long after the California Bill SB-277 was passed, defeating Kennedy’s tiny activist coalition).
Robert F Kennedy Jr was prepared to let America burn if it would help him block a small state bill on a vaccine exemption. What could he do with real power? For this reason alone, this man is unfit for office and would be a threat to American health and peace. Any post he occupies will end in flames.
David Zaruk
Firebreak Editor