International Man: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is challenging Joe Biden to be the Democratic nominee for the 2024 election.
Unlike most Democrats, RFK Jr. is against escalating the war in Ukraine and seems to be generally anti-war. Likewise, he’s not on board with a lot of the woke insanity.
His support among Democrats is around 20% as of writing and rising, worrying many establishment figures.
What’s your take?
Doug Casey: It’s too bad for him that he’s part of the Democratic Party. They’ll treat him the way they treated Bernie Sanders. During the last two elections, if vox populi had anything to do with it, Bernie Sanders would’ve been the Dem candidate. The average Democrat loved him because he’s a fire-breathing socialist and welfare statist. But Bernie was a party outsider and a loose cannon. The powers that be in the Democratic Party only nominate insiders. They like frontmen who will reliably “play ball.” Kennedy has his own agenda, as did Sanders. That tells me that he doesn’t have a chance of being nominated.
I’ve listened to a number of recent Kennedy speeches. He spends a lot of time promoting peace and defending his views on COVID. Speaking as an anarcho-capitalist, everything he said on those subjects resonated with me.
He’s completely opposed to not just the insane war in the Ukraine but wars in general. Of course, he is famous for his views on vaccines. These are two of the major issues today, and he seems 100% sound on both.
However, he doesn’t talk much about his economic policy; I believe he’s basically an FDR/LBJ mixed economy guy. I haven’t heard him address wokeism directly, but he comes across as a conventional heterosexual. I don’t think he’d actively promote LGBT etc., etc., like the current administration. He’s a lifelong eco-warrior, so he’s on board with the global warming hoax. He’s certainly anti-gun, though he is playing that down. He says he’s open to nuclear power—but not very open. His game is to appear knowledgeable and reasonable and to avoid alienating Republicans.
He’s clearly very well-read. But feels an almost genetic obligation to follow in the footsteps of his father and his uncle.
All things considered, he’s probably the best candidate on the Dem side—for what that’s worth. Probably not much since the Democrat Party is a putrid cesspool, the evil party, and he’s still a member.
International Man: Whenever the mainstream media mentions RFK Jr., they always preface him with a pejorative, usually “conspiracy theorist” or “anti-vaxxer.”
There have been numerous occasions where the media has outright censored him.
They equate any point of view that deviates from the mainstream consensus as so-called “disinformation,” which they don’t refute with better ideas, facts, or logic but use as an excuse to justify their censorship—a despicable practice.
What is really going on with the media censoring RFK Jr.?
Doug Casey: One thing he always emphasizes is his dislike of the military-industrial complex. Especially the CIA, but he seems to sincerely dislike powerful government agencies in general. That means that the members of the Deep State see him as an enemy, somebody who could break their rice bowls. They come out against him not because he has a different philosophy, like Ron Paul, but because he’s an outsider threatening their bottom line.
The fact is that the powers-that-be, the military-industrial-corporate-academic-media complex, the Deep State if you will, are so committed to war in the Ukraine, vaccines, and wokeism that they almost can’t do an about-face at this point.
Whether any of these people like him personally or not or like the Kennedy family’s generally statist policies, they’re committed to promoting their agenda and therefore trying to debunk Bobby.
International Man: What exactly is the Deep State?
Why do they generally hate the Kennedy family and RFK Jr. in particular?
Doug Casey: All countries have a Deep State. The Deep State are people who control and profit from the State. In the US, its top-level might include several thousand individuals. Heads of agencies, top congressmen and senators, generals, top corporate people, bankers, top university presidents and professors, top state and big city officials, and the like. They equate to what were called the Nomenklatura in the Soviet Union. They pull all the strings, have immense power, and have huge amounts of money flowing into their personal pockets. We can call them “top dogs.”
Underneath them, in the Deep State, we have several million people that are equivalent to the apparatchiks of the old Soviet Union. They’re middle managers under the top dogs. They have good positions and get to give a lot of orders. They’re low-level big shots. I like to call them “running dogs.”
The many millions who accept these people, the masses who slavishly support the Deep State out of fear or habit, I call “whipped dogs.” They’re strictly pawns in the game. They’re thoughtless and delusional enough, thanks to schooling and propaganda, to believe they’re in control of a so-called “democracy.” Even though they’re 98% of the population, they don’t count unless they go wild due to a serious war, depression, or other catastrophe.
The people in the Deep State deny their own existence. And nobody has a membership card or an official decoder ring. But the Nomenklatura, and a lot of the apparatchiks, went to the same schools, belong to the same clubs, and have the same philosophy and worldview. They all live off the State, which in turn lives off the 98%, the whipped dogs.
So, why do they generally hate the Kennedy family, and RFK Jr. in particular?
In his recent speech at St. Anselm College, he mentioned that his uncle, JFK, wanted to break the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the wind. RFK Jr. wants to follow what he thinks are the footsteps of his father and his uncle, not follow instructions from the Deep State.
He’s fervently, and it seems sincerely, anti-war. In today’s world, the US government, through the CIA, the Defense Department, and other agencies, goes out of its way to antagonize other countries, including nuclear-armed countries like Russia and China. I think he understands we’re a hair trigger away from World War III, and he wants to de-escalate. Bravo. It’s idiotic for a declining and sclerotic empire to act tough and pick fights.
And he points out that when his uncle was in office, the advisors around him, the Nomenklatura, all pumped for more foreign intervention, more military spending, and more military adventures around the world. This is true with Deep States everywhere in the world.
The worst guy in a government is not always the guy right on top. His strings are usually pulled by the advisors around him. They actually steal most of the money as well.
International Man: How do you see the 2024 primaries and presidential election unfolding in the months ahead?
Doug Casey: It’s out of the question that the demented, incoherent old Joe Biden will run. Something will happen before the election to preclude that.
The fact that Kamala Harris and Mayor Pete are frontrunners shows how degraded the Dem Party really is. It appears that Gavin Newsom, the disastrous governor of California, is a possibility. He’s slick, looks good, and speaks coherently—even though absolutely everything he advocates is horrible.
On the Republican side, who knows whether Donald Trump will get the nomination or not? There are about a dozen other Republicans who want to be President. Some of them, like Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, Liz Cheney, and Nikki Haley, are loathsome. For all Trump’s faults, they’d likely be worse than Trump. Ron DeSantis has made some appealing moves in the past few years but appears to be a creature of the Bushes; I’m not a fan. He’s just another venal politician.
It’s entirely possible that Kennedy, realizing that he’s going to be shut out, will start a third party or perhaps run as part of the Constitution Party, though that’s unlikely since it’s on the ballot in only 13 states. It’s possible that Trump will also run as a third-party candidate if the Republicans shut him out.
Could either Trump or Kennedy run as a Libertarian? Neither is even remotely a libertarian. Neither even has a philosophical core. But the Libertarian Party doesn’t have a philosophical core anymore either, evidenced by the fact that they ran statists like Bob Barr and William Weld as candidates. The Libertarians would probably welcome any big name just to show that they’re actually players. Pity, really.
Since the military is about the only element of the US government that still has a modicum of trust and respect from Americans, it’s possible that both Dems and Reps will pick a general to run. Things may be chaotic enough in 2024 that the country will be ripe for a” strong man.”
There’s even an outside possibility—dare I say it?—that there will be no election if the economy, the society, or some war gets too out of control. After all, in our 51st state, the Ukraine, Zelensky has canceled their elections.
In any event, I’ll bet that the Democrats will win for many of the same six reasons why I picked the Democrats to win in 2020.
International Man: What do you suggest people do to prepare for the possibility of increasing political turmoil in the US?
Doug Casey: It’s important to remember that although most members of the police and the military are decent and generally conservative people, they will follow orders, even if they don’t like them. That’s because they’re trained to do so. But also because they don’t want to get into trouble; they all have house payments, car payments, credit card payments, and other debts. They can’t afford to lose their jobs—a pretty different dynamic than was the case in the Revolution or the 19th century.
They’ll do what they’re told. That’s a real danger when you have Jacobins in control of the apparatus of the State, as we now do.
As far as the average American is concerned, including those reading this now, fighting against the State is dangerous and impossible as a practical matter. Doing so will just result in your being rounded up and imprisoned.
It would be like what happened on January 6th, multiplied by a hundred. Fuhgedabowdit.
I’ve said for years that the US is on the verge of an actual civil war because the factions in the country really hate each other, and they just can’t communicate. If things get really dire, it might be wise to be abroad, just as it was wise to be out of the country during the war Between the States from 1861 to 1865.
It’s too bad the US no longer has the equivalent of California in 1860, a place you could go, seek opportunity, and remain uninvolved with all the foolishness.
Make some contingency plans. But remember, time is short.
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