Quotes That Sum Up Why RFK Jr. Happened

Author

Bubba
18 Nov

Political commentator Matthew Continetti connects the dots on why Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination to Health and Human Services secretary might not be as crazy an idea as it seems. (Commentary)

Chart: Our World in Data

Dot 1: During the latest Commentary Magazine podcast episode, Continetti cited a new Lancet study, which predicts a spike in childhood obesity, as the latest example of how the health status quo is in crisis.

  • Per the study, by the year 2050, nearly 260 million people in the United States will be overweight or obese.

  • The prevalence of obesity in adolescent boys and girls rose by more than 150% between 1990 to 2021.

Dot 2: Continetti also referenced columnist David Brooks’ new Atlantic essay, which describes the complete collapse of public trust in the meritocracy, aka “the experts.”

  • 69% of Americans think elites don’t care about hardworking people, according to an Ipsos survey from February.

  • 63% think experts don’t understand their lives, and 66% say the country needs a strong leader to take power back from the wealthy and elite.

  • Confidence in higher education has declined sharply.

Brooks:

…under the leadership of our current meritocratic class, trust in institutions has plummeted to the point where, three times since 2016, a large mass of voters has shoved a big middle finger in the elites’ faces by voting for Donald Trump.

Continetti brings it all together:

All of the people who have gone through the organizational machinery of going to the right schools, getting the right degrees and landing the right jobs have clearly failed to impress the American people and the electorate with the results of this schooling and resume building that they've done. … I think you can see why RFK Jr. has had an electric effect on American politics in the past couple years.

There is a rising sense in the culture, not talking about the political system, but culture, that there's something wrong with our public health and with our nutrition. And this is a cultural phenomenon. It starts out with the crunchy liberals that RFK used to be a part of in California, but it is now basically going across America among, particularly, moms. …

There is such now widespread distrust of expertise in this country, stemming primarily from the pandemic and the public health system's response to the pandemic, that this distrust opens up the door for people whose views are marginal and fringe to become a legitimate point of view.

Bubba’s Two Cents

“If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?”

That’s a quote from Anton Chigurh, the menacing antagonist of Cormac McCarthy’s 2005 novel, “No Country for Old Men.” In the Trump era, some on the right have adopted Chigurh’s statement as a motto to signify how we need to cast off our preconceptions of how politics works.

If you think (as so many Americans do) that our institutions — whether public health, Justice Department, military — are broken and in need of serious reform, does the solution mean deploying (arguably) kooky, unsavory or controversial outsiders like RFK, Tulsi Gabbard and Matt Gaetz? Maybe it does. Maybe this is what change looks like. Maybe this is what change requires?