When the Poles Shift

RFK's Endorsement of Trump and the Spirit of Populist Resistance

In typical fashion, Donald Trump stole the thunder of the Democratic National Convention last night when he received Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s official endorsement. It was an anticipated but momentous occasion since RFK Jr. had originally attempted to run as a Democrat at the beginning of his presidential run. After unsuccessfully trying to play by the rules, RFK switched to the Independent ticket last fall. He even wooed the Libertarian Party in hopes of an alliance. But as summer slowed and autumn loomed, whispers began that RFK Jr. would drop out of the race and endorse the Republican nominee, Donald Trump.

In front of a packed arena full of twenty-thousand-plus people, RFK did more than just endorse Trump. He essentially aligned the two factions of populist resistance in this country. RFK initially attracted attention because of his heavy Democratic ties; Americans have long associated the Kennedy family with the traditional Democratic Party (hence the phrase ‘Kennedy Democrat’). It was a Democratic Party concerned with preventing nuclear war and unifying Americans across social classes. A party that distrusted the increasing power of the intelligence agencies. Kennedy utilized much of this spirit when he began his campaign. Instead of supporting the Biden White House’s slavish siphoning of cash to Ukraine, RFK explicitly called out the corruption of our proxy war in Eastern Europe. Even more importantly, he publicly denounced Dr. Anthony Fauci and criticized the federal government’s entire handling of Covid-19.

Many Americans were first aware of RFK because of his vociferous and controversial criticism of vaccines. After years of environmental litigation, Kennedy shifted his focus from how corporations were poisoning the environment to how they were poisoning the American public. In 2015, Kennedy joined the Children’s Health Defense, a non-profit focused on educating parents about the dangers of many modern medical treatments, especially vaccines. Initially, it reserved Kennedy to more fringe factions of the alternative health movement. But after the disaster of Covid-19 and the global vaccination push, more and more Americans were willing to listen to RFK’s opinions.

RFK’s willingness to criticize the war in Ukraine and discuss the health ramifications of forced vaccination helped reignite the anti-war and anti-corporate spirits of the old-school Democratic Party without joining the current Democratic Party. His campaign attracted libertarians, Independents, conspiracy theorists, and classical liberals; Millennials and Gen Xers disaffected with the two-party system. Americans old enough to remember how different this country operated just twenty years ago were eager to hear what RFK had to offer. It allowed more than just MAGA Americans to air their grievances.

The cultic momentum of MAGA and Trump’s astounding popularity are mostly due to populist energy. Eschewing the ‘respectable’ politics of uniparty Republicans like Mitt Romney, Dick Cheney, or the Bushes, Trump opted for a ‘street’ approach to the political system. The promises of Barack Obama for ‘hope and change’ had exacerbated the wars in the Middle East rather than end them, and the attempts to create unity and multicultural harmony instead invigorated the culture wars. After the financial crisis of 2008, it was becoming clear to average Americans that the government operated more like an oligarchic mafia than a democratic republic. If the game was about winning, Americans wanted a fighter who could win on their behalf. Part-business man and part-celebrity, Trump’s unapologetic brashness and confidence hit the mark. He spoke to Middle America’s fears about immigration and the economy while calling out the media’s corporate complicity and hypocrisy.

This aggressive and resistant stance multiplied after the repeated attempts to thwart Trump’s campaign - the media campaigns, the lawsuits, the raids, the trials, and finally, the assassination attempt. Skeptical Americans across left and right sat up and paid attention to the Secret Service’s blatant botch of Trump’s ‘protection’ detail. Rampant memes and screenshots from that fateful day in Pennsylvania highlighted the surrealism of modern American politics. Was the Deep State actually trying to remove Trump? And if so, had they done this before?

This question leads directly back to RFK. At the heart of RFK’s presidential campaign was a willingness to question some of the predominant narratives of the modern American era - do we really need to go to war again on the other side of the world? Are the regulatory agencies really protecting us from corporate greed and malfeasance? Are the intelligence agencies operating as democratic defenders or rogue mercenaries? These have been the persistent gadflies Americans have felt gnawing at the back of their minds since John F. Kennedy got shot in front of the world on November 22, 1963. If they lied about JFK, what else have they lied about?

For several years, neither party was willing to entertain that question. Obama’s Democratic Party resolidified the corporate ties President Bill Clinton worked hard to build. Just as the Republicans had gone corporate under Ronald Reagan, so Democrats went under Clinton. Questioning war or inflation or the national debt was silly. Corporations were our friends; their multimedia marketing campaigns proved it. Under Obama, that meant corporations would also care about social justice and LGBTQ+ rights. They would run the country but they’d do it in style. Republicans had been happy to repeat the pattern on behalf of weapons manufacturers and Big Agriculture companies. Democrats would foster that same blind trust in Big Pharma and Healthcare. Before Trump, Democrats and Republicans were starting to look more alike than different.

Trump’s impact on American politics has helped shift the poles of left vs. right. Once the predominant matrix through which most of have viewed the political spectrum, the polarization of left and right has collapsed. The designations of conservative or liberal fail to capture most of our feelings about politics today. Liberals feel isolated from the Democratic Party’s embrace of blatant anti-liberal sentiments like warmongering and corporate censorship and conservatives can’t imagine trusting the system to conserve law and order. If the former President of the United States isn’t safe from the government, who is? Americans instead are conceiving a new spectrum - establishment vs. resistance.

Trump might have been the infancy of a new American polis but Kennedy is the teenage rebellion. Americans are coming to terms with the collective lies of their system and choosing to respond in unprecedented ways. While the establishment promises a joyful return to Obama-like ‘hope and change,’ the resistance calls for some form of accountability or course correct. Americans sense something is rotten in Denmark and instead of abiding by the state’s gaslighting and propaganda, they’re listening to alternative calls to action. Perhaps there is more at stake than simply 'democracy.’