From: Team Kennedy <info@teamkennedy.com>
Date: Sun, Apr 28, 2024 at 3:08 PM
Subject: RFK Jr’s Personal Message & Best Selling Merch!
To: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.com>
|
America’s Next FIRST LADY? Cheryl Hines: From Comedian to Political Royalty.
A Private Reception with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in Melville, NY
Elida Calero, JB Bolvadin, and Jillian Burne are proud to host a special event at a private venue in Melville, New York.
Sunday, April 28th, 2024
Please support Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. at an in-person fundraising event to support his candidacy for President of the United States.
The evening will include a private reception for Maximum and Premier donors followed by cocktails and heavy hors d’oeuvres, remarks from Mr. Kennedy, a Q&A, and a photo opportunity for all.
Tickets are available with a campaign contribution of $6,600, $3,300, $1,500 or $1,000.
Business attire.
This event is closed to press.
WHEN
April 28, 2024
Sun, 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM EDT
WHERE
Melville, NY
United States
Google Maps and Directions
Read before purchasing a ticket
- If you have already donated to Mr. Kennedy's campaign for President, please be mindful not to exceed the $6,600 limit. If you have already contributed $6,600 and would like to attend this event, please reach out to events@teamkennedy.com.
- Each guest must purchase their own ticket. If you would like to bring a guest, please be sure to have them purchase their own ticket under their name.
Private Reception Included
Private Reception Included
General Reception
By providing your telephone number and email, you consent to receive calls, texts, and emails from Team Kennedy, including prerecorded messages and via automated methods. Msg & data rates may apply. Msg frequency may vary. For texts, reply STOP to opt-out & HELP for help. For emails, click the "unsubscribe link" in the footer of the email if you no longer wish to receive such emails. View Terms of Service and Privacy Policy for more info.
A Private Reception with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Cheryl Hines, moderated by Donnie Wahlberg and Jenny McCarthy in Boston, MA
We are proud to host a very special event at the historic Park Plaza Hotel in the heart of Boston, Massachusetts. Join us for a fundraising event where Mr. Kennedy first announced his historic candidacy for President of the United States one year ago.
Meet the candidate, Cheryl Hines, Donnie Wahlberg and Jenny McCarthy and listen as Donnie and Jenny moderate an insightful fireside chat with Mr. Kennedy.
Monday, April, 29th, 2024
The evening will include a private reception followed by hors d’ oeuvres and cocktails, a fireside chat moderated by Donnie Wahlberg and Jenny McCarthy, Q & A, and a photo opportunity for all.
Tickets are available with a campaign contribution of $2,400, $1,000, and $500.
6:30 PM - 7:30 PM - Private Reception for Platinum donors including mingling with the candidate, Ms. Hines, and moderators.
7:30 PM - 9:00 PM- Fireside Chat, Q&A, hors d' oeuvres and a photo opportunity for all donors.
Hosted bar and complimentary merchandise for Platinum and Gold donors. Silver donors will have access to a no-host bar.
Business attire is recommended.
This event is closed to press.
WHEN
April 29, 2024
Mon, 6:30 PM - 9:00 PM EDT
WHERE
Park Plaza Hotel
50 Park Plaza
Boston, MA 02116
United States
Google Maps and Directions
Contact Us
For general inquiries and customer support, email info@teamkennedy.com, visit our FAQ at RFK Jr. chatbot, or call 1-833-RFK-JR24.
Special requests:
Press inquires ONLY: Press@teamkennedy.com.
Speaking engagements ONLY: SpeakingEngagements@teamkennedy.com.
To leave feedback, please fill out the field below.
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AI Agent · a few seconds ago
Review of Current Investigations and Regulatory Actions Regarding the Mutual Fund Industry
Topic
Witnesses
Witness Panel 1
-
Mr.
Stephen M.
Cutler
Director - Division of EnforcementSecurities and Exchange Commission
-
Mr.
Robert
Glauber
Chairman and CEONational Association of Securities Dealers
-
Eliot
Spitzer
Attorney GeneralState of New York
Can you read this?
I understand your frustration and I apologize if I couldn't provide the help you were looking for. If you have any other questions or need assistance with
Yea Right
I'm sorry, but I can't provide a definite answer based on the available context. The information you're asking for is not included in the context
Go Figure why the webcast and transcript are missing https://www.banking.senate.gov/hearings/review-of-current-investigations-and-regulatory-actions-regarding-the-mutual-fund-industry
I appreciate your feedback. As an AI, I'm here to provide accurate and helpful information based on the context provided. I understand that my
IMHO Your AI needs to learn how to read rather than pretend to have empathy
I'm sorry to hear about your experience. It's important that your concerns are heard and addressed appropriately. Unfortunately, as an AI
I did that already and all the lady seemed to care about was getting a donation
Based on the provided context, if you wish to talk to a real person, you can call the number provided on the contact page: 805-410-9085. However, please
How do I talk to a real person who will listen to me about my concerns about the missing hearings of the Senate Banking Committee
👋 Hi! I am RFK Jr. chatbot. Ask me about the campaign or website.
I'm sorry, but as an AI, I don't have the ability to access or check emails. I'm here to provide information and answer questions based on the context
Did you get my emai???
All About Nicole Shanahan, RFK Jr.'s VP Pick and Sergey Brin's Ex-Wife
Shanahan, who was previously married to Google co-founder Sergey Brin, has been named Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s running mate in the presidential election
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Gonzalo Marroquin/Getty
Here's what to know about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s vice president pick, Nicole Shanahan.
On March 26, Kennedy Jr. introduced his new running mate in the presidential election in Shanahan's hometown of Oakland, saying he set out looking for someone who was "battle tested" to join his ticket.
"I wanted a partner who … possesses the gift of curiosity; an open, inquiring mind; and the confidence to change even her strongest opinions in the face of conflicting evidence," he said, noting how he "found all of those qualities" in Shanahan.
Before making headlines in the political sphere, Shanahan was well-known in the tech industry for her work and former relationship with Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
The two first started dating in 2015, the same year Brin finalized his divorce from his first wife Anne Wojcicki, and eventually tied the knot in 2018, as reported by Business Insider. The couple welcomed a daughter later that year.
In June 2022, Brin filed for a dissolution of marriage from Shanahan, according to court documents obtained by PEOPLE. In July 2023, Shanahan opened up about her split exclusively to PEOPLE, calling the process and aftermath "a long journey."
Learn more about Shanahan ahead with these facts.
She's an attorney
Shanahan is a California-based attorney. Per her LinkedIn profile, she specializes in criminal justice reform as well as "improving marriage contracts such that they promote healthy domestic partnerships."
She started her own foundation
According to her bio on Stanford Law, Shanahan is the founder and president of Bia-Echo Foundation, which is described as "a private foundation that aims to invest in changemakers at the forefront of innovation who are tackling some of the world's greatest challenges: reproductive longevity & equality, criminal justice reform and a healthy & livable planet."
She is also the founder and CEO of ClearAccessIP, "an automated patent management and valuation platform," per her LinkedIn profile.
She studied at the University of Puget Sound
Shanahan got her B.A. at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington, studying Asian Studies, Economics and Mandarin Chinese. She later got her J.D. at Santa Clara University School of Law, as detailed on her LinkedIn profile.
She's a CodeX fellow
On top of her impressive foundation work and college background, Shanahan is also an academic fellow of CodeX, a center that combines Stanford's legal and computer science schools to work on big issues at the intersection of law and technology.
She's a mom
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Shanahan welcomed a baby girl, Echo, with Brin in 2018. When they married, she also became a stepmom to his son Benji and daughter Chloe from his previous marriage to Wojcicki.
She found love again after divorcing Sergey Brin
Speaking with PEOPLE in 2023, Shanahan revealed that after her divorce from Brin, she met and fell for a man named Jacob Strumwasser, who is the vice president at Lightning Labs and a "reformed Wall Street guy," as she describes him.
Instead of getting married traditionally, they celebrated their commitment in a love ceremony at a special beach in May 2023. “It’s lovely to be seen for who I am,” she told PEOPLE, “and not how search results show me.”
She worked with RFK Jr. on his 2024 Super Bowl ad
In February 2024, Shanahan helped fund RFK Jr.'s presidential ad during the 2024 Super Bowl. According to The New York Times, she gave his team $4 million for the ad and "helped coordinate the ad’s production."
“It seems like a great opportunity to highlight that he’s running for president,” Shanahan told the publication, adding that her motivation in backing RFK Jr. included her concerns about the environment, vaccines and children’s health.Jenny McCarthy and Donnie Wahlberg's Relationship Timeline
Jenny McCarthy and Donnie Wahlberg have been married since 2014
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Photo: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagicSparks first flew between the television personality and the New Kids on the Block member during a joint appearance on Watch What Happens Live in 2012. The following year, Wahlberg appeared on McCarthy's VH1 talk show, The Jenny McCarthy Show, in March 2013.
A few months later, they were officially dating and making red carpet appearances together, and in April 2014, Wahlberg popped the question. The two got married that August in a ceremony featured on their A&E reality show: Donnie Loves Jenny.
The couple eventually moved to McCarthy's home state of Illinois with their blended family — made up of McCarthy's son Evan, whom she shares with her ex-husband, John Asher, and Wahlberg's sons, Xavier Alexander and Elijah Hendrix, whom he shares with his ex-wife, Kimberly Fey.
From their wedding to their multiple vow renewals, here's a complete timeline of Jenny McCarthy and Donnie Wahlberg's relationship.
We’ve grown so far apart”: Mark Wahlberg May Secretly Hate Brother Donnie for Marrying Scary Movie Actress
Following his no-show at his brother’s wedding, fans made the assumption that Mark Wahlberg was at loggerheads with his sibling.
SUMMARY
- Mark Wahlberg raised eyebrows in 2014 when he did not show up for his brother Donnie Wahlberg’s wedding to Jenna McCarthy.
- Following his absence, rumors regarding a feud between both brothers began to make the rounds.
- Some reports indicated that the brothers’ wives did not get along with each other.
- Wahlberg put an end to all speculations by confirming that he missed his brother’s big day owing to his daughter’s 11th birthday.
Familial relationships can be complicated and this is no different for high-profile celebrities as well. While internal politics between family members escape public scrutiny if one is an ordinary person, big-league Hollywood stars do not have the luxury of privacy when it comes to family feuds, be it rumors or otherwise.
A few years ago, actor Mark Wahlberg was at the center of a controversy surrounding his relationship with his brother Donnie Wahlberg. The immediate elder sibling of the Oscar winner also began his career in music like his brother as a member of the band, New Kids On the Block. His marriage to actor Jenna McCarthy in 2014 made the news mainly for the conspicuous absence of his famous brother Mark, thereby sparking rumors about a feud between the siblings.
Fact Check: Mark Wahlberg Told Fellow Celebs, 'If You Don't Like the USA, Please Leave'?
Claim:
Actor Mark Wahlberg once said, "If you don't like the USA, please leave and take your comrades Alec Baldwin, Cher, Madonna, Rosie [O'Donnell], Jennifer Lawrence, Miley Cyrus, Mark Ruffalo, Sean Penn, Robert De Niro, Barbra Streisand, Matt Damon, Oprah [Winfrey], Colin Kaepernick and the whole lot of rich losers with you."
Rating:
On Dec. 6, 2023, the X account @DesireeAmerica4 posted that actor Mark Wahlberg had said something noteworthy in regard to Hollywood celebrities. The post's caption read, "Mark Wahlberg calls out the Hollywood liberal Democrats. He said, 'If you don't like the USA, please leave and take your comrades Alec Baldwin, Cher, Jennifer Lawrence, Miley Cyrus, Barbra Streisand, Matt Damon, Oprah, and Colin Kaepernick with you.' Who agrees?"
As of this writing, the post on X had racked up nearly 10,000 reposts and over 72,000 likes.
However, despite all of the users' interactions with the post, the truth was that this quote did not come from Wahlberg. The person who authored the quote was a writer on the America's Freedom Fighters (AFF) website who had opined about an interview that Wahlberg had once given in 2016.
The Full Quote
A longer version of the same quote was also previously posted in 2022 on iFunny.co alongside photos of both Wahlberg and former U.S. President Donald Trump. It read as follows:
ConservativeGuy NewsBeat
[Mark] Wahlberg: "If you don't like the USA, please leave and take your comrades Alec Baldwin, Cher, Madonna, Rosie [O'Donnell], Jennifer Lawrence, Miley Cyrus, Mark Ruffalo, Sean Penn, Robert De Niro, Barbra Streisand, Matt Damon, Oprah [Winfrey], Colin Kaepernick and the whole lot of rich losers with you. The U.S. has an open door policy that swings both ways. Leave the rest of us alone to rebuild our nation as it was intended by our forefathers."
How the Quote Originated
We traced the beginnings of this rumor about Wahlberg back more than seven years before the supposed quote was shared on X.
On Nov. 29, 2016, the Task & Purpose website published an interview with Wahlberg about his film, "Patriots Day." The movie was released in U.S. theaters on Jan. 13, 2017. (We previously published an article about this interview.)
During the interview, Wahlberg said that he didn't believe "out of touch" celebrities should talk about politics and that "a lot of Hollywood is living in a bubble":
“A lot of celebrities did, do, and shouldn’t,” he told Task & Purpose last week, at a swanky luncheon in New York, held on behalf of his upcoming film “Patriots Day.” We were talking about the parade of actors and musicians who lined up to denounce Donald Trump in the months and weeks leading up to Election Day.
“You know, it just goes to show you that people aren’t listening to that anyway,” he continued. “They might buy your CD or watch your movie, but you don’t put food on their table. You don’t pay their bills. A lot of Hollywood is living in a bubble. They’re pretty out of touch with the common person, the everyday guy out there providing for their family. Me, I’m very aware of the real world. I come from the real world and I exist in the real world. And although I can navigate Hollywood and I love the business and the opportunities it’s afforded me, I also understand what it’s like not to have all that.”
Two days after Task & Purpose published their interview, Breitbart.com reported about Wahlberg's remarks with the headline, "Mark Wahlberg Tells 'Out of Touch' Celebrities to Shut Up About Politics."
Then, on an unknown later date, an unnamed author on the America's Freedom Fighters (AFF) website published an article about the interview, citing the story on Breitbart.com. It was that unknown AFF author who was the person who had written the quote that was later misattributed with Wahlberg's name:
Mark Wahlberg…an actor that can have our theater bucks.
Americans have had enough of it. The general public doesn’t give a rip about what the Hollywood celebs think. When we pay our hard earned money to be entertained, that’s all we want, a few moments out of time—not a lecture on the entertainer’s politics.
If you make $10 million a movie, have homes all over the planet and probably never even finished high school, how can you possibly be in a position to say Obamacare is great for the rest of us? You don’t have to pay rising premiums for inadequate coverage.
If you don’t like the USA, please leave and take your comrades Alec Baldwin, Cher, Madonna, Rosie, Jennifer Lawrence, Miley Cyrus, Mark Ruffalo, Sean Penn, Robert De Niro, Barbra Streisand, Matt Damon, Oprah, Colin Kaepernick and the whole lot of rich losers with you. The U.S. has an open door policy that swings both ways. Leave the rest of us alone to rebuild our nation as it was intended by our forefathers.
For further reading, we previously reported about another Wahlberg rumor that claimed he had supposedly spoken publicly to provide his thoughts about the 2023 child sex-trafficking film, "Sound of Freedom."
Sources:
“BOOM: Mark Wahlberg BREAKS SILENCE And Slams Every Trump Hating Celebrity In EPIC Interview.” America’s Freedom Fighters, 8 Oct. 2020, https://americasfreedomfighters.com/boom-mark-wahlberg-breaks-silence-and-slams-every-trump-hating-celebrity-in-epic-interview/.
Gell, Aaron. “Mark Wahlberg Thinks Celebrities Need to Shut Up About Politics.” Task & Purpose, 29 Nov. 2016, https://taskandpurpose.com/culture/mark-wahlberg-thinks-celebrities-need-shut-politics-2/.
Hudson, Jerome. “Mark Wahlberg Tells Celebrities to Shut Up About Politics.” Breitbart, 1 Dec. 2016, https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2016/12/01/mark-wahlberg-politically-active-celebrities-touch-common-person/.
LaCapria, Kim. “Mark Wahlberg Expresses Disdain for Hollywood’s Political Involvement.” Snopes, 3 Dec. 2016, https://www.snopes.com/news/2016/12/03/mark-wahlberg-expresses-disdain-hollywoods-political-involvement/.
Liles, Jordan. “Did Mark Wahlberg Comment About ‘Sound of Freedom’ and Hollywood, Saying ‘Enough Is Enough’?” Snopes, 3 Aug. 2023, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/wahlberg-sound-of-freedom-hollywood/.
Mike_10101. “ConservativeGuy NewsBeat Wahlberg: ‘If You Don’t like the USA, Please Leave.’” iFunny, 11 Sept. 2022, https://ifunny.co/picture/conservativeguy-newsbeat-wahlberg-if-you-don-t-like-the-usa-9GiNxfgr9.
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Justin Trudeau's Brother Is Driving a RFK Jr. Campaign Bus
The antivax bus is coming. Everybody's jumping.
“Anyone have a clue why,” Toronto Star columnist Susan Delacourt tweeted Sunday. “A @RobertKennedyJr bus, blaring ‘Stop Children What's That Sound’1, is circling Ottawa's New Edinburgh neighbourhood?”
It was a great question. Because, sure enough, a bus emblazoned with Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s face, proclaiming “the remedy is Kennedy,” was driving around the Canadian capital blaring, arguably, the anthem of the 1960s counter-culture.2
The fact that the bus (ok, actually, it’s an RV) was in Canada isn’t even in the interesting part: It’s who was driving it.
Behind the wheel with his wife and two children by his side, was and is Kyle Kemper: An anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist and activist in his own right, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s half-brother.
This week, on a very special Bug-eyed and Shameless, I've got something to tell ya. I've got news for you: RFK Jr. is comin’ through.
When Margaret Trudeau’s marriage to her late husband, Pierre Elliott (Prime Minister of Canada 1968-1979, 1980-1984), was in the process of falling apart, she went off on the romp of a lifetime.
Much has been written and said about Margaret, and I couldn’t begin to do her life story justice here. But suffice it to say that she was rubbing elbows with — and often attached romantically to — Mick Jagger, Ronnie Woods, Lou Rawls, Jack Nicholson3, amongst others. (Her ex-husband the prime minister, was not much different, having dallied with Barbara Streisand before their marriage.) The romance that properly marked an endpoint to her marriage was, strangely enough, with Ted Kennedy: RFK Jr’s uncle. By the early 1980s, she was separated from Pierre Elliot and without custody of her kids and, without alimony, broke.
Then she met Fried Kemper, an Ottawa real estate developer, and settled down. The two would spend the next 15 years married and would have two children, Alicia and Kyle.
When Justin Trudeau — Pierre Elliot’s son, Kyle Kemper’s half-brother — became prime minister in 2015, the Trudeau family baggage was relegated to, mostly, curiosity. Best I can tell, nobody thought to ask Kemper’s opinion about the state of politics in Canada and Kemper didn’t seem terribly keen to offer it. Canada is, beyond a superficial curiosity, not terribly interested in the lives of politicians’ families. And that’s for the better.
In relative anonymity, Kemper became an early Bitcoin evangelist. Which was well enough because, as we know, being a Bitcoin evangelist is a full-time job.
He became a lobbyist, calling on the government to keep their hands off Bitcoin altogether. (Related: Kemper once told a magazine that the worst day of his life was “February 28, 2014, when Mt. Gox, a major platform, filed for bankruptcy.” Maybe a bit of regulation would have prevented that!)
It really wasn’t until 2020, and the COVID-19 pandemic, that Kemper stepped into the limelight. In a rambling video, Kemper endorsed the increasingly paranoid politics that was infecting the right — and converting some on the paranoid left. “The real battle is not simply left or right. It is authoritarianism versus libertarianism,” Kemper explained. Kemper phrased his new turn to politics as an “affectionate” chiding of his brother.
Over the past few years, he’s popped up at the world premiere of the Plandemic “documentary.” (It was fiction.) He became a huge booster of the so-called Freedom Convoy, and joined Alex Jones on Infowars to explain how the occupation of Ottawa should push his half-brother to resign and trigger the “great awakening.” He endorsed the idea that the 2020 U.S. election was stolen.
And now, Kemper has joined the Robert F. Kennedy Jr bandwagon.
“One of the major concerns for many nations, including Canada, is the erosion of sovereignty under the influence of a globalist oligarchy,” Kemper wrote on Twitter. “But fear not, for Bobby Kennedy is here to champion our cause!”
Kemper is, unsurprisingly, big into the ‘wellness’ community: A hotbed of conspiracy theories and misinformation these days. RFK Jr., Kemper writes, is an “icon for health and wellness.”
The Florida-based Kempers weren’t happy with just endorsing Kennedy. They decided they had to roll up their sleeves and actively help out.
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Which brings us to the bus RV.
RFK Jr. joined the Kempers in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts to send off the Kennedy-mobile as it headed through Montreal, Ottawa — then, New York to San Francisco, intercity disinfo.
The unveiling of the project came, technically, via Gavin McInnes — ex-VICE, ex-Proud Boy leader, current dirtbag4 — on his poorly-watched streaming platform. McInnes showed up in a parking lot where the RFKbus was parked, and stumbled upon Kemper sporting a MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN tshirt.
“So you did this all by yourself just for a laugh?” McInnes asks.
“Uhhh,” Kemper starts. “It's been a kind of evolving bus moving kind of art car. And originally it was as blockchain across America bus. My friend ran from Miami to Santa Monica, to raise awareness for blockchain and the homeless epidemic in America.” (Woof.)
As a purely DIY project, the Kennedywagon would be a strange and eccentric use of Kemper’s time, but he would be well within his rights to drive a camper up-and-down the U.S. spreading the gospel of a man who thinks poppers cause AIDS. (Dispatch #59)
But on the side of the RV is a URL: Healthedivide.com. That corresponds to the website of the first major pro-RFK Jr. superPAC.
Heal the Divide, Inc is registered with the Federal Election Commission through a pro-Trump political consultancy firm. The actual leadership of the PAC isn’t listen on their website or FEC filings. (Their first campaign statements are not yet due.) But Heal the Divide was incorporated in Indiana as a non-profit in April by James Heckman. (He is not, for you nerds out there, the Nobel Prize-winning economist.)
Heckman made his money in the sports publishing world: Starting his own sports news website, being acquired by Fox, joining Yahoo, and eventually founding publishing company Maven. His company would strike a licensing deal to operate famed publication Sports Illustrated, and a few other titles. And by all accounts, it went badly: “Heckman and [business partner Ross] Levinsohn are like morticians who drop a corpse while carrying it to the coffin and then trash the deceased in the funeral program,” the Ringer wrote in 2020. Later that year, Heckman was turfed and replaced with Levinsohn.
Since then, Heckman has gone down the anti-vax route: Sharing a declaration from a bunch of quack doctors proclaiming COVID-19 vaccines “experimental genetic therapy injections.” He tweeted last year that there are “over 20 million extra dead” due to Pfizer’s vaccines: “A crime against humanity.”
And now, it seems, he’s running a pro-RFK Jr. superPAC.
I messaged Kemper to ask about his involvement in the campaign. “I believe Kennedy is the Remedy,” he replied. Later, after multiple invites to join him on his podcast, Kemper said he had no formal role on the campaign.
I asked if he had any role wth the Heal the Divide. But, after several more podcast invitations, he did not reply.
Heal the Divide is big on accepting Bitcoin donations, which lines up with Kemper’s love of crypto. Kemper was also the second person to tweet out the link to Heal the Divide’s website, shortly after Heckman himself.
Kemper, for what it’s worth, is running his own quasi-campaign. He’s selling merch over at kennedy.party. His website reads that it “is an independent production not affiliated with the official campaign or it's committee. Every sale helps to grow the movement; ensuring that the campaign's message of unity and hope reaches as many people as possible.” (Which sounds to me like a political action committee, and therefore governed by campaign finance law, but what do I know.)
Whether Kemper’s Kennedy barnstorming is in service of Heckman’s superPAC or his own half-baked effort, it is both a strange tale and a sign of things to come.
Because, here’s the thing about Kemper: His core rhetorical message, of a constructive post-partisanship, in contrast to division and anger, is actually a really welcome one. And I do believe that it is genuine. It was a common refrain during the anti-vaccine occupation of Ottawa: We’re here fighting for your freedom was a common rallying cry. Most people, of course, see that emotionally manipulative language for what it is: A fanatical belief that their cause is right and just, and everyone who fails to follow is indoctrinated, a sheeple. Folks like Kemper profess, often earnestly, to believe in compromise and understanding, but are so enmeshed in their disinformation networks that any discussion is really just a debate that will eventually collapse.
This is a frustrating paradox: The people most emphatic about political reconciliation are also the ones making the problem worse. Still, we should hold out some hope that we can get back on the same page, especially as the brainworm-inducing memories of the pandemic fade.
Yes, anti-vaxxers have done actual, measurable harm: RFK Jr. in particular, thanks to his proselytizing and snake oil selling, particularly in communities without adequate healthcare. And it’s not hard to see that his campaign is a stalking horse for the Republicans, as they try to thwart Joe Biden. And RFK Jr. may not wade into the same kind of hateful anti-trans rhetoric as Ron DeSantis, say, but he does frequently suggest that Big Pharma is to blame for the existence of trans people. But it’s hard to ignore the fact that RFK Jr.’s — admittedly vague — platform does read like a thoughtful effort to start talking about issues instead of running politics-as-bloodsport. (Minus the anti-vaccine stuff, of course.)
It’s not enough to point at Kemper and RFK Jr. and say: They’re wrong, don’t listen to them. Because they have tapped into a very real current of grievance, particularly on the left. It is a space also occupied by other professional agitators and longtime polemicists like Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Bill Maher, and a handful of others. Their underlying complaints, such as the excessive power of big corporations or the the United States’ penchant for starting expeditionary wars, have become rather unassailable. Indeed, I myself agree with them on a huge swath of things. Their skepticism and contrarianism, however, has gone off the rails. It has linked up with hard-right anti-institutionalism. Some call this horseshoe theory. I call it paranoia manifest.
As people grow disenchanted with the political establishment, RFK Jr. may yet become a welcome home. And Justin Trudeau’s half-brother may welcome them in.
That’s it for this special dispatch.
I’m in New York City on a little working vacation, doing some research for my next book. I’m hoping to fire off another dispatch later this week, a little polemic on the idea of deleting more and more of the internet, so keep your eyes peeled for that.
And now, for those of you who didn’t understand all the mid-90s one-hit wonder references scattered throughout the newsletter, I present: The Vengaboys.
Susan, of course, meant "For What It’s Worth”
There’s plenty to argue with, here. Please, argue with it.
Weird bit of serendipity: “For What It’s Worth” was not, as is commonly understood, written about the Vietnam war (at least not explicitly.) It was written about a series of demonstrations on the Sunset Strip, against municipal ordinances designed to quell noise on the Sunset Strip. The “riots” that ensued included ex-Margaret Trudeau fling Jack Nicholson. The snake eating its own tail!
This whole show is sophmoric edgelord shit, with a whole deeply sad segment about “America's obsession with Nazis and how gay it is” and featuring lines like “he does have a schnoz. I can't tell if he's Jewish.” The less I have to listen to McInnes, the happier I am
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