In the Aftermath of Hurricane Bobby

Harder, better, faster, stronger-- we've learned a great deal about how to leap frog past fallen heroes since the dawn of the 21st.

DISCLAIMER: I’m not a licensed professional conspiracy theorist, so you should take my theories, such as they are, with a grain of salt and, perhaps, a shot of vodka if your licensed professional M.D. doesn’t object.

In today’s throw-away-before-breakfast conspiracy theory, I’m imagining that an agent of the deep state came to RFK Jr at an undisclosed location with no cell phones within earshot and said, paraphrased, more or less, “Okay Bobby, you’ve had your fun. You’ve been massively disruptive despite our best anaesthetic propaganda having been administered to the body politic. We gave you Secret Service protection for a couple of weeks just so we can say we gave you Secret Service protection in 2024 without making our contracted fact-checkers feel completely out of integrity, but… it’s over. It’s over as of now. You have to stop or… we’ll stop you.. you know, the way we do, and, by ‘stop’, I mean you have to end your political career as a champion truth-teller to the masses by completely discrediting yourself in some way we haven’t been able to with our bogus stories about brain worms, dog-eating and bear killing. None of the ordinary, pedestrian self-discrediting will do. This has to be something special. It has to be something unforgettable. Something unforgiveable. Something that will make even your most die-hard supporters throw their arms up in the air like Sergeant Elias in ‘Platoon’¹, curse the gods and wish they’d never shelled out their hard-earned dollars for your campaign merch. Do you understand?”

And Bobby replied, paraphrased, more or less, “Yes, I know exactly what you mean, but I’ve already done that. Why are you here? I’ve already given my full-throated support of Israel’s massacre of an estimated 186,000 Palestinians² so Cheryl could keep her career in Hollywood. What more do you want?”

Agent: “Endorse Trump”

Bobby: WTF? I can’t Endorse that… him. Cheryl’d kill me.

Agent: Who do you want to take your chances with— her or us?

Okay, fun as it may be to speculate, I digress. It doesn’t really matter WHY Kennedy suspended his campaign and urged people to vote for Trump. What matters is that we, the ten-to-forty million voters who have considered Kennedy our number one choice at various times, have individual agency to respond to this switch-up however we want to. We are not automatons blindly following our leader. We are a much more thoughtful and intelligent rabble than that.

I’d like to argue that there are many possible valid responses to this turn of events and that we shouldn’t fragment our movement just because we respond differently. We share important values quite deeply and, I would argue, the community of Kennedy supporters that has come together at the grass-roots level is the greatest asset this campaign has produced and we must not lose that.

I’ve been participating in several Kennedy communities, both online and off. One group is the local city-level Kennedy volunteers who’ve been meeting throughout the signature-gathering stage of the campaign. They’re good people. The impact of Bobby’s decision has been a true grieving process— denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Another group is an online X Spaces group led by Lauren Lee (@sheislaurenlee) and Holden Culotta (@Holden_Culotta). There’s also a group that meets weekly near the University and a State-level organizing group that meets physically in Portland with zoom access.

In one of the meetings we’re considering a “salon” format for the next few weeks where everyone just expresses their individual passions and visions for how this movement goes forward because we want to honor peoples’ individual agency and just listen to each other as we figure out what’s next.

Here are some of the “next steps” I’m hearing discussed:

MAHA/MAGA/Unity with Trump Campaign

Some of us are choosing to trust Kennedy’s judgment and recommendations completely and join him in supporting Trump. If successful, at the very least, this approach might serve to send a signal to the Democratic Party that their tactics— lawfare and administrative obstacles to ballot access, rigging of primary rules to make the Democratic nomination impossible for non-insiders, weaponizing Secret Service and other agencies against political opponents— all of their tactics can and will backfire and lose them elections.

That’s not much consolation if Trump doesn’t follow through with the MAHA agenda. Some think he will. Others have, shall we say, “known too many Spaniards” to go out on that limb with much confidence.

Personally, I don’t see how to reconcile the environmental factors necessary to MAHA in Kennedy’s vision with Trump’s past antagonistic relationship with the EPA. But, I am not privy to Kennedy’s discussions with Trump. Maybe those discussions would alleviate my concerns. Maybe not. Each of us can only do what our best judgment leads us to do.

Vote Kennedy in Red and Blue States, Trump in Swing States

This was Kennedy’s initial plan when he first announced he was suspending his campaign. This plan aims to achieve both the installation of a second Trump administration (with the presumed augmentation of MAHA policies and advisors) AND reaching 5% nationally for Kennedy and/or the “We The People” party to more firmly establish the new party and to make federal funding available in the 2028 election season.

Because I live in the blue state of Oregon, I have registered as a member of the new “We The People” party (for which we gathered over 30,000 petition signatures to create) and I intend to vote for Kennedy in November.

We The People Party— Vote Kennedy Everywhere Possible

This option seems to speak to people who feel striving to getting the WTP party up to 5% is the most important goal and are ambivalent about which of the two major party candidates might win.

There are four states that now have established “We The People” parties — Oregon, Hawaii, North Carolina, Delaware (and Mississippi??? — Grok is a bit fuzzy on this). Additionally, in California, voters can change their party affiliation to “We The People” and, if the threshold of 75,000 voter is reached, my understanding is that California’s WTP party will also be officially established.

In the states where WTP is established, the parties can nominate candidates for Congress and Senate in 2026 and put them on the ballot without having to get thousands of signatures. Candidates might also be nominated for offices of mayor, governor, county commissioners, etc.

These party powers are a great outcome of the Kennedy campaign and it behooves us to get active as members of our local WTP party (or support WTP in other states if your states doesn’t have one yet) and make the party as vibrant, robust and active as possible. It is also time for us to formulate a WTP platform based on Kennedy’s vision (but perhaps not identical to it) so that WTP becomes a true party that is truly accountable to the membership and is not exclusively identified with RFK Jr, a great candidate who it is our honor to run for President in 2024, but who is, ultimately, just the first of many WTP candidates we will nominate for many offices (we hope).

A Million “Lawyer” March— Mass Learning of Pro Se Legal Skills

This one seemed tangential at first, but I’ve also come to see it as natural outcome for a movement inspired by one who is arguably the best and most effective environmental attorney our country has ever seen. 2024 has shown us that the courts are the most important battleground that we’ve been largely ignoring.

The “Pro Se” (legal self-representation) movement is an attempt to fight against the economically inaccessible status quo where 90% of Americans cannot afford to hire legal representation to fight for their rights in courts. The plan for this option is to provide access to educational resources that show us how to file lawsuits, write pleadings, meet deadlines, monitor administrative processes and so on so that we the people can reclaim the power of the courts.

Younger people may want to go even further and take the LSATs and go to law school. Do-it-Yourselfers may want to look into self study, perhaps with the mentorship of a practicing attorney, and study for the bar exam without going into debt for law school. Others might just want to represent themselves to fight to get a rental deposit back from a sticky-fingered landlord.

The overall idea is to make competent legal “warriors” for the people more numerous and accessible so that those who are currently profiting from loopholes and abuses won’t be able to afford to continue doing business that way.

Ranked Choice Voting in Oregon (and Everywhere)

Imagine what the 2024 election cycle would have been like if election spoilers were no longer possible and people were free to vote their first choice without any worries about whether or not they could win. Imagine the media-implanted perceptions of “winnability” and “path to 270” no longer being a thing— no longer wasting our time— so we could talk about issues instead of horse-race speculations.

The Kennedy campaign’s commissioned Zogby poll showed that Kennedy could win head-to-head contests against either Trump or Biden and that he was, therefore, quite possibly the preferred candidate of Americans overall although the poll could just as easily have been measuring inter-tribal hatred instead of #HealTheDivide enthusiasm. Without true Ranked Choice Voting (or Ranked Choice Polling in this case), it’s impossible to know for sure.

This November, Oregon will not have ranked choice voting, but it will be able to vote yes or no on a referendum that would make RCV the law of the land for Oregon. The ballot measure was referred to the voters by our state legislature (a first), so awareness of the ballot measure is still relatively low and it’s going to take a lot of voter education to overcome the fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) that the duopoly is going to field to defeat this measure.

For more info, sign up here:

https://www.oregonrcv.org/

Regenerative Farming and Permaculture Projects

Regardless of the election outcomes, we still have the freedom to buy and eat what we want and to grow/raise food as a part-time or full-time hobby, career or business to give ourselves and others real and affordable alternatives to the SAD (Standard American Diet).

At a recent meeting, we discussed local farms that provide non-GMO organic foods and how we can un-plug from big-box stores and connect, instead, with local farms, community gardens and farmers’ markets.

MAHA begins at home and local farms.

If we build it, the people will come around.

Fighting Chronic Disease

Again, regardless of the election outcomes, we still have freedom to pursue some of the aims of Kennedy’s campaign. MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) is something we can move forward with individually, with our families and with our friends and neighbors. We can organize healthy potlucks. We can connect with exercise buddies in our neighborhoods for walks, runs, cycling and hikes. We can share info about how to best avoid toxins. What are the latest results of tests done on our water supplies? What are the worst hazards identified by local air pollution authorities? Are there local polluters we can organize to clean up? Who are our local seed savers?

As we get directly involved in making ourselves, our families and our neighbors healthier, we can observe what obstacles we encounter and brainstorm about how to overcome the obstacles and even formulate policies that could be enacted in future to help eliminate such obstacles to simplify healthy living for people all over the country and future generations.

And, of course, the healthier we can be, the more energetic and effective we’ll be in the campaigns ahead.

Spreading Truth and Boycotting Lies

In 2024, the general populace was ill-prepared to see through all the establishment lies that serve to keep the status quo in place. The media were counterproductive— doubling down on the lies about Ukraine, vaccines, government corruption, environmental toxins, assassinations and more so that Kennedy’s campaign to open voters’ eyes to these truths was as much of an uphill battle as Sisyphus’s struggling to push his boulder over the hill.

Even if we never get 51% of voters to see through all of the lies they’ve been fed, we can still fight the good fight, at least as long as free speech is possible.

Mainstream media are losing readers and viewers and that’s a good thing. Let’s hope they either do a 180-degree turn around and decide to publish truth or go bankrupt before 2026 comes around.

Conclusion

Despite the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” that have befallen the Kennedy campaign in recent weeks, this historic campaign has been awakening the sleeping giant, that is the American electorate, to corruption of current government officials, government agencies, media, public health officials and industry-funded researchers who purport to tell us what “the Science” dictates we should do.

It is our privilege to be part of a movement that was started this year and, God willing, will continue into the future for as many years as is needed to remedy all the injuries done to the public and the planet and to restore health, justice and economic parity for all.

I hope that you’ll each continue such projects as you feel moved and inspired to work on as your best judgment leads you to feel you’ll be most effective in.

And let’s stay connected and communicating and celebrating each small success on the path forward.

And, yes, in this revolution you can most definitely dance: ³

1. Willem DaFoe as Sergeant Elias in ‘Platoon’:

2. Lancet Study estimated 186K dead in Gaza:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/7/8/gaza-toll-could-exceed-186000-lancet-study-says

3. Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” by Daft Punk: