edited by P.C. Bosco
I am a Gen-X’er who remembers the somber wave of grief over our country following the June 6, 1968, assassination of RFK. It washed ashore with the looming grief we’d been living with since JFK’s assassination in 1963.
In those days, the Kennedy name was often heard at our family functions and dinner tables. Depending on who was present, it could stir up some heated conversations.
The Kennedy Administration had been a source of contention for my maternal grandfather and his associates because RFK was cracking down on the crime syndicate, and my grandfather just happened to be operating the largest gambling ring on the West Coast at the time.
In June of 1969 he was scheduled to go on trial for racketeering. One day prior to his trial date he was murdered at the legendary Los Angeles eatery known as The Pacific Dining Car. Ironically, it was located only two miles away from the Ambassador Hotel, where RFK was assassinated just one year before.
Prior to this, my grandfather was the family patriarch and provided everything we needed. My parents were barely out of high school, married but amicably separated, living the hippy life, marching for civil rights, and experimenting with drugs.
I spent a lot of time with my grandfather and his girlfriend in what felt like a typical family. He taught me how to ride a bicycle, she taught me how to swim. We played Go Fish and Old Maid. A normal life from my vantage point, atop his shoulders and unknowingly complicit in our clandestine ‘’operation decoy” and affording him the opportunity to sneak into the horse race parks he was banned from.
At the time of his murder, my mother was twenty, I was four, and we were alone. But there were hundreds of people at his funeral, including the FBI. Reporters were piled up outside of the cemetery walls, ready to rush cars at the gate. And I remember it all, like it was yesterday.
Everything we owned had been seized, so we had nowhere to go. Shortly after the funeral, with our dog in tow, I recall standing at the Burbank Boulevard onramp to the North 405 Freeway in Van Nuys, California. I clutched my mom’s left hand as she extended the other to hitch a ride. I even remember the peace sign swaying from the black Volkswagen Bug’s rearview mirror when the driver, Amy, pulled over to pick us up. Next stop, San Francisco.
For the next several years, it seemed gloom was just an inconvenient necessity of life. My mother was battling depression and would later be diagnosed with bi-polar disorder during her 50’s.
My dad’s friends were returning from Vietnam, plagued with heroin addiction to cope with their physical and mental injuries. My dad fell prey to heroin and would spend the next sixteen years chasing the dragon. He and my mother reunited in 1974, whereafter he landed in prison on drug charges.
Consequently, my mom and I, like Nicole Shanahan’s family, were on welfare and food stamps most of my young life. In 1985, my dad, like RFKJ, got sober via the 12-steps. As an adult child of an addict, I too was addressing some of my issues with my dad. During those sessions, he shared two thought provoking statements with me that would completely change my perception throughout life.
The first was, ‘When an addict’s behavior triggers you, they’re not doing it to you, they’re just doing it.’ The other was, ‘You know, sometimes it’s easier to dispel negative perceptions of others when you seek your similarities instead of the differences.’
The first of those statements would prove to be my safety net more than once, considering I was cyclically predisposed to attracting addicts. The second one would prove to be my inner blueprint in assessing whether my judgement of others was coming from a pure source of healthy discernment, or the need to turn away from the reflection of my own behavior.
Like my family, I was a lifelong democrat, but my trust in the Democratic Party’s commitment to the people has eroded over the last few decades. The last time I felt content with a president is when Bill Clinton was in the Oval Office.
Say what you will about the Bill Clinton of yesteryear, but during his second term I was a single woman in my twenties, mortgage interest rates were lower than they had been in twenty years, the economy was strong, and I had just bought my first house on my own.
Looking back at the 80’s when Reagan and Bush Sr. monopolized the Whitehouse, a lot of my friends had parents who were employed at various aerospace companies here, in Los Angeles. The Pentagon had scaled back the spend in that sector and the manufacturers weren’t building more aircraft.
At the decade’s end, of those friends, at least one of their parents was out of work. People couldn’t sell their homes because buyers couldn’t qualify due to the surging interest rates, some as high as 18%, and of course, the divorce rate was skyrocketing.
30-Year mortgage
Divorce rate
Still, the thought that our government was lying to, or gaslighting us wasn’t really on my radar yet, except for the controversial Kennedy assassinations and the CIA drug trafficking mess (The Great White Lie, authored by former DEA Agent, Michael Levine).
But that was then, this is now, and I’m a believer.
Sharing a Brain in The New Millennium
Clinton’s presidency had ended, and Little Bush took office in 2001. Soon after, the country was radically changing again and not in a good way. There was 9-11, an uptick in ridiculous wars, the economy was slipping, once again the mortgage crisis was destroying people and families, and the Wall Street/bank bailouts were literal insanity.
Republicans were the common denominator, so they became my scapegoat. I prayed every night for Obama to win during his first campaign. After all, he promised a lot regarding those issues. He also promised to bring home our troops from Afghanistan.
By the end of his first year in office, he had ordered 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan instead of ordering them home. We didn’t fully withdrawal until 2021.
I felt cheated. The news was a joke. It was bad enough they [the news] aired the Octomom more often than they aired our president, who in my opinion, was dragging his feet while his fingers were in too many of the wrong pies.
My profession was largely dependent on the entertainment sector because those employees were my clients. The 2007 writers’ strike followed by the pending actors’ strike, and the mortgage crisis, left my clients out of work. So, we were all broke.
By 2009 my life was spiraling. My HMO health plan was over $900.00 a month, so I had to let it go. I was losing everything, and I felt hopeless.
The American people were in a state of emergency with unemployment as high as it was in the 80’s, while he traveled the world for nine of the twelve months of his first year in office.
And that’s when I realized those ‘rich men north of Richmond’ were sharing a brain!
After Trump won the 2016 election, I swore I’d never vote again because I believed my vote no longer counted.
In 2020, like a lot of people, I didn’t like the options in front of me, but I was terrified the other guy would win, so I caved and voted for Biden. When we funded the Ukraine-Russia war, once again, disillusioned, I swore nobody would get my vote unless I could check off a long list of similarities and a short list of differences.
But this time I meant it. I wanted a divorce from the Democratic Party.
This was not an easy decision because I had been torn between my obligatory civic duty, and my cynical belief that all politicians are liars.
Then, in 2023 the most amazing thing happened. A friend told me RFK Jr. had just announced his candidacy for president.
What? The ‘anti-vaxxer’? I just had to see what he was about.
When I was young, we could trust our journalists and news media. Today we must dig for the truth while they deliver not even cleverly spun soundbites, and pander to corporate greed and cross-ownership for the love of money. Big shout out to the FCC. Who needs media/broadcasting checks and balances anyway?
He was new in the game so current interviews were sparse, and well… per usual, mainstream media was on censor patrol. That didn’t stop me. I just kept diving for more podcasts and social media.
Within a week I had signed up to volunteer for his campaign and I’ve steadily donated whatever and whenever I can. I’ve never done that for any candidate. And, so it goes, there’s a first time for everything as they say.
By this time my political party needle had been moving closer to left-of-center because of the bizarre state of our Union, and the outrageous neglect of duty our leaders have been demonstrating.
RFKJ made perfect sense to me. He was the first candidate I’ve ever heard actually outline his blueprint to fix our broken and bastardized Democratic Republic.
Most politicians ramble off a list of buzz topics they intend to ‘fix’, but don’t actually tell you how or when they plan to do it. Remember Afghanistan…
Another refreshing thing about Bobby is when he’s confronted with a subject, he’s unsure about, he says so. He’s said, ‘I don’t know’, or ‘I would have to look into that because I don’t have enough information to answer at this time.’ Or ‘I’m open to suggestions on that.’
Name the last politician who was willing to do that. Personally, I find it very transparent and noble. Besides, he is the most equipped candidate to fix the issues our country is facing because he’s been suing those agencies at the root of the problem his entire career. More importantly, he’s been winning!
To Agree or Agree to Disagree
To be fair, I’ve questioned his position on a few occasions. The first being his stance on a woman’s right to choose during his interview with NBC’s Ali Vitali in August of 2023, where he initially stated he would sign a ban on abortion after three months. He followed that by asserting individual states should have the right to protect the child once it’s viable and he wouldn’t personally prohibit abortion, as he supports the Fourteenth Amendment.
Admittedly, I thought about walking away to support Marianne Williamson, but I decided to wait until more unfolded. I think it took about three months or so, until he later updated his support for a woman’s right to choose AND he believes we should also have programs to help women who want to carry to full term. Flip-flopping? Maybe, but at least he’s open to change.
For the record, I think it’s fine for someone to change their mind. It doesn’t make them a flip flopper if they employ critical thinking and arrive at a new perspective.
Other issues that gave me pause and this is a big one, his stance on the Israeli-Hamas war and finally, gun control.
Me on the war: I just couldn’t understand how he could support Netanyahu’s strategy after stumping on peace and ending forever wars. Yes, I believe Israel should be able to defend its people, but that is not a credit card to go wiping out an entire nation of innocent civilians at warp speed right in front of us.
His redemption? He recently stated in an interview (I can’t recall with whom), if he’d been in office, he would have gone about it differently by joining in talks with other world leaders on how to bring peaceful solutions to the problem.
Me on gun control: I’m not for taking gun rights away but I don’t understand the need for automatic or assault guns to be available to average civilians.
His position: Leave legal gun owners alone, banning them is not going to fix the gun violence problem and he has a plan to keep schools safer. I think I can live with that.
Shanahan for VP? What Just Happened?
Wow. I mean wow! I was not expecting that, especially after RFKJ had just made a public statement before March 26th, saying the press got some of the details wrong.
My knee jerk reaction to that rumor was: There’s no way he’ll choose her. She’s too young, she has no political experience, and her vaccine stance would just send us back to square one with the boomers, a conversation I was really dreading with my stubborn, hyper liberal parents and friends.
And when he did announce Shanahan for VP, I just sat there watching in shock. All I could do was reflect on how hard we [volunteers] had worked to get him this far, and he just blew it.
Socials immediately started blowing up with posts about walking away from him.
Side note: I’ve predicted every election winner since Bill Clinton, excluding 2020. In fact, before anyone had paid any attention to Obama, I spied him on C-Span during Clinton’s second term and told my dad he would be the first U.S. black president.
Since announcing his candidacy, I have believed Kennedy was the dark horse who would bring it in November 2024, marking one of the most important moments in American political history.
The week before his VP announcement I was convinced he would win by a landslide because we were getting a lot of traction with the D&R fringe.
But now… I’m just not sure.
The Shanahan announcement had me once again, thinking of defecting from the campaign. Not because I didn’t like Nicole because I do. I was worried she would scare off the Republican fringe we were attracting because she was so liberal, and she would scare off the Dem fringe because of her stance on vaccines.
My mind was racing…
Will the D&R fringe and the boomers even give her the time of day without any political experience?
What really scared me was, what if something happens to him?
Will she be able to handle running the country, with zero political experience while facing the world challenges we are dealing with?
On the other hand, and equally important, she’s acutely knowledgeable about AI, health science, agriculture, and the legal capacities in which they’re bound or should be bound.
I needed to think about it, then execute my list of similarities and differences.
[insert Jeopardy game show jingle here].
Five days later…
Strategy Extraordinaire?
I thought, okay, wait…
Bobby is wicked-smart. There must be more to this.
What if the choice for the following qualities in a VP was a brilliant strategy?
- Younger
- Mom
- Liberal
- Female with a large following and financial support
- Strong understanding of tech science and AI and a legal expertise to hold the developers and those who govern it to the highest standard
Could those qualities appeal to the fringe of the D&R enough to get them on board with our pick for POTUS?
Could this compel her pool of followers to at least pay attention to him and just maybe open their minds to explore his ideas too? That would be good.
Because, when you get right down to it, the issue keeping the devout D&Rs from hearing anything he has to say is the lack of honest exposure in media coverage. He’s even said it, most people convert after hearing his full speeches and interviews.
It’s the boomers and the hyper liberals who follow MSM and remain in an abusive marriage with the Democratic Party, who don’t listen to his full interviews.
Maybe this is the roundhouse kick to propel the campaign’s reach to those nay sayers. If we can bring them to the well, perhaps we can save them from the proverbial drought.
Similarities Vs. Differences
After going within, I’ve learned I check a lot more boxes on Nicole’s tab than not.
Truth be told, I’m still on the fence about her capability to run the country should something happen to Bobby, God forbid. And not to be macabre, but for the same reason, that may be why he’ll remain safe, once in office. Just looking at all angles here for the sake of an honest argument.
Do I think she would be a fantastic addition to his cabinet? Yes.
Do I think she has qualities and capabilities that will bring our top ranks up to speed on modern invention and regulation? Yes.
Do I think the boomers are going to run for the hills? Yes.
Do I think we can grab enough of the left to make the cut over Trump because we know Biden’s going down? Undecided.
At the end of the day, I was a lot more confident Bobby was going to win before the VP pick than I am now, and I would feel more convicted in his chance to win had he chosen Williamson, Warren, West or Gabbard as VP.
Am I throwing down my sword, and walking away?
No.
This country is literally dying for change.
I trust that if we work hard to get him on the ballot, Kennedy will take that piece of ground and the sword he asked for, and he will take back our country.
May those ‘rich men north of Richmond’ never darken the door of the people again!
