Aware
I don’t like the new-speak “woke”, but to quote Peter Townsend from The Who, I “became aware” in 1968 (We’re Not Going to Take It). I was eleven, and it was the year that Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists at the Olympics, the Democratic Convention in Chicago dissolved into violence, and Richard Nixon won the Presidency.
I was as child of the Kennedy Presidency. Some of my earliest memories are of learning of the President’s death. I watched his funeral on our black and white television (you had to turn it on early – it needed to warmup). It was only a month or so later that we went to Washington. The service hats were still surrounding the “eternal flame” lighting his grave.
Bobby Kennedy took up his brother’s legacy. It was in January of 1968 that the myth of American victory in Vietnam exploded like an overfilled balloon. The Tet Offensive showed that the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong were not only undefeated, but uncontained and willing to accept tremendous losses to gain control. Now a Senator from New York, Bobby wasn’t the first to speak out against President Johnson. But his words and actions, his willingness to place his life on the line and run for the Presidency himself, made him Johnson’s powerful opponent.
It got him killed. There was another funeral, this time in “living color”, another procession to Arlington Cemetery. He was buried beside his brother: an Attorney General, a US Senator, a candidate for President, a final chapter of the “Camelot” dream.
The Burden
There must be a terrible burden in the Kennedy name.
Robert Kennedy Junior is the third child of the eleven Bobby and his wife Ethel had. He grew up in the great “Kennedy” tradition, graduating from private school in Boston and going onto Harvard, the London School of Economics, and, like his father, the University of Virginia Law School. He made his mark as a leading environmental lawyer for thirty-five years, founding the “Waterkeeper Alliance” and as senior attorney for the National Resources Defense Council. Kennedy also advocated for minority and poorer communities, particularly when environmental issues combined with their interests.
As an outgrowth of his environmental involvement, Mr. Kennedy became an outspoken critic of the use of the chemical compound thimerosal in vaccines. Out of that original concern, he has evolved into the leader of the “anti-vaccination” movement in the United States. According to Center for Countering Digital Hate, he is one of dozen leading “influencers” on social media.
Kennedy has come out against many vaccines, including those against COVID-19. He also claims that 5-G cellular telephone radiation is linked to the coronavirus, and claims, without evidence, that a “…wave of suspicious deaths” are tied to the vaccines (NPR).
Easy to Hate
Robert Kennedy represents the odd union of progressive politics and conspiracy theory. And it all began with a now discounted theory linking the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine with autism, published in the British medical journal The Lancet (it has since been retracted). The author subsequently was stripped of his medical license. But the “cork was out of the bottle” – and the anti-vaccination world had what they needed to attack.
I guess there’s some logic in the movement. Big industry spent years hiding and denying pollution. Some big pharma companies have made a fortune on drugs that ultimately did more harm than good – the opioid crisis comes to mind. So when “evidence” comes out that vaccines are “bad”, it’s easy to accept. And when investigations by institutions, like the Food and Drug Administration or the American Medical Association, refute that “evidence”, it’s easy to claim that it’s just “big money” buying their acceptance.
Anti-Hero
But it’s just as easy to go from selective understanding to total “anti” everything. And that’s a problem. Vaccinations work, ever since 1796 when Edward Jenner discovered the smallpox vaccine. My generation saw the end of smallpox and polio, and the fading of the typical “childhood” diseases that took a toll in disability and death every year: measles, mumps, rubella, whooping cough, scarlet fever and chicken pox. Vaccinations worked so well that we forgot the dangers of the diseases themselves. We focused instead on the minuscule risks of the vaccinations.
It’s hard when the leading spokesperson for the “anti” movement is the son of a hero, a man with a long record of service to causes you support. Hard to maintain common sense, and not fall into the black hole of conspiracy theory and pseudo-science. Social media is good for so many things, from finding lost dogs to selling campers. It gives us access to all sorts of information, some legitimate, and a lot of it junk. But what it also has done is given every “snake oil salesman” a platform, with slick graphics and realistic lab coats.
Legacy
Robert Kennedy takes his family name and wears it like a “lab coat”. It gives him legitimacy, an echo of his father and uncles and an earlier, simpler time. He has spent a career battling the “corporate interests” that damaged our environment. But now he has stepped beyond the truth – and instead of protecting folks, he is putting them at risk. He is appealing to their worst instincts, and with the imprimatur of his family, it works.
His uncle said: “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country”. What Robert Kennedy is doing for his country is helping more people die. It’s a sad chapter in the Kennedy legacy.
