Against my better judgment, I became—I won't say "embroiled, maybe bemused(?) in a Facebook conversation concerning RFK Jr., a hero to every conspiracy nut who believes the CIA runs NPR or Fauci created Covid—all them—ending with 19.
And during this little excursion into never-ever land, I thought of two disparate references. "Learn to be Still," a song by Don Henley, and Carson McCullers' masterful novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, written 81 years ago when Ms. McCullers was only 23.
In Henley's song, we find this passage:
We are like sheep without a shepherd
We don't know how to be alone
So we wander 'round this desert
Wind up following the wrong gods home
This is America—maybe the world—in 2024. Looking for some god to follow and choosing the wrong one time after time. Whether it's Robert Kennedy or Donald Trump, too many of us feel cheated and ignored—the world has been unfair to us. And so we grab our thousand-dollar iPhones, comment on the misery we see all around us on our 65" flat screens, sip our ten-dollar lattes (with tip!), and wait for someone to put the impoverished immigrants in their place or blow the lid off the vaccination "scam" that has saved hundreds of millions of lives in the past century. They want Fauci in jail but insurrectionist thugs freed. Thay want a return to the "patriotic days" of white Americans speaking only "American" and the glory days of polio and diphtheria when infants and children died in horrific numbers.
They want to go back, but Trump won't take them there or anywhere. Kennedy will steer the ship, though he may slaughter some animals along the way.
Following the wrong gods home.
McCullers's novel, more subtle, traces a town's reaction to a deaf-mute named John Singer. He becomes all things to all people, and as their confidant, becomes their confessor and support. He gives their sad lives meaning, but his world does not revolve around them at all; instead, it centers on a character we would find despicable. McCullers, at 23, knew that finding meaning in life is not something given to us; it is something we discover. If we expect a failed businessman or a goofy anti-vaxxer to be our salvation, many disappointments lie waiting.
The so-called charm of people like Trump and RFK is their ability to seize on individual frustrations and to offer facile solutions—an easy way out. The scheme has worked for dictators from Hitler to Saddam Hussein. The America version centers on a return to a more halcyon and tranquil homeland, which, if I remember correctly, has never been halcyon or tranquil. But it was, of course, white, and as a starting point in a racist country, that's always a Trump crowd-pleaser. Further, in a dumbed-down nation suddenly mistrustful of the science that has saved the lives of their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents for a century, someone like RFK Jr., who dabbles in everything and knows little, is the perfect spokesperson for people too lazy to discover the truth.
Conspiracies were more fun when they decorated the cover of some check-out counter newspaper and we laughed at them. Now we die from them, for when 100 million people believe that only 6% of reported Covid deaths were actuallythe result of Covid (reports are actually almost a million short according to morbidity data) it's less conspiracy than mass hysteria. Upwards of 800,000 Americans died because they believed the fabrications and outright lies of hucksters like Trump and Kennedy. And they continue to die—and their children with them.
That these two have appeared on the same stage is a warning we ignore at our own peril. But for those eager for a conspiracy, here's one with proof behind it: since the 1950s and the development of a burgeoning post-war middle class, an increasingly large segment of the Republican Party has worked systematically to stagnate that middle class by attacking unions, denigrating education, promoting religion over science, and demonizing women's rights. The election of Donald Trump in 2016 got them to the promised land.
So there—next time someone tells you in grave tones that some pill prevents aging or happy thoughts prevent viruses, reply with your own about how the average American is viewed as an impediment in GOP-land. At least you can be part of the conversation.
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