Alright man, I did it. I watched all of it.

I like the idea of RFK Jr. a lot. We're all sick of corporatism, the washington establishment, the creep towards oligarchy. I very much identify with his addiction struggles, and I respect him for acknowledging his sordid past, bringing awareness to the fact that some people can change, and that coping with addiction doesn't make you bad person. His history of legal and activist environmentalism is righteous, and no one in their right mind could defend big pharma's current state, yes. I love that he acknowledges our corporatism nightmare, and that he is capable of nuance. He isn't afraid of showing emotion, and I think he does really care about the future of our country. Plus the high backflip into a lake was cool, there's no denying that.

He prioritizes immediately de-fanging media reports about him. Now, yes, the mainstream media landscape absolutely sucks, and largely operates in the interests of the same people lobbying washington, but the video, four weeks old, includes him reacting dismissively to the idea that he's a racist, and then one week ago, he goes to a conference and (after asked about it) says that he opposes taking down confederate statues in the South because it "erases the history". Bro, the history of the statues is that the majority were erected in the Jim Crowe era, decades after the civil war, as a "fuck you" to Black Americans. I'm not sure if he knows that. I guess keeping the statues up isn't really teaching much history, and it's preserving a nasty part of history that we need to correct. No one's going to forget American civil war history if we take down symbols built with the sole intent of propagating racism.

Anti-vax. I think he is. The vid doesn't make a real attempt to dispute this, it merely blames big pharma and the establishment for labeling him as such. Yes, he says he has taken prior vaccines, but not the covid vaccine, and then cut scene, no elaboration. RFK Jr. is not trained in medical science, epidemiology, biotech, or anything related, and has essentially said "I have decided that I know better than the tens of millions working in the global medical science community", who have repeatedly concluded that the thimerosal (mercury-based preservative) in vaccines (or previously in vaccines) has no link to autism, or really any widespread negative health setbacks. Instead of saying "I was wrong about that one", he has wrongly incorporated the criticisms of his objectively incorrect stance on the science into the narrative that big pharma is out to get him. Not that they aren't, but if you're gonna take them on, focus on all of the things they're actually doing wrong; the TV advertising, the lobbying, the insane profit margins (he's got these three), and how our for-profit healthcare system grossly enables them. I would make the argument that meaningfully attacking big pharma is basically impossible without taking on the whole healthcare system, but I don't hear anything about that. He won that cancer case against Monsanto, and says the victim probably wouldn't be alive without the settlement money to fund their medical care. I dunno how you could get that far and then strictly limit public criticism of our healthcare system to drug manufacturers. Going off of his op-ed headline they briefly tease, "the covid lockdowns were a failure", the covid lockdowns were not a failure (~1 million lives saved), I think, even if we're playing the effective altruism game of trying to tally the damage inflicted on society by the lockdowns for comparison, which does absolutely exist. Martyrizing yourself with a comparison to the Tienanmen square tank guy like in this promo vid is kinda weird, too.

The environmentalism. Obviously, climate change is the number one issue, and absolute crickets on this one. He has advocated for suspending all natural gas exports (and most people don't know this, but Biden has enacted a temporary freeze to see what the effects are). That's great, and his statements in the past about carbon credits being an absolute cop out for corporations to continue their emissions with only extremely minor penalties is spot on. 30 minutes of video, not a single mention of it. I have concerns that his distrust of "establishment" science and anti-consensus branding could be getting in the way, but probably, it's more to do with...

Obviously, a lot of this is playing politics, making calculated statements, choosing his battles, etc. to appeal to a wide swath of voters, but courting Trumpists and climate change do-nothings is pretty disqualifying for me. I have no way to evaluate whether or not he understands the threat to our democracy uniquely posed by MAGA. The most consistent theme throughout the entire video is "I'm persecuted", and, oof, if that ain't a bit of a turn off for me, considering that it's also a major driving animus of MAGA. But to be fair, he is a legitimate underdog, not a fake populist billionaire with far less legitimate claims of persecution. All this said, the most important issue here is that angling for votes has prevented him from being able to at least publicly observe how radical and dangerous the MAGA movement has become. I'm sorry, no, there is not even a rough equivalent between disgustingly corporatist Joe Biden and the guy who staged an insurrection attempt that continues through through this very day. And besides, he knows he functions as a spoiler candidate, he's not exactly politically aloof. There have been conflicting statements from him and his campaign about this, which doesn't help his credibility.

What are your criticisms of Biden? I do not particularly look forward to voting Joe this fall, and a lot of that's because of Palestine-Israel, but I'm still doing it because I think it's the most likely/quickest path to ever being able to reform our politics. Even though I don't live in a swing state, I'd rather bolster the popular vote with my single ballot for Joe just to make it ever so slightly more ridiculous if Trump loses and then inevitably claims election fraud.