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RFK: CALLING ON AMERICANS TO BE THEIR BEST, NOT THEIR WORST

In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 5, 2026 at 12:10 am

Fifty-eight years ago, Robert Francis Kennedy aroused passions of an altogether different sort from those aroused by Donald Trump. 

Kennedy had been a United States Attorney General (1961-1964) and Senator from New York (1964-1968). But it was his connection to his beloved and assassinated brother, President John F. Kennedy, for which he was best known.

Kennedy himself remained haunted by the assassination for the rest of his life. He had spent most of his adult life in service to his brother’s ambitions—first as Congressman (1946), then as Senator (1952) and finally as President (1960).

For the last five years of his life (1963-1968) Robert Kennedy had to chart his own course and find his own voice.

As Attorney General, he had waged an unrelenting war against the Mafia. But he also championed civil rights and guaranteed protection for James Meredith, the first black student to enter the all-white University of Mississippi (1963).

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, in October, 1962, his wise counsel had helped steer America from the brink of nuclear war with the Soviet Union.

As a U.S Senator he continued to support civil rights and urge greater Federal efforts to fight poverty. Like his dead brother, he called on Americans to improve their own lives while aiding the less fortunate.

Robert F. Kennedy campaigning for President

Millions saw RFK as the only candidate who could make life better for America’s impoverished—while standing firmly against those who threatened the Nation’s safety.

As television correspondent Charles Quinn observed: “I talked to a girl in Hawaii who was for [George] Wallace [the segregationist governor of Alabama]. And I said ‘Really?’ [She said] ‘Yeah, but my real candidate is dead.’

“You know what I think it was? All these whites, all these blue collar people who supported Kennedy…all of these people felt that Kennedy would really do what he thought best for the black people, but, at the same time, would not tolerate lawlessness and violence.

“They were willing to gamble…because they knew in their hearts that the country was not right. They were willing to gamble on this man who would try to keep things within reasonable order; and at the same time do some of the things they knew really should be done.”

Campaigning for the Presidency in 1968, RFK had just won the crucial California primary on June 4—when he was shot in the back of the head.

His killer: Sirhan Sirhan, a young Palestinian furious at Kennedy’s support for Israel.

Kennedy died at 1:44 a.m. on June 6, 1968.  He was 42.

On June 8, 1,200 men and women boarded a specially-reserved passenger train at New York’s Pennsylvania Station. They were accompanying Kennedy’s body to its final resting place at Arlington National Cemetery.

As the train slowly moved along 225 miles of track, throngs of men, women and children lined the rails to pay their final respects to a man they considered a genuine hero.

Little Leaguers clutched baseball caps across their chests. Uniformed firemen and policemen saluted. Burly men in shirtsleeves held hardhats over their hearts. Black men in overalls waved small American flags. Women from all levels of society stood and cried.

A nation says goodbye to Robert Kennedy

Commenting on RFK’s legacy, historian William L. O’Neil wrote in Coming Apart: An Informal History of America in the 1960′s:

“…He aimed so high that he must be judged for what he meant to do, and, through error and tragic accident, failed at….He will also be remembered as an extraordinary human being who, though hated by some, was perhaps more deeply loved by his countrymen than any man of his time.

“That too must be entered into the final account, and it is no small thing. With his death something precious disappeared from public life.”

America has never again seen a Presidential candidate who combined toughness on crime and compassion for the poor.

Republican candidates appeal to negative emotions—hatred, greed, fear. They constantly seek new “enemies” to frighten their voters: Asians, Hispanics, blacks, “uppity” women, liberals, “socialists.”

They constantly attack the Federal Government as a source of repression—especially when it reins in predatory businesses or levies taxes on the rich. And they try to convince their voters that if only “government gets out of the way” of these businesses and doesn’t tax billionaires, wonderful riches will “trickle down” to those far below.

They champion “law and order” when they control law enforcement—as governors or Presidents. But when the Biden Justice Department started investigating former President Donald Trump for illegally withholding classified documents, Republicans demanded the defunding of the FBI.

And Democratic candidates try to appease the Right by supporting its foreign and domestic agendas. In 2003, liberal Democrats—such as then-Senator Hillary Clinton—supported President George W. Bush’s unprovoked attack on Iraq.

Democrats have aided Republicans in opposing anti-poverty programs and efforts to combat pollution and climate change. 

RFK had the courage to fight the Mafia—and the compassion to fight poverty. He called on Americans to act on their best qualities, not their worst.

At a time when Americans long for candidates to give them positive reasons for voting, his kind of politics are sorely missed.

HOW THE TRUMP DICTATORSHIP COULD HAVE BEEN PREVENTED

In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 4, 2026 at 12:10 am

Upon being sworn in as the nation’s 46th President on January 20, 2021, Joseph Biden faced the most important decision of his life.    

On July 1, 2024, the Republican-dominated Supreme Court conferred almost unlimited criminal prosecution immunity to Presidents. This gave Biden the opportunity—and authority—to save, at least temporarily, the American republic.

Official presidential portrait of Biden smiling, wearing a navy blue suit jacket with an American flag lapel pin, white shirt, and blue necktie.

Joseph Biden

Instead, he chose to go down in history as the man who presided over the end of the American republic.

To save it, he could have:

  • Purged, through arrests and trials, almost the entire treason-conspiring Republican party, starting with  Donald Trump, its Fuhrer-in-waiting.
  • Done this officially, because the Court had ruled that he (and future Presidents) could only be prosecuted for unofficial acts.
  • Done this while he still commanded the full resources of the military and Justice Department.

DOJ Civil Rights Division (@CivilRights) / X

            File:Seal of the United States Department of Defense.svg - Wikipedia

  • Swept clean the Federal courts of all Right-wing, treason-supporting judges—such as Aileen Cannon, who had repeatedly thwarted efforts to try Trump for stealing and hiding almost 300 highly classified government documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
  • This would have included the six Right-wing Supreme Court Justices who have given future Presidents the legal authority to assassinate rivals, take bribes and/or foment coups.

If Biden had done this, he would have been damned as the first President since Abraham Lincoln to brutally crush political opposition.

But he would also have been hailed for having—at least temporarily—prevented a wholesale Right-wing takeover and dictatorship under Project 2025. Its’ goal: Replace existing federal civil service workers with tens of thousands of radical Right-wingers.

To preside over the end of the American republic, all Biden needed do was what he had done for the previous three years: Nothing

Example #1: Only on November 18, 2022, did then-Attorney General Merrick Garland appoint Jack Smith Special Counsel to investigate Trump’s attempt to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 Presidential election and become “President-for-Life.” 

This was clearly treason—and Garland should have appointed Smith, at the latest, by mid-2021.

Official portrait of United States Attorney General Merrick Garland

Merrick Garland

Example #2: Trump’s accomplices included 147 members of Congress who voted to invalidate the 2020 Electoral College vote count. A total of 139 served in the House of Representatives, and eight served in the Senate.

To date, not one of these accessories has even been indicted, let alone convicted, for treason.

Arguably, Biden’s worst appointment was Merrick Garland as Attorney General. 

In 1961, when Robert F. Kennedy became Attorney General, he moved quickly and forcefully to wage war on America’s organized crime syndicates. Unprecedented numbers of mobsters found themselves facing vigorous FBI investigations, indictments and/or convictions.  

By contrast, Garland’s timidity in prosecuting the crimes of Right-wing Republicans served as not only a national embarrassment but a mortal threat to national security. 

On May 30, 2024, a Manhattan jury convicted Donald Trump of 34 felonies for falsifying New York business records in 2016. He had done so to conceal his hush money payoff to porn “star” Stormy Daniels for his extramarital tryst with her.

Related image

Donald Trump

Even though the Biden administration had nothing to do with the case, Republicans immediately blamed the President—and demanded wholesale prosecutions of the Left.

Right-wing propagandist Charlie Kirk urged Republican prosecutors to get “creative” in bringing charges: “Indict the left, or lose America,” he said on X.

And Trump quickly issued his own calls for “vengeance”

“Wouldn’t it be terrible to throw the president’s wife and the former secretary of state, think of it, the former secretary of state, but the president’s wife, into jail? Wouldn’t that be a terrible thing? But they want to do it,” Trump said in an interview on Newsmax.

“It’s a terrible, terrible path that they’re leading us to. And it’s very possible that it’s going to have to happen to them.”

Nor did Trump forget former Republican Representative Liz Cheney, who chaired the House 1/6 Committee investigating the Trump-inspired attack on Congress.

“ELIZABETH LYNNE CHENEY IS GUILTY OF TREASON,” Trump posted on his social media website Truth Social. “RETRUTH IF YOU WANT TELEVISED MILITARY TRIBUNALS.”

There could be absolutely no doubt that Trump would pursue “vengeance” against everyone who has ever opposed him if he was re-elected President.  

There could also be no doubt that he would remain in office until he died as “President-for-Life.”

When Andrew Jackson, seventh President of the United States from 1829 to 1837, was close to death, he asked his doctor: “What act of my administration will be most severely condemned by future Americans?”

“Perhaps the removal of the bank deposits,” said the doctor—referring to Jackson’s withdrawal of U.S. Government monies from the first Bank of the United States.

“Oh, no,” said Jackson, his eyes blazing. “I can tell you. Posterity will condemn me more because I was persuaded not to hang John C. Calhoun as a traitor than for any other act in my life!”

John C. Calhoun had once been Vice President under Jackson and later a United States Senator from South Carolina. His fiery, pro-slavery rhetoric and radical theories of “nullification” of Federal laws played a major role in bringing on the Civil War (1861-1865).   

Like Jackson, Biden had a chance to prevent catastrophe. But through his own natural decency, he brought catastrophe to the country he loved.

Like Jackson, he will be simultaneously praised and damned by future generations of Americans. 

TRUMP–AND “THE TWILIGHT ZONE”

In Entertainment, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 3, 2026 at 12:23 am

On May 11, 2026, for three hours, President Donald Trump posted over 50 messages on his website, Truth Social. The posts mainly consisted of:         

  • Reposting;
  • Attacking political opponents;
  • Calling for prosecution of enemies;
  • Posting AI-generated images of himself; and
  • References to foreign policy, including the war in Iran.

The posts occurred just before a scheduled trip to China and amid rising economic pressures in the United States. These, in turn, stem from Iran’s blocking the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% to 25% of the world’s oil passes, after Trump ordered a naval blockade of Iranian ports.

The Wall Street Journal reported that between 10:14 p.m. and 1:12 a.m., Trump posted 55 times, with other reports citing over 50-54 posts within that timeframe.

He posted a 400-word attack against The New York Times at 1:12 a.m. on May 12. His complaint: It had revealed that his renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool would cost more than $10 million over what he had previously said. 

Donald Trump

He also falsely claimed the Times of losing subscribers. On the contrary: On May 6, the company reported:

“The Times has added an average of 330,000 total subscribers a quarter, including print, since the start of last year” and “now has 13.1 million subscribers…after adding about 310,000 digital-only subscribers in the first quarter of the year.”

Most of his venom was aimed at Barack Obama. Trump reposted messages from his supporters, who accused the former president of sedition, wiretapping Trump Tower and creating the “Russia Hoax” to steal the 2016 Presidential election.

It’s clear that Trump—a lifelong racist—harbors jealousy of the black, still-handsome, articulate, witty and beloved former president. When Trump was being assailed in 2016 for his “grab-em-by-the-pussy” comment, he complained that no one was accusing Obama of sexual infidelities.

File:Barack Obama in 2016.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

Barack Obama

For good reason: Unlike Trump—who bedded a porn “star” while married to his third wife, Melania—there has never been a hint of scandal about Obama.

In one post, Trump—who incited a deadly attack on Congress on January 6, 2021, to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 Presidential election—accused Obama of plotting a coup against him.

As always with Trump, he offered no evidence to back up his slander.

He also lied that:

  • Obama profited $120 million from Obamacare;
  • Obama wiretapped Trump Tower; 
  • Dominion voting machines changed votes in 2024; and
  • Neither Joe Biden nor Kamala Harris was running the previous administration.

Obama was not the only public figure Trump attacked. Others included:

  • Former presidential opponent Hillary Clinton;
  • Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, who has urged members of the military to disobey illegal orders;
  • Former FBI director and Trump critic James Comey;
  • Former independent counsel Jack Smith, who investigated Trump’s inciting the January 6 coup attempt

Trump is clearly still hung up on his 2020 re-election loss to Joe Biden, lying that Dominion voting machines “DELETED 2.7 MILLION TRUMP VOTES NATIONWIDE. INCLUDING OVER 1 MILLION PENNSYLVANIA VOTES SWITCHED FROM PRESIDENT TRUMP TO BIDEN.”

He can’t accept that a majority of voters would prefer anyone else to him—even though his loss largely stemmed from his refusal to tackle the mushrooming COVID-19 crisis.

Trump’s tweeting rampage echoes the theme of a 1962 episode of The Twilight Zone: “One More Pallbearer.” The central character in it is millionaire Paul Radin (played by Joseph Weisman) who nurses decades-old grudges against three people.

With a few slight alterations, he could be Trump himself.

Radin invites three people to the bomb shelter that he has built in New York City. But they aren’t family or friends. He  holds deep grudges against all of them.

One is high-school teacher Mrs. Langsford, who gave him a failing grade when he was caught cheating on a test. The second is Colonel Hawthorne, who had him court-martialed when Radin endangered lives by disobeying orders. The third is Reverend Hughes, who made a public scandal out of a young woman who later committed suicide over Radin. 

Radin has equipped his shelter with sound effects and fake radio messages to convince the trio that nuclear war will occur in just moments. He offers them refuge in the shelter if they beg his forgiveness for their treatment of him. They refuse his offer, making it clear they would rather die with loved ones than survive with him. 

A TV screen playing footage of a nuclear explosion—and the accompanying sound effects—convince Radin that his fantasy is in fact real.

When he emerges from the shelter, the city is intact. But the sheer intensity of the illusion he created has led Radin to lose his mind. He sobs helplessly at the foot of a fountain outside his intact building—a victim of his own overweening pride and hatred.

And, as happens at the close of every Twilight Zone episode, Rod Serling, the series’ host and narrator, is on hand to offer his moving commentary:

“Mr. Paul Radin, a dealer in fantasy, who sits in the rubble of his own making and imagines that he’s the last man on Earth, doomed to a perdition of unutterable loneliness because a practical joke has turned into a nightmare. Mr. Paul Radin, pallbearer at a funeral that he manufactured himself in the Twilight Zone.”