And there he is: the man who is charged with looking after your health and well-being for the next four years.

His father, his mother, and every one of his uncles and aunts would be scrambling over each other to be the first to disown him . . . and possibly to beat the living shit out of him. Their generation of Kennedys — while as imperfect as any of us — were loyal Americans who loved and served their country. And they were sane.

Bobby Jr. is unworthy — not just of his new job as head of Health and Human Services — but of the Kennedy name. He is a loose cannon, a disgrace, and a danger to the health and wellbeing of all Americans.

He is a Trump appointee, approved by Congress only because both houses are controlled by Trump’s Republican advocates. Even after a prolonged, contentious hearing process, during which his lack of qualifications and his harebrained beliefs were laid bare for the world to see, not a single Republican had the guts to swing the vote the way it should have gone. (To his credit, Mitch McConnell did, but it wasn’t enough by itself.)

Kennedy has no medical training; he is a rabid anti-vaxxer; he is a well-known conspiracy theorist. Yet he is charged with overseeing the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) — all of the agencies that have protected the health of this country’s citizens and advanced medical research for decades.

In November of 2024 — three months before his confirmation as HHS Secretary — Kennedy announced that he planned to shift NIH’s research focus away from infectious diseases such as COVID-19, toward chronic diseases like obesity, telling an anti-vaccine group:

“I’m gonna say to NIH scientists, ‘God bless you all. Thank you for public service. We’re going to give infectious disease a break for about eight years.’” [Ryan Quinn and Kathryn Palmer, Inside Higher Ed, November 15, 2024.]

In one chillingly Dickensian moment, Kennedy has summed up the current administration’s prevailing attitude toward the people of the United States: that it is, in their opinion, time to “decrease the surplus population.” [Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, 1843.]

*. *. *

The “new level of stupid” of which I speak applies, not just to Bobby Kennedy, Jr., but to the entire Trump administration: the White House contingent, both houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court majority. It is the first two who have selected and approved the disastrous Cabinet and other appointments to this administration; and it is the Supreme Court that permits their unconstitutional decimation of our government agencies to continue unabated.

Even Charles Dickens knew, almost 200 years ago, who the bad guys were, and he dealt with them in his stories. But this is the real world. Where is the Ghost of Christmas-yet-to-come now, in 2025, when we really need him?

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
3/4/25