Last night, as on many nights before, Robert Kennedy Jr. sprayed out a toxic stream of stupid, maddening nonsense. The subject of this particular rant (link deliberately not included) was climate change, but it could have been vaccines. Or anything that falls under his general theme of “learning things is bad, kids. Stay away from books, scientists, or anyone who believes in gravity.” If knowledge is power, Kennedy is an advocate for arms control.
I don’t want to engage with this jackass. No one really does. For the most part, people have spent the last 50 years looking at Robert Kennedy Jr., or deliberately not looking at Robert Kennedy Jr., with poorly disguised pity. Some of that is for the obvious losses his family has endured. Much of it is because he’s so obviously not just the junior Kennedy, but the lesser Kennedy.
But hell, let’s spend a little time giving him some of that attention he so clearly craves.
Kennedy is well aware that he’s long been considered the family member everyone wants to forget. He’s not the moral voice of the nation, quoting ancient Greek poetry in an effort to soothe America’s broken heart. He’s not the king of a new Camelot, leading an age of hope tragically cut short. He’s not the “lion of the Senate,” defending progressive values across decades. He’s the Kennedy most likely to embarrass the family twice before breakfast.
He’s not so much the family black sheep as he is that guy at the airport trying to give you a flier on why we should “nuke the whales.” He’s the 9/11 Truther who shows up uninvited at your dinner party to talk about why jet fuel isn’t hot enough to break concrete. He’s a full-time amateur asshat turned professional agent of chaos thanks to an investment by Republicans.
As it turns out, Republicans scribbling his name onto forms that make it seem that there’s something remotely legitimate about his “run for the White House” was like tossing jumper cables into this cesspool of scam artistry and self-loathing. The difficulty of sustaining this joke as more than a one-day wonder is exactly why his rhetoric keeps rising in both anger and absurdity.
His proclamations are pitched to generate the same levels of discomfort as a mosquito hovering around your ear. Taking a lesson from Donald Trump, Kennedy’s statements are riddled with such obvious mistakes, such heavy lacings of bunk, folly, trash, and drivel, that you can’t help but to want to rush to your keyboard and pound out a correction.
Don’t. Just don’t.
Don't presume there's something wrong with his intellect. If there’s a missing chunk of his brain, it’s not the part that allows him to understand that pollution can’t be solved by polluting more. He knows he's lying. He knows that if he lies loudly enough, obviously enough, vilely enough, people will rise up and attempt to correct him
His failing isn’t in memory or logic. It’s ethics.
Maybe time spent in the shadow of all those family members fondly recalled for their empathy, understanding, and love for both people and knowledge was just too much for him. Maybe he’s on year 56 of his teenage rebellion. It really doesn’t matter.
What matters is that he craves engagement. Because any level of engagement requires that his basic theme—science as a cabal that must be defeated—gets air time. Right now Republicans are patting themselves on the back about what a good investment they've made in this slime bucket, but there has never been a better time than this to recall some of the wisest words ever written on the internet: Don’t. Feed. The. Troll.
Kennedy doesn't deserve pity. He doesn't deserve engagement. He deserves disdain.