MAY 2024 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH:THE IGGY

1. Presidential Candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Kennedy’s presidential candidacy is a stale meme that’s yet to go viral, unlike the more than 100 US children who’ve contacted measles so far this year because some silver spoon loaf-brain told their parents vaccinations were for losers/.

But while Kennedy is likely to become president right around the time Donald Trump scrawls a working unified field theory into his mashed potatoes, that doesn’t mean that he isn’t still dangerous. It’s unclear whether Kennedy will draw more votes from Biden or Trump, but this “Democrat” turned independent has a lot more in common with Trump than any Democrat.

The latest evidence that Kennedy is more dog-whistling, conspiracy reactionary than True Blue Democrat comes in the form of a podcast interview he did with right-winger Tim Pool.

His answer on Confederate statues—and the appropriateness of “honoring” a seditious, virulently racist government that barely lasted four years—could have come from any Southern Republican. Or, if you sprinkled in a few non sequiturs about the apocalyptic repercussions of low-flow shower heads, from Trump himself.

Asked if he condemned the melting down of the Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville, Virginia, Kennedy “responded that he didn’t like it at all. Nope, not one bit.

“I have a visceral reaction against the attacks on those statues. I grew up in Virginia. I know that there were heroes in the Confederacy who didn’t have slaves. I just have a visceral reaction to destroying history. I don’t like it. I think we should celebrate who we are, and that, you know, we should celebrate the good qualities of everybody. If we want to find people who were completely virtuous on every issue throughout history we would erase all of history. And, you know, values change throughout history and we need to be able to be sophisticated enough to live with, you know, our ancestors who didn’t agree with us on everything and who did things that are now regarded as immoral or wrong. Because maybe they had other qualities that we want to celebrate, and clearly Robert E. Lee had extraordinary qualities of leadership and, you know ... I wouldn’t have done that.

Of course, there are several ways to debunk Kennedy’s horribly shopworn “argument.” First of all, as University of Chicago history professor Jane Daily told NPR in 2017—while Confederate iconography was being dismantled across the country and Trump was vigorously defending it—Confederate statues were never really about honoring anyone’s heritage.

“Most of the people who were involved in erecting the monuments were not necessarily erecting a monument to the past," said Dailey, “but were rather erecting them toward a white supremacist future.”

Indeed, most of the statues went up well after the end of the Civil War—during periods of notable progress for Black Americans.

Meanwhile, the good citizens of Germany—who clearly have no intention of erasing the history of World War II, lest its grave sins be forgotten—nevertheless manage to get through each new day without engaging in knock-down, drag-out fights over Nazi flags and Hitler statues.

Kennedy is smart enough to know this, of course, so it’s worth asking whether his answer is just right-wing agitprop meant to signal to MAGA voters that he’s a viable option for them. After all, he’s running against a guy who reportedly said “Hitler did a lot of good things.” (If Germany is determined to bury its short-lived Nazi “heritage,” Trump appears equally as determined to resurrect it.)

If we’re lucky, Trump’s and Kennedy’s race to the bottom will end in tears for both of them as they split the bonkers vote, and Joe Biden, this cycle’s only reasonable presidential hopeful, will easily prevail. And if not—well, hope you really dig polio, man.