A WAR AT HOME IS STILL A WAR, GUYS

A couple of hours ago, at Twitter and Threads, Robert Kennedy Jr. posted this:

pic.twitter.com/ul2sR31VvU

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) October 30, 2024

This is a reminder of one reason Donald Trump is winning over some young men, apart from the bro-ishness and misogyny of his campaign: Trump and his surrogates have young men convinced that a vote for Harris is a vote for war. Trump regularly says that a Harris presidency will lead to World War III, while he'll instantly, magically, and single-handedly end all the major wars taking place right now and prevent future wars by means of a slogan, "Peace Through Strength." Harris, regrettably, has welcomed the support not only of Liz Cheney (who has stood up for the rule of law in recent years) but also of her father, whom nobody admires these days and who was unquestionably a warmonger. Trump surrogates like Kennedy and Tulsi Gabbard echo Trump's message, and most bros don't realize that what these surrogates really want is an alliance with Vladimir Putin rather than with NATO. To these voters, it all seems Bernie-esque.

But even if the bros believe what Trump and his retinue are saying about foreign wars, they need to understand that you won't need to be shipped overseas to die in combat in a second Trump presidency. Over at The American Prospect, Rick Perlstein runs through a frightening list of scenarios that many of us could face if Trump is elected. Bros who see Trump as a peace-loving isolationist ought to consider these:

WHAT IF YOU ARE IN THE ARMY, and are ordered to the border to transport children to deportation camps? Or shoot peaceful protesters? ...

Your pacifist son is forced to take the military entrance exam. What do you do? ...

You’re in the National Guard, and ... your unit is about to be federalized to move in on a New Jersey sanctuary city and bust down doors in Baghdad-style house-to-house raids because the migrants living there are “not civilians.” Do you follow orders, or do you risk the stockade?

Or you are a National Guardsman in Texas, and breathe a sigh of relief when the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, draws the line against your governor’s interpretation of Article I, Section 10, Clause 3 of the Constitution, claiming that because refugees from Venezuela “actually invaded” that state, literal war can be waged against these poor huddled masses yearning to breathe free. But your heart sinks when the governor acts anyway, replying with a piece of apocrypha credited to President Andrew Jackson: The court has made its decision; now let them enforce it. What’s your decision?

Maybe you care if the victims are brown people in a country you've never been to, but you don't care if they're brown people who live near you, but in a neighborhood you avoid. Nevertheless, this could still seem like a war. I suspect that Trump will round up the least violent, most law-abiding immigrants first, and that the criminals he talks about are the ones who'll hold out the longest,a nd shoot back. It might turn into a guerrilla war that will look an awful lot like the Iraq quagmire Trump now denounces.

*****

And on "illness," which is also mentioned in the tweet above, let me remind you once again that RFK Jr. has said that there's no such thing as a vaccine that's both safe and effective. He said this in July 2023 on Lex Fridman's podcast:

Fridman, July 6: You’ve talked about that the media slanders you by calling you an anti-vaxxer, and you’ve said that you’re not anti-vaccine, you’re pro-safe vaccine. Difficult question: Can you name any vaccines that you think are good?

Kennedy: I think some of the live virus vaccines are probably averting more problems than they’re causing. There’s no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective.

On the same podcast, he said:

... if you say to me, “The polio vaccine, was it effective against polio?” I’m going to say, Yes. And if you say to me, “Did it kill more people ... did it caused more death than averted?” I would say, “I don’t know, because we don’t have the data on that.”

Now some reporting from CNN:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told supporters on Monday that former President Donald Trump has promised to give him “control” of several public health agencies, including the US Department of Health and Human Services and the US Department of Agriculture, if he wins a second term in November.

Kennedy ... said during a livestreamed organizing event that Trump told him he’d oversee a vast public health portfolio if the former president returns to the White House....

“The key that I think I’m – you know, that President Trump has promised me is – is control of the public health agencies, which are HHS and its sub-agencies, CDC, FDA, NIH and a few others, and then also the USDA, which is – which, you know, is key to making America healthy. Because we’ve got to get off of seed oils, and we’ve got to get off of pesticide intensive agriculture,” Kennedy said, according to video of the event obtained by CNN.

I get some of this. I have questions about pesticide-intensive agriculture. But seed oils? This is podcast-level health quackery. And Kennedy said what he said about vaccines. I don't expect youngf, single bros to reject Trump because it might be illegal to get a COVID shot (or a polio vaccine) in his and RFK's America, but that alone should be reason enough for the rest of us to reject Trump.