What RFK Jr. Gets Right–and What He Gets Wrong | Hacker News Reader

What RFK Jr. Gets Right–and What He Gets Wrong

thefp.com

6 pointsblindriver9 comments

I really don't get what the hype around this guy is.

I am not a betting man, but I would bet good money he never gets close to the Democratic party nomination, let alone any further.

I guess it is because of his name, hardly no one else on the D side is announced yet, and he is easy to trash...

I only see him incidentally in my “right wing” news sources I often interact with, but I had no idea he was a Democrat. The news about him tends to be positive

Right-wing sources might find him favorable for a few reason:

1. His sympathy towards anti-vaccination and other views shared by them.

2. His presence divides the Democratic side and weakens the incumbent's legitimacy.

3. The Kennedy legacy has confusingly become favored by (boomer) conservatives thanks to QAnon.

Huge mistake to run as a Democrat. I think he would have a decent chance against DeSantis and Trump, though.

Reagan, who started off as a Democrat, is famous for saying, when he became a Republican, something to the effect "I didn't change, the Democratic Party did." I'm not sure how accurate that was in Reagan's case, but it does seem to apply to RFK Jr. When he was interviewed by Gerry Baker for the WSJ Free Expression podcast it was evident to me that he continues to think very much along the lines of his father and uncle (leaving aside vaccines and maybe the environment). He struck me as very intelligent and sort of an anti-Biden in the sense that he requires no handlers to prop him up.

The first thing I thought of when I heard him speak was that he needs to have whatever that surgery was that Elton John had to fix his voice. Unfortunately, Kennedy's problem is due to a muscle (or nerve?) disease that affects just the larynx. Sad to say it is probably a career-limiting condition for someone running for the presidency. I am a Republican myself, but I grew up in an Irish Catholic Democratic family -- the Kennedys could do no wrong! Needless to say I would much rather have him as president than Biden.

This blogger's off-base on two big accounts:

- Vaccines have extra bad side effects in autistic people/make autism worse, though they don't CAUSE autism.

- Hydroxychloroquine (+ zinc) and ivermectin are both moderate-spectrum antivirals.

Chloroquinolones + zinc inihibit all "low-ph" viruses by alkalizing cells' endoplasmic reticula (and some other areas).

Ivermectin jams nuclear importin alpha/beta, inhibiting "single-stranded RNA" viruses which require nuclear alpha/beta importin to reach cells' nuclei for reproduction. It has numerous other antiviral effects too.

Personally, I'm hoping his proposal to jail the funders of climate change denial for reckless endangerment catches on and becomes popular.

You don't see any potential First Amendment problems with that?

Or, you don't see any problems with a presidential candidate who advocates stomping all over the First Amendment?

The Supreme Court said that there is "no constitutional value in false statements of fact":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertz_v._Robert_Welch,_Inc.

So it's not necessarily a First Amendment problem. It's not clear how the Supreme Court would actually take it, but that's a matter for five Court members to decide; I have zero input into that.

It is probably a problem under how most people think of the First Amendment, and how they would want the First Amendment to be thought of. Most Americans probably want deliberate falsehoods to be protected rather than putting the government in charge of adjudicating every argument, especially given how vague that Gertz decision is and the lack of common law infrastructure supporting it.

But I wouldn't automatically assume that the Constitution forbids it, either. What Americans want doesn't really figure into it.

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