Family dyamics

 

I think I understand why Joe Biden put a bust of Robert F. Kennedy in his office.  They both had disappointing sons.

Unless you were an only child you know what I mean.  One kid is golden, outstanding student, great athlete, social skills for miles.  Volunteers for the military, serves with distinction, career success.  That would be Beau Biden, who died too young.  His father still wears his watch.  Hunter is the other one, the screwup who needs bailing out, breaks the rules, can't quite get it together.  And his dad loves him anyway, and will continue to do so no matter how many MAGAts try to portray him as a combination of bin Laden and Carlos the Jackal.

It's not hard to imagine what Bobby would think of his namesake.  Would his love be unconditional?  That's not a Kennedy feature.  Joe was more toughness than love, even having one of his daughters hidden away and eventually lobotomized for the crime of being imperfect.  The children's job was to fulfill the father's unreachable goal.  When Joe Jr. was no longer available to be president the burden fell on Jack, frail in health, whether he wanted it or not.  And so on.  Infuriating as it is from a feminist perspective, it may be just as well that Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama had only daughters.  There was no pressure to follow in Dad's footsteps (though Malia or Sasha still may).  

If Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., were named Jones, he wouldn't be sharing his conspiracy theories with Moms for Anything; he'd be running a podcast nobody watches, or working on a whiteboard covered in scribbling and red yarn purporting to prove that Lincoln was assassinated on orders from Disraeli.  The media have decided that the Kennedy name is magic, even though nobody under seventy remembers Camelot (a post-Dallas invention by Theodore H. White).  To most people JFK is just the name of an airport or a terrible movie.  The Kennedy money is a lot more potent.  But a lot of people have money or can score it from the Kochs and Mercers, or from whoever dreamed up No Labels.   The idea seems to be to chip away at support for Biden by promoting Kennedy, Williamson, Ramaswamy, Cornel West (did you know Jill Stein is running his "campaign"?), whatever leftovers they can find to install a Republican.  It's a desperate maneuver by shadowy figures who want only power.  Watch the antics of the House on C-SPAN any day and you'll see what happens when they get some.

We all have some idea of who's running this from the shadows.  If it's Putin, and why not, he has his own problems right now.  Like, how do you get from Moscow to a deluxe hotel suite in Beijing or Budapest when you're afraid to fly?  I guess Palm Beach is out of the question.