Rowling and the Kennedys: Part Two

Yesterday I posted a YouTube video of J. K. Rowling accepting the Robert F. Kennedy ‘Ripple of Hope’ Human Rights award with a note about how upside-down it seemed to me that a feminist like Rowling would have a serial adulterer such as RFK as a hero. I think I understand that better today, though not because of evidence that the third son of Joseph Kennedy was a faithful husband or kind to the women in his life. He wasn’t  — or at least the dominant historical narrative today says he wasn’t.

Reading the transcripts of RFK’s 1965 Affirmation Day speech in South Africa, the so-called ‘Ripple of Hope’ address, though, and of Rowling’s 2019 Ripple of Hope Award brief acceptance talk has clarified for me that Kennedy was Rowling’s “political hero” — and the stupendous disconnect between the Kennedy family today and those who act with political and personal courage contra mundum and contrary to the expectations of family, friends, and fans.

After the jump, I’ll share highlights from those transcripts, I’ll review the 2020 comments made by Kerry Kennedy, one of Robert and Ethyl Kennedy’s eleven children and the principal guardian of his legacy, about Rowling and those she made last week last week about her brother, RFK, Jr., and the responses made by Rowling and Bobby Kennedy’s namesake about those rebuffs. Join me for that information and my thoughts about the unusual position RFK, Jr.’s beliefs put Rowling and her curious silence about his campaign to become President.

Robert Kennedy’s 1965 ‘Ripple of Hope’ Address, Capetown, South Africa

Here are the closing remarks of Robert Kennedy’s talk to  National Union of South African Students members at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, on June 6, 1966, on the University’s “Day of Reaffirmation of Academic and Human Freedom.” (See the Wikipedia page devoted to the talk for its historical context, composition, and legacy.)

The cruelties and the obstacles of this swiftly changing planet will not yield to obsolete dogmas and outworn slogans. It cannot be moved by those who cling to a present which is already dying, who prefer the illusion of security to the excitement and danger which comes with even the most peaceful progress. This world demands the qualities of youth: not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the life of ease – a man like the Chancellor of this University. It is a revolutionary world that we all live in; and thus, as I have said in Latin America and Asia and in Europe and in my own country, the United States, it is the young people who must take the lead. Thus you, and your young compatriots everywhere have had thrust upon you a greater burden of responsibility than any generation that has ever lived.

“There is,” said an Italian philosopher (Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, Chapter Six), “nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.” Yet this is the measure of the task of your generation and the road is strewn with many dangers.

First is the danger of futility; the belief there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world’s ills – against misery, against ignorance, or injustice and violence. Yet many of the world’s great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant reformation, a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth, and a young woman reclaimed the territory of France. It was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and 32 year old Thomas Jefferson who proclaimed that all men are created equal. “Give me a place to stand,” said Archimedes, “and I will move the world.” These men moved the world, and so can we all.

Few will have the greatness to bend history; but each of us can work to change a small portion of the events, and in the total of all these acts will be written the history of this generation. Thousands of Peace Corps volunteers are making a difference in the isolated villages and the city slums of dozens of countries. Thousands of unknown men and women in Europe resisted the occupation of the Nazis and many died, but all added to the ultimate strength and freedom of their countries. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage such as these that the belief that human history is thus shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

“If Athens shall appear great to you,” said Pericles, “consider then that her glories were purchased by valiant men, and by men who learned their duty.” (Thucydides, ‘Pericles’ Funeral Oration,’ History of the Peloponnesian Wars, Book Two)  That is the source of all greatness in all societies, and it is the key to progress in our own time.

The second danger is that of expediency; of those who say that hopes and beliefs must bend before immediate necessities. Of course if we must act effectively we must deal with the world as it is. We must get things done. But if there was one thing that President Kennedy stood for that touched the most profound feeling of young people across the world, it was the belief that idealism, high aspiration and deep convictions are not incompatible with the most practical and efficient of programs – that there is no basic inconsistency between ideals and realistic possibilities – no separation between the deepest desires of heart and of mind and the rational application of human effort to human problems.

It is not realistic or hard-headed to solve problems and take action unguided by ultimate moral aims and values, although we all know some who claim that it is so. In my judgement, it is thoughtless folly. For it ignores the realities of human faith and of passion and of belief; forces ultimately more powerful than all the calculations of our economists or of our generals. Of course to adhere to standards, to idealism, to vision in the face of immediate dangers takes great courage and takes self-confidence. But we also know that only those who dare to fail greatly, can ever achieve greatly.

It is this new idealism which is also, I believe, the common heritage of a generation which has learned that while efficiency can lead to the camps at Auschwitz, or the streets of Budapest, only the ideals of humanity and love can climb the hills of the Acropolis.

A third danger is timidity. Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change the world which yields most painfully to change. Aristotle tells us “At the Olympic games it is not the finest or the strongest men who are crowned, but those who enter the lists. . .so too in the life of the honorable and the good it is they who act rightly who win the prize.” (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1099a) I believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter the conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner of the world.

For the fortunate amongst us, the fourth danger is comfort; the temptation to follow the easy and familiar path of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread before those who have the privilege of an education. But that is not the road history has marked out for us. There is a Chinese curse which says “May he live in interesting times.” Like it or not, we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and uncertainty; but they are also the most creative of any time in the history of mankind. And everyone here will ultimately be judged – will ultimately judge himself – on the effort he has contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which his ideals and goals have shaped that effort.

So we part, I to my country and you to remain. We are – if a man of forty can claim the privilege – fellow members of the world’s largest younger generation. Each of us have our own work to do. I know at times you must feel very alone with your problems and with your difficulties. But I want to say how impressed I am with what you stand for and for the effort you are making; and I say this not just for myself, but men and women all over the world. And I hope you will often take heart from the knowledge that you are joined with your fellow young people in every land, they struggling with their problems and you with yours, but all joined in a common purpose; that, like the young people of my own country and of every country that I have visited, you are all in many ways more closely united to the brothers of your time than to the older generation in any of these nations; you are determined to build a better future. President Kennedy was speaking to the young people of America, but beyond them to young people everywhere, when he said “The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it – and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.”

And, he added, “With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth and lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.” (JFK, Inaugural Address)

I thank you. (JFKLibrary.org)

The Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organization gives ‘Ripple of Hope’ awards every year, as explained at JKRowling.com in the news piece about her receiving one in 2019, to “leaders in their field who demonstrate commitment to social change and reflect Robert Kennedy’s passion for equality, justice, basic human rights, and his belief that each of us can make a difference.”  There is a through-line or direct connection between RFK’s 1965 Day of Affirmation address in South Africa with its four dangers and corresponding and compensating virtues and the philanthropic effort of Rowling in Lumos to help institutionalized children around the world.

Reviewing the transcript of her speech (made from YouTube transcript and edited for clarity below) in December 2019 at the Ripple of Hope gala in New York, she lauds RFK as her “political hero” and she speaks as he did in Cape Town to encourage others to make a difference:

You should you should know that among the British being forced to watch a film in which people say how great you are is actually considered cruel and inhumane treatment. We are a people of the firm handshake; if we’re feeling particularly effusive. we may say ‘Well done’ but that’s generally followed by something like ‘you bastard’ in case the recipient becomes inappropriately giddy. I’m feeling very shaken honestly and I’m going to try and express why I feel so emotional about this award and I’m going to try and do that quite briefly because no one wants to hear from Nancy Pelosi more than I do.

So, briefly then, on the top floor of my house in Edinburgh is a framed poster from Robert Kennedy’s presidential run and I bought it in a from a memorabilia store in DC during my first ever Harry Potter tour in the states. I bought it of course because Robert Kennedy has been since my teens one of my greatest heroes. We overlapped on this Earth for only three years so I know him by his legacy and by the many biographies I’ve read. Robert Kennedy embodied everything I most admire in a human being.

He was morally and physically courageous, and, like Churchill, I believe that courage is the foremost of the virtues because it  guarantees all the others. He looked beyond the invisible but powerful boundaries that can insulate people of privilege from the rest of the world and he looked into those dark corners where poverty and discrimination and injustice breed. He was a man of both empathy and action and he brought about real change and he continues to inspire people beyond the boundaries of his of his own country — and I’m not sure we can ask much more of any politician or indeed of any human being.

Having said all of that I do understand the very human desire not to go poking into too many dark corners. As you’ve just seen on the film, I experienced that feeling myself when I saw a picture of a small child screaming through wire in a British newspaper and I went to turn the page. Now I’m not usually very good with dates or counting as anyone who would like to check the shifting numbers of House-elves at Hogwarts can confirm but I always know exactly how long ago it was that I saw that picture because I was pregnant with my youngest child at the time and she turns 15 this January.

I was very ashamed of my impulse and so I turned back and I thought, “if it’s as bad as it looks, you have to do something about it.” I read the accompanying article which was by an undercover reporter and it was bad and so I knew I had to do something about it.

I began writing letters and then I met many experts in the field and that led to the founding of my NGO Lumos which aims to end child institutionalization. (Applause) Thank you. I think it isn’t widely enough understood, as Roger said on the film, that 80% of the children living in so-called orphanages worldwide have at least one living parent. Research shows us that even well-run institutions have catastrophic effects on child health. Development statistics show us that one in five will have a criminal record, one in seven will enter the sex trade, and one in ten will kill themselves. We know that many institutions are hot beds of abuse and we understand that parents are pressured and sometimes even tricked into giving up their children on the promise of food, health care, and education that they know isn’t available anywhere else in their communities.

Now I’ve often been asked “Why this issue?” and my answer is there are few people on earth more vulnerable than a child who has been taken from their family and hidden from mainstream society. I’ve now met children with attachment disorders so severe that they will crawl into the lap of any stranger who smiles at them. I’ve seen profoundly ill children lying three in a bed with minimal human contact and and no stimulation and I’ve stood in room-fulls of babies who’ve learned not to cry.

Now there is good news, believe it or not, and the good news is that this is an entirely man-made problem and we can fix it. Yeah, that is good news; we have to we have to have hope here — and it it is fixable as long as we have the individual and the political will. Incredibly, it is cheaper to support children in their own family than it is to Warehouse them in this way and most importantly of all the outcomes for children are hugely improved if they’re brought up in loving family care and that includes foster care. We can all make small changes to bring about that outcome uh by making sure we never donate to so-called orphanages and we don’t volunteer in them.

I’m very very proud and grateful to all of our incredible Lumos staff around the world. We’re now providing support on deinstitutionalization to fifty countries globally and we’ve so far helped  just under 50,000 children directly, either by moving them from institutions into loving families often their own or by preventing them entering the institution in the first place. I cover all core costs of Lumos so all donations go directly to programs that help children. (Applause) Thank you.

Can I just say this speech is full of typos so, whoever got it on the silent auction, send it to me, and I’ll copy edit it for you. It’s really annoying me as I read through it. Anyway, I’m nearly there.

I didn’t know the sex of the baby I was carrying when I first read about that cage child, but I did know that, if it was a boy, I would I would name him ‘Robert’ after Robert Kennedy. In fact, she became McKenzie and I became Robert. When I was thinking up a pen name for the crime series that has been one of the great joys of my writing life, I took the name Robert Galbraith in tribute to my political hero.

I’m currently just a few pages away from completing JK’s thirteenth and Robert’s fifth novel. If I hadn’t come to New York to accept this award, I would have I would have finished it this week. So…  I should say that I enter a state that can best be described as ‘feral’ when I’m in the final stages of a book, so one of the many extraordinary things about this evening is that I’m standing in front of you not looking like a cave dwelling hermit. For this, my husband thanks you. I just want to say ‘thank you;’ this truly is one of the most extraordinary honors I could have possibly been given.

I shouldn’t ask for anything else while I’m standing here, but I will; if you would like to know more about how to help some of the world’s most vulnerable children, please visit WeAreLumos.org. Thank you.

First, it should be said that Rowling understands profoundly and earnestly strives to embody RFK’s ‘Ripple of Hope’ Speech’s message of moral courage in combat with the dangers of cowardly complacency. Contrast her talk with, say, Dr Anthony Fauci, another Ripple of Hope Award winner, or the January 6th Committee, or Prince Harry and Meghan, if you don’t grasp the difference between Rowling and other laureates.

Second, a much more obvious connection between Robert Kennedy’s 1966 ‘Ripple of Hope’ speech’s four dangers and virtues can be made between Rowling’s efforts to stand against genderist madness and in defense of women and children made vulnerable or sterilized by those in thrall to this delusion than her work to help institutionalized children. Starting Lumos only required the moral courage to not ignore the problem she saw in the newspaper one morning and the individual will to investigate and invest time, talent, and treasure to combat the “entirely man-made” and hence “fixable” problem.

Rowling’s efforts for the cage children of the world only confirmed her status as a thoughtful philanthropist who cared about the many children living in the world’s “dark corners” or beneath the stairs. She took zero ‘hits’ for this. No one spoke out for the orphanage directors around the world she was driving to suicide because of her bigoted rants; no one called for her to be murdered, raped, or cancelled.

Contrast her receiving the Ripple of Hope Award in 2019 (on which trip to NYC she premiered her Solve et Coagula wrist tattoo) with the reaction of Kerry Kennedy, RFK daughter and protector of the Kennedy mythos, to Rowling’s decision to take a stand against the great tide of public opinion to protect women’s only spaces and children from chemical castration and surgical mutilation. Kerry Kennedy’s statement was published 3 August 2020 at the RFKHR website in response to Rowling’s lengthy explanation in June 2020 of her gender critical positions, ‘J.K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues.’ Kennedy has since wiped her disdainful rebuke from the web (or tried to) but here is the Wayback Machine’s record of it;

I have spoken with J.K. Rowling to express my profound disappointment that she has chosen to use her remarkable gifts to create a narrative that diminishes the identity of trans and nonbinary people, undermining the validity and integrity of the entire transgender community—one that disproportionately suffers from violence, discrimination, harassment, and exclusion and, as a result, experiences high rates of suicide, suicide attempts, homelessness, and mental and bodily harm. Black trans women and trans youth in particular are targeted.

From her own words, I take Rowling’s position to be that the sex one is assigned at birth is the primary and determinative factor of one’s gender, regardless of one’s gender identity—a position that I categorically reject. The science is clear and conclusive: Sex is not binary.

Trans rights are human rights. J.K. Rowling’s attacks upon the transgender community are inconsistent with the fundamental beliefs and values of RFK Human Rights and represent a repudiation of my father’s vision. As well, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states in Article 1: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights…” Women’s rights are not degraded by the recognition of trans rights. On the contrary: A commitment to human rights demands a commitment to combat discrimination in all its forms.

We at Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights have long fought in solidarity with transgender and other allied activists around the world. … We all need to work together to create a world in which every person is able to grow and thrive without limits imposed by artificial barriers or discrimination of any type. At Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, we will not cease in our efforts to realize that world.

There are a lot of ‘false truths’ in that screed — there is no “disproportionate” violence against trans women, for instance, or suicide ideation for the trans-repressed — and her claim that the “science is clear and conclusive” that “sex is not binary” requires ignoring the actual consensus of scientists (and all thinking people) until about fifteen minutes ago.

But Rowling responded promptly to Kerry Kennedy’s public notice of her “profound disappointment” with a woman she had lauded within the calendar year for her courage, a promptness I think that was prompted by the statement that the author’s “attacks” were “inconsistent with the fundamental beliefs and values of RFK Human Rights and represent a repudiation of my father’s vision.” Rowling returned the Ripple of Hope Award on 27 August 2020 and posted her ‘Statement from J.K. Rowling regarding the Robert F Kennedy Human Rights Ripple of Hope Award:’

Kerry Kennedy, President of Robert F Kennedy Human Rights, recently felt it necessary to publish a statement denouncing my views on RFKHR’s website.  The statement incorrectly implied that I was transphobic, and that I am responsible for harm to trans people.  As a longstanding donor to LGBT charities and a supporter of trans people’s right to live free of persecution, I absolutely refute the accusation that I hate trans people or wish them ill, or that standing up for the rights of women is wrong, discriminatory, or incites harm or violence to the trans community.

Like the vast majority of the people who’ve written to me, I feel nothing but sympathy towards those with gender dysphoria, and agree with the clinicians and therapists who’ve got in touch who want to see a proper exploration of the factors that lead to it. They – along with a growing number of other experts and whistleblowers – are critical of the ‘affirmative’ model being widely adopted, and are also concerned about the huge rise in the numbers of girls wanting to transition.

To quote the newly-formed Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM), a group of 100 international clinicians:

The history of medicine has many examples in which the well-meaning pursuit of short-term relief of symptoms has led to devastating long-term results… The “gender affirmative” model commits young people to lifelong medical treatment…, dismisses the question of whether psychological therapy might help to relieve or resolve gender dysphoria and provides interventions without an adequate examination.

I’ve been particularly struck by the stories of brave detransitioned young women who’ve risked the opprobrium of activists by speaking up about a movement they say has harmed them.  After hearing personally from some of these women, and from such a wide range of professionals, I’ve been forced to the unhappy conclusion that an ethical and medical scandal is brewing. I believe the time is coming when those organisations and individuals who have uncritically embraced fashionable dogma, and demonised those urging caution, will have to answer for the harm they’ve enabled.

RFKHR has stated that there is no conflict between the current radical trans rights movement and the rights of women. The thousands of women who’ve got in touch with me disagree, and, like me, believe this clash of rights can only be resolved if more nuance is permitted in the debate.

In solidarity with those who have contacted me but who are struggling to make their voices heard, and because of the very serious conflict of views between myself and RFKHR, I feel I have no option but to return the Ripple of Hope Award bestowed upon me last year.  I am deeply saddened that RFKHR has felt compelled to adopt this stance, but no award or honour, no matter my admiration for the person for whom it was named, means so much to me that I would forfeit the right to follow the dictates of my own conscience.

What did 2019 Rowling say, again, made Robert Kennedy the embodiment of “everything I most admire in a human being”?

He was morally and physically courageous, and, like Churchill, I believe that courage is the foremost of the virtues because it  guarantees all the others. He looked beyond the invisible but powerful boundaries that can insulate people of privilege from the rest of the world and he looked into those dark corners where poverty and discrimination and injustice breed. He was a man of both empathy and action and he brought about real change and he continues to inspire people beyond the boundaries of his of his own country — and I’m not sure we can ask much more of any politician or indeed of any human being.

What did RFK say in his ‘Ripple of Hope’ address about courage and about the dangers before a person wanting to be a light in the darkness, words that so inspired and still inspire Rowling? Most notably, I think, he talked about the dangers of submitting to the ideas of futility and timidity:

First is the danger of futility; the belief there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world’s ills – against misery, against ignorance, or injustice and violence. Yet many of the world’s great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. … Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance….

A third danger is timidity. Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change the world which yields most painfully to change.

Remember the denouement in the Great Hall of Hogwarts at the end of Philosopher’s Stone. Rowling has the decisive House Points awarded to Gryffindor not because of the sacrificial bravery of Harry, Ron, and Hermione in frustrating the Dark Lord’s capture of Flamel’s stone. It was the moral courage of Neville Longbottom that Dumbledore chose to highlight as the difference maker in reversing the many years of Slytherin sovereignty in the House Cup competition: 

“There are all kinds of courage,” said Dumbledore smiling. “It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends. I there fore award ten points to Mr. Neville Longbottom.” (306)

Rowling stood up not only to her friends at RFKHR, but to the leadership and online press gangs of the Harry Potter fandom, not to mention the Hollywood Squares crew from her various movies who were happy to chant ‘TWAW.’ I think she deserved her ‘Ripple of Hope’ award most when she tossed it back to Kerry Kennedy with a warning about the “medical and medical scandal” she felt was “brewing,” one that would eventually ensnare the moral cowards that facillitated the abuse of children, adolescents, and women of all ages: “I believe the time is coming when those organisations and individuals who have uncritically embraced fashionable dogma, and demonised those urging caution, will have to answer for the harm they’ve enabled.”

That time is not yet with us, alas, but it is visible on the horizon. The landmark Cass Report, consequent findings of the UK courts about the legality of bans on puberty blockers, and the closing of ‘Gender Affirming’ clinics that chemically castrated and surgically mutilated young people means that judgment is coming, in courts or in the popular mind, for those who spat venom on the more sober and cautious among us at the height of the gender wars. Think “lobotomies,” another fashionable psychological ‘intervention’ that destroyed countless lives, and how those who facilitated the irreversibly destructive procedure and dismissed those with concerns are remembered today.

Kerry Kennedy took down her screed of “profound disappointment” with Rowling on the RFKHR site for a reason. It’s no longer fashionable or intellectually tenable, especially in a family famous for the young woman, Kerry’s Aunt Rosemary, it lobotomized.

But Kerry Kennedy wasn’t done policing those whom she felt were unworthy of Robert Kennedy’s signature badge of moral courage, the virtue celebrated in his ‘Ripple of Hope’ speech. Her back-and-forth was just the warm-up for her pinnacle casting out of those “who represent a repudiation of my father’s vision.” Last week she decided that Robert Kennedy, Sr’s namesake, that’s right, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., was unworthy of any association with the Kennedy legacy.

What RFK, Jr., done? He’d taken a heroic stand against the dangerous temptations and cowardly excuses of futility, expediency timidity, and comfort to make a difference in American life. He’d suspended his campaign for President as an Independent, he withdrew his name from the ballot in the so-called ‘Swing States,’ and he had endorsed former President Trump. His speech resonated remarkably with the ‘Ripple of Hope’ address, albeit without the asides from Machiavelli, Aristotle, and Pericles cum Thucydides: 

You can read the transcript here and, if you have the time, take in Robert Malone’s opinion, what I think is the best reading of Kennedy’s incredible decision (hat tip to Kelly for sharing that with me).Not surprisingly, Kennedy frames his decision, I think rightly, as the morally courageous thing to do, as a “moral obligation:”

President Trump telephoned me a few minutes later, and I met with him the following day. A few weeks later, I met again with President Trump and his family members and close advisers in Florida. And in a series of long, intense discussions, I was surprised to discover that we are aligned on many key issues. And in those meetings he suggested that we join forces as a unity party.

We talked about Abraham Lincoln’s team of rivals. That arrangement would allow us to disagree publicly and privately and fiercely, if need be, on issues over which we differ, and also work together on the existential issues upon which we are in concordance. I was a ferocious critic of many of the policies during his first administration, and there are still issues and approaches upon which we continue to have very serious differences. But we are aligned with each other on other key issues, like ending of forever wars, ending the childhood disease epidemics, securing the border, protecting freedom of speech, unraveling the corporate capture of our regulatory agencies, and getting the U.S. intelligence agencies out of the business of propagandizing and censoring and surveilling Americans and interfering with our elections. Following my first discussion with President Trump, I tried unsuccessfully to open similar discussions with Vice President Harris. Vice President Harris declined to meet or even to speak with me.

Suspending my candidacy is a heart-rending decision for me. But I am convinced that it is the best hope for ending the Ukraine war, for ending the chronic disease epidemic that is eroding our nation’s vitality from the inside, and for finally protecting free speech. I feel a moral obligation to use this opportunity to save millions of American children, above all things.

Kennedy goes on to speak about the crisis of children’s health in America, a story totally ignored in our national media. He is attempting to re-frame the election, not to mention the possible Trump Presidency, on the radical footing of taking back American government from the oligarchs of Big Tech, Big Ag, Big Bombs, and the bad boy alphabet ‘intelligence’ agencies. His focus, if chosen to serve in Trump’s second administration, I’m guessing would be as the director of Health and Human Services, where he would combat ‘Agency Capture’ at the CDC and associated troughs for Big Pharma.

Kennedy explained at his speech’s start that he hadn’t left the political party of his father and uncle, but that it had gone to war with free speech and democracy “in order ‘to save democracy’,” and in slavish service to the money holders in the United States and abroad. The Clinton-Obama Democrats had left him and all the other ‘Kennedy Democrats’ behind.

He mentions more than once that he understands his decision will come at a cost to him and those close to him: 

For 19 years I prayed every morning that God would put me in a position to end this calamity. The chronic disease crisis was one of the primary reasons for my running for president along with ending the censorship and the Ukraine war. It’s the reason I’ve made the heart-wrenching decision to suspend my campaign and to support President Trump. This decision is agonizing for me because of the difficulties it causes my wife, and my children, and my friends, but I have the certainty that this is what I’ve meant to do, and that certainty gives me internal peace, even in storms…. My joining the Trump campaign will be a difficult sacrifice for my wife and children, but worthwhile if there’s even a small chance of saving these kids.

Within an hour or so of this speech going viral, Kerry Kennedy responded by casting her older brother into the outer darkness:

“Sad ending to a sad story” wasn’t enough for Kerry, though. She went on Jen Psaki’s MSNBC (DNC) show and added, “I am disgusted by my brother’s obscene embrace of Donald Trump. And I completely disavow and dissociate myself from Robert Kennedy Jr. and his flagrant efforts to desecrate my father’s memory.”

Go to that link and scroll down the comments thread for the predictable reaction to the Kennedy’s disowning RFK, Jr. Or check out this tweet from Michael Knowles: “Your brother took a principled (not to mention correct) stand with which you disagreed, so you saw fit to disavow him publicly. What is wrong with you people?”

RFK, Jr., was relatively magnanimous, responding to his sister with something like a shoulder shrug:

“My family is at the center of the Democratic Party,” Kennedy said during an interview on Sunday. “I have five members of my family that are working for the Biden administration. President Biden has a bust of my father behind him at the Oval Office (could it be a ‘Ripple of Hope’ award? Sure enough — 2016!). He’s been a family friend for many, many years.”

Kennedy said he understood his family was “troubled” by his endorsement of Trump, adding he still loved them despite their deep disagreement with the presidential candidate.

“We were raised in a milieu where we were encouraged to debate each other and debate ferociously and passionately about things, but just still love each other,” he said. “They’re free to take their positions on these issues. There are many, many members of my family who are working in my campaign, who are supporting me. I have a very big family. There’s a few of them that are troubled, but you know, I think we all need to be able to disagree with each other and still love each other.”

I wrote all this up today and quoted the principals at such length above to make three points about Rowling or at least to begin conversations around three questions.

The first is how important grasping the influence of Robert F. Kennedy, Sr., is to understanding Rowling’s political purview as well as her internalized gauges of good character and of bad. She has said often enough how important courage is to her as a virtue and that is evident in her heroic Hogwarts books as well as the Strike series. I think what is neglected in the conversations about her response to genderist over-reach and the consequent loss of women’s rights, not to mention the health of children and adolescents, is that it was driven by the monitor within her asking perpetually, “What Would RFK do?” and “Am I creating ‘a ripple of hope‘ that will become part of a “current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance“? Just as meditating on Gainsborough’s Morning Walk and Caravaggio’s Supper at Emmaus gave me a fresh perspective on Rowling’s artistry and meaning via her Lake experiences, so I think her acceptance and return of the RFKHR statuette clarified her bearings in the public square.

The second is about Rowling’s silence vis a vis RFK, Jr’s run for President and his recent decision to throw his support to President Trump. I can think of several reasons Rowling would side with the Kerry Kennedy Klan in Hyannisport against the namesake of her “political hero:” she suffers from an acute case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, she has a doctor in the family and a seemingly uncritical view of allopathic medicine, to include the vaccine schedule which the Kennedy in question opposes, and RFK, Jr., if you believe the hit stories the DNC affiliated media have circulated (and some in the New York Post), makes his father, uncle, and grandfather look like choir boy Incels, which is to say, “not a feminist.”

But they have some things in common. Important things.

Both have waged wars against shiboleths and mythologies that make life-sentence customers for Big Pharma and been cancelled as bigots or conspiracy theorists for their trouble. As virulent as the blowback was on Rowling for her criticism of unqualified “transgender” celebration, that was nothing compared to the pile-on that continues today for RFK, Jr.’s rejection of the hallowed vaccine narratives of our time.

Both have dedicated themselves in David vs Goliath conflicts well out of the public eye. Lumos has Rowling as its face but her goal of deinstitutionalizing children globally in her lifetime is not something that makes the news, as heroic and important as it is invisible. Robert Kennedy has spent most of his life as a lawyer combatting corporate polluters on the Hudson River. He won quite a few important battles, some think he even won the war, but no one thought he would be the Kennedy to take up his father’s and uncle’s White House ambitions. I think he was referring in his speech to these off-screen lost causes as much as children when he said he has a “weakness for orphans:”

I got involved with chronic disease 20 years ago, not because I chose or wanted to. It was essentially thrust upon me; it was an issue that should have been central to the environmental movement. I was an essential leader at the time. But it was widely ignored by all the institutions including the NGOs who should have been protecting our kids against toxins. It was an orphaned issue, and I have a weakness for orphans. I watched generations of children get sicker and sicker. I had 11 siblings and I have 7 kids myself. I was conscious of what was happening in their classrooms and to their friends. And I watched sick kids, these damaged kids in that generation, almost all of them were damaged and nobody in power seemed to care or to even notice.

Of course, that may just be a reference to the death of his father when he was a teen. Regardless, Rowling and RFK, Jr., are all about the suffering children of the world.

Last and most important, I think they both have spent a lot of time in reflection on the legacy of Robert F. Kennedy, Sr. It’s inevitable if you are his son and wear his name, of course, but Rowling has clearly done more than read biographies and create a poster-shrine to her childhood hero. She said point blank to a stage crowded with Kennedy children and adults that RFK, Sr., was her ideal man, the embodiment of everything good and noble.

Will Rowling eventually come off her yacht and enter the American Presidential scrum in progress? The only sign she has shown of whom she might endorse in a Harris-Trump match-up, if you discount her near decade of hysterical anti-Trump tweets, was a re-tweet of a post decrying ugly memes about Vice President Harris on that platform because she is a woman. To her credit, she retweeted a note that did not celebrate the assassination attempt on Trump.

I think she has to be conflicted, no? Trump, she has noted, is much worse than Voldemort (I kid you not). But he has promised to keep men out of women’s sport, which, of course, has been a policy initiative of President Biden and Vice President Harris. Trump, too, has said he will take the “transgender” option off the table for those serving in the American military. How does she endorse Vice President Harris for President when Trump-Voldemort is more in alignment with her feminist views?

Which is not to mention her perspective on RFK, Jr’s sacrificial initiative to save the children that he is making by endorsing Trump. If she admires that move, will she just turn the page of her newspaper or will she join arms with him contra Kerry Kennedy? We’ll see. The safe money, I think, is on the Rowling-Murrays falling in behind the person Barack Obama endorsed (she is as star-struck about BHO as she is allergic to everything Trump).

Third and last, I want to say how reading the ‘Ripple of Hope’ address by RFK today and re-reading Thucydides’ version of Pericles’ ‘Funeral Oration’ for the first time since i struggled with him in a Greek 300 course, ten weeks dedicated to The Peloponnesia Wars, in 1982 gave me some peace of mind about Rowling having Bobby Kennedy as her “political hero.” Yesterday I noted that it is a constant irritant to me that Rowling’s primary role models of her choosing were Jessica Mitford, ardent communist and Stalin mouthpiece, and Robert Kennedy, serial adulterer. I found peace of mind about RFK if not Mitford in Thucydides’ version of Pericles’ Funeral Oration.

Here is the extended quotation of the Oration that RFK quoted in ‘Ripple of Hope:’

Any one can discourse to you for ever about the advantages of a brave defense, which you know already. But instead of listening to him I would have you day by day fix your eyes upon the greatness of Athens, until you become filled with the love of her; and when you are impressed by the spectacle of her glory, reflect that this empire has been acquired by men who knew their duty and had the courage to do it, who in the hour of conflict had the fear of dishonor always present to them, and who, if ever they failed in an enterprise, would not allow their virtues to be lost to their country, but freely gave their lives to her as the fairest offering which they could present at her feast.

That’s a lot meatier and martial, I think, then RFK’s Peace Corps version. Still, imagine a Presidential candidate who had Machiavelli, Aristotle, and Thucydides as mental backdrops or even who had speechwriters who had the Greats at the tip of their tongues. Now think of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.

Here, though, is the piece of the ‘Funeral Oration’ that helped me get over the seeming contradiction of a feminist who embraces a man as hero who cheated with loathsome openness and frequency on a wife with whom he had eleven children:

For even those who come short in other ways may justly plead the valor with which they have fought for their country;they have blotted out the evil with the good, and have benefited the state more by their public services than they have injured her by their private actions. None of these men were enervated by wealth or hesitated to resign the pleasures of life; none of them put off the evil day in the hope, natural to poverty, that a man, though poor, may one day become rich. But, deeming that the punishment of their enemies was sweeter than any of these things, and that they could fall in no nobler cause, they determined at the hazard of their lives to be honorably avenged, and to leave the rest.

Kennedy was not a perfect man but Rowling, who I do not doubt has read many biographies of her “political hero,” continues to celebrate him for all his failings because in the arena:

He was morally and physically courageous, and, like Churchill, I believe that courage is the foremost of the virtues because it  guarantees all the others. He looked beyond the invisible but powerful boundaries that can insulate people of privilege from the rest of the world and he looked into those dark corners where poverty and discrimination and injustice breed. He was a man of both empathy and action and he brought about real change and he continues to inspire people beyond the boundaries of his of his own country — and I’m not sure we can ask much more of any politician or indeed of any human being.

She chooses to honor RFK both for the change he brought about in real time and for his inspiring, global legacy — and to overlook the crap, failings that his wife seemed to accept as a given for life with a Kennedy man. I think that’s a healthy perspective and that our country lost a very great man and potential game changer in that Los Angeles ballroom in 1968.

Tomorrow is the Feast of the Dormition, my wife’s Names Day, and my youngest son’s birthday so there won’t be much here from me. Greetings on the Feast! Your reward for reading to the end is this link to a RFK, Jr., video in which he tries to win back the trust of his family’s dogs after they heard the ‘fake news’ that he once ate Fido. Enjoy!