Introduction
As I type this, we do not know whether RFK Jr. will be confirmed by the Senate. It is quite possible that he will not make it, although I certainly hope he does make it through. But some of my reasons for that are clearly in need of an explanation. Under ordinary circumstances, which these are not, RFK would be among my very last choices, meaning that I would not choose him at all. So there’s that.
So why on earth would I hope for something like that? It is certainly not because I think his position on abortion is in any way defensible. He is a radical pro-abort advocate—he does wants to fight for the health of American children, but only after they have successfully run the bloody uterine gauntlet. He is good with them being chopped up into little pieces, but then after that he wants to protect them from sugary cereals.
And it is not because I believe that this odd coalition that Trump has put together in this weird moment is in any way a stable coalition. It is not in any way stable. Can two walk together unless they are agreed (Amos 3:3)? The “agreement” that the Biden-era Democratic party was intolerable is by its very nature a shimmery and soon-to-vanish agreement. After the intolerables are all back home writing their memoirs, the radical disparities within this coalition will begin to become more apparent, and at some point there will be clashes and contretemps. This is not really a coalition but rather more of a cobbled together gathering of co-belligerents.
But nevertheless, as things now stand right this minute, I am hoping for RFK to get through because in the providence of God he would be a fox tail on fire in the Philistine fields.
Now if David Bahnsen and I were to be put in charge of this matter, I think we could shake hands on a deal inside of five minutes. I would much prefer RFK at FDA to this, and if we were living in ordinary times, which we are not, I would also prefer that he would be pursuing his hopes, dreams and aspirations in the private sector. But we are where we are now, and so I would like him to be confirmed at HHS.
But this still requires further explanation.
Caution: Political Loyalties Always Veer Personal
I need to give an important warning at the outset.
Many in the MAGA movement are whooping for RFK as though he is the greatest thing ever, like a just-discovered long-lost uncle, and so their affection for him is personal. Make America Healthy Again has a nice ring to it. They are trusting him to go in there and do good things, all of them filled with healthy uplift and sunshine. Moonshine is more like, but here we are.
This personal affection aspect is how politics usually works, and it is the danger of having someone like RFK in the MAGA movement, even temporarily.
If I were in a position to make cabinet nominations—and you may thank a kindly providence that I am not—he is not the kind of person I could ever nominate. If I were to do something like that, it would be a sin.
But I am nevertheless counting on him to do both bad and good things, and maybe even mostly bad, but with a destructive and good result. I want RFK to pretend he is Carrie Nation, and that HHS (Hellish & Horrendous Spirits) is a liquor store with bottles from floor to ceiling, and I want the Senate to hand him the hatchet. I certainly don’t think he should be turned loose on wholesome liquor stores with traditional values, owned by pious grandmas, but I do want him turned loose in this one.
Kind of like when the children of Moab and the children of Ammon started fighting with each other, and Jehoshaphat just looked on with a measure of gratification, having voted for neither of them (2 Chron. 20).
The Moonbat Objection
While keeping my own opinions on this next subject a carefully guarded secret, I simply want to point out that attacks on RFK for his long record of “moonbattery” on various health issues is likely to be a complete non-starter. And why?
Such attacks could have had some traction ten years ago, but that was before the American medical establishment gathered up all the accumulated credibility that they had—a considerable amount—walked it out the lip of a gigantic sinkhole that had opened up, in accordance with the words of the prophet Derrida, and pitched it all in. The noise made by the filing cabinets was both eerie and surreal, and the fluttering papers behind them as they bounced down the slope made the spectacle look like a paper plume, descending down to Tartarus.
But there will still be those who marvel at the fact that I somehow want an advocate of moonbattery to go running loose in the corridors of Respectable Medical Science. No, they say, more than that. I apparently want this advocate of moonbattery to be put in charge of the Department of Respectable Medical Science.
Actually, not quite. What I want is for an advocate of Peripheral Moonbattery to be put in charge of the Department of Mainstream Moonbattery.
Let me remind you again how the medical establishment and our federal health officials soaked their remaining credibility with lighter fluid—whatever had not been thrown down the aforementioned sinkhole—and set it off with torches.
I ask you. Does the American Medical Association support “gender-affirming care” for youngsters? Cutting breasts off healthy teen-age girls? What do our Top Scientists in the medical field think of XX and XY chromosomes? Any theories yet on what those things do? And what do they think about abortion? What is their take on euthanasia? Up until a few weeks ago, was DEI a thing at HHS? Have they been giving a thumbs up to puberty blockers? And before the barbarian Trump, how many genders were acknowledged over there in that Palace of Scientific Rigor? And I do know that conventional OBGYNs do take a dim view of midwives because infants sometimes die in childbirth through lack of sufficient resources and medical care. But then again, the midwives could reply that at least they never kill the babies on purpose, the way the ghoulish hospital boys do. And where was the research that determined that the coronavirus would be completely stymied if we just stood six feet apart in line at the grocery store? And when top athletes who had taken the jab started keeling over, wasn’t it the work of a moment to start blaming climate change? Remember all that? And when the COVID business was first rampaging among us, an orthodoxy on appropriate treatment regimens hardened within weeks, did it not? No Ivermectin ever, no hydroxychloroquine at all, what are you, a savage? The science was settled, all right . . . by news anchors. They called it believing the science, but it was actually believing the television.
So I have a modest request here. Anybody who played any role at all in the officially-approved moonbattery of those days should probably sit this one out. If a scientific consensus forms within weeks, and the consensus is then enforced with a club, and if that consensus is propping up claims that seem to rhyme with boonhat, then I believe we should demand that any defenders of that kind of science, and that kind of medical establishment, take a seat on the bench. So if RFK were to maintain that cancer can be cured by Buddhist wind chimes, I would be happy to note my disagreement with him, but would still want to send him to HHS. Sounds kooky, sure enough, but things like that should fit right in over there.
And the entire official medical establishment should be too embarrassed to say anything at all. You are the ones who threw it all away.
Bottom Line
So the name of the game at HHS right now is disruption. Before we send the bull into the china shop, I want a qualified vet to give that bull a safe and temporary maddening agent. Something to frenzy him up a bit, but with no long term effects at all. Let the bull have a little fun, and with no ill aftereffects.
As we look at all the cabinet positions that need to be filled, not all solutions will be the same. This is found in the very nature of the case. The dirty deeds at the FBI were largely aimed at Trump, and that has to addressed, but Trump was the target. The money machine of the Biden crime family made a mess in Ukraine, and that has to be cleaned up. Sure enough, agreed. But a lot of the federal corruption can be addressed by means of discrete investigations. But the crimes that came out of HHS were large scale crimes, perpetrated against the American people directly. From the lockdowns to mandatory jabs, tens of millions were hurt and thousands died. The damage done to our civil liberties was enormous. The censorship regime was beyond appalling. This was a shambolic mess from beginning to end, and I really don’t mind if the comeuppance is a little shambolic in return.
So I want radical and deep reforms at Justice, at State, at Defense, and so far, things are looking good. At Education I would naturally want to see a smoking crater. But at HHS I would like to see two years of mayhem, with more than a little bit of yelling, culminating in arrests and prosecutions. But I do want to keep an open mind about how all of this is likely to play out in the details. Let us remember that this kind of operation is not an exact science.