A «Third Force» in American Politics?

I already wrote before, that basically all people could be divided into two main categories - "fools" and "scoundrels". Articles about "fools and scoundrels" can be written weekly because nothing changes in people’s perception of their politicians and the politics in the country.

All people try to manipulate each other: parents with children (and vice versa), husbands with wives (and vice versa), teachers with students (and vice versa), bosses with subordinates (and vice versa), politicians with people (and vice versa)... Even pets try to make us give them an extra treat, and we make them stand on their hind legs for it. The difference is that sometimes manipulations are done consciously, and sometimes subconsciously.

"Scoundrels" see the real picture of life, consciously manipulate "fools" and try to live off them. It is a kind of talent and such people are few. Example: Mr. Trump and his claims of “stolen elections 2020.”

"Fools" see a distorted reality due to their upbringing, education, faith, hopes, position, and trust the “scoundrels”. "Fools" unconsciously succumb to manipulations and, as a result, make real fools of thyself. Those are, unfortunately, the majority. They simply see a small piece of the truth and don't bother looking for the missing part. Example: Mrs. Biden and his explanations of the inflation.

There is also a third category of people which can be called “independent” or “uncommitted”. It is a growing group of people who are ashamed to/cannot manipulate others and do not succumb to manipulations of the scoundrels or fairy tales of the “fools” due to seeing the world as it is. Example: me and my reader, Mrs. Patrice Felton (we both see that major US parties lead the country the wrong way.)

The bad thing is that “fools”, like many “independents”, are mostly decent, intelligent and educated people who simply have not learned to distinguish the important things from unimportant ones and ask themselves the right questions throughout their lives.

I'm not using the words “scoundrels” and “fools” here to insult anyone, but solely to refer to categories of people who can see beyond their own noses and take advantage of that, or can't see far enough and therefore can't benefit from that. I know very well what I am talking аbout: my wife is a very wise woman and I often feel like a “fool” around her, because in everyday situations she sees much further than me and can easily foresee the course of coming events.
By the way, Homo Sapiens differ from Neanderthals and other mammals just by their vision of the perspective.

Background.

A certain Mrs. Felton wrote a comment on my article «The Democrats' mistake».
The essence of the article is that the Democrats (and any party) would easily win elections if they provide health and well-being to the US citizens instead of political struggle. At the end of the article, I gave 3 variants for the events to come in the presidential election this November, where either Mr. Trump or Mrs. Harris becomes the president.

Mrs. Felton's comment:
«You forgot an important factor in all this. What about RFK Jr? Neither party wants the other in office, read what Aaron Siri on X @AaronSiriSG, one of the best attorneys in the nation has to say about the electoral potential.»

I replied:
«RFK Jr is not an “important factor”. I'm not interested in him because I don't want to get another blind man in the presidency. His program is as shallow as the Democrat’s or Republican’s ones and pretty much falls between the two. People don't vote for complicated ideas, they have no time for them. RFK Jr (and anyone, by the way) could win any election if he offered the Americans affordable healthcare, for example, or universal basic income and explained how he was going to implement that. I would be listening with the interest, too.»

Then Mrs. Felton continued:
«Know less about UBI’s and we wouldn’t need to invest in so much of the Health Care Systems, if we flip getting Americans healthy again, through regenerative farming, education, rehab farms, clean water and farming whole organic foods. RFK Jr is as passionate about this as he is in helping our young people get into their 1st homes with 3% interest rates. He is super popular among those under 40. His team has collected over a million signatures to get him on the ballot in all 50 states and D.C., a feat that initially seemed impossible. He may not make it to the White House, but he and his populist movement particularly among our youth is a force to be reckoned with and isn’t going away anytime soon. I invite you to relook at his policies here: https://www.kennedy24.com/policies.»

I replied:
«If you and anyone else think that «helping our young people get into their 1st homes with 3% interest rates» solves any problem of this country, go ahead and vote for the super popular RFK Jr. in November. I'm not interested in him.»


Time after time one of my few readers reminds me of Mr. Kennedy's existence and his viewpoints haven’t impressed me much. So, finally I have read carefully what he was offering to the Americans now.

Anyway, the question of a “third force” in American politics besides the annoying Republicans and Democrats is in the air. Actually, this «third force» (it is the only real force of any state) already exists, but it is fragmented, ignorant and does not see its strength. It needs to be educated and that’s what I try to do with my articles. Unsuccessfully so far.

Mr. Kennedy's policies: what is more or less clear, but unfeasible.

Almost any platform of any party or candidate is usually “for everything good and against everything bad.” Almost all platforms suffer from an abundance of details that blur the not very clear essence. Any platform must assess the current state of affairs in the country (at least at the level of “bad”, “normal” or “good”), indicate the main problems, who is to blame for them, ways to solve them and determine goals for the near future and long term. Any platform can be criticized, it's easy.
……….

There are truth, untruth, correct and wrong things, and pure populism in Mr. Kennedy's platform, but this is normal for any party or candidate. Everyone is sincere in their delusions (me including). The platform as a whole gives the impression of being crude.

1. Mr. Kennedy states at the very beginning that one of his top priorities will be «… to dissolve the corrupt merger of state and corporate power. That means freeing government agencies from the control of big corporations.»

This is correct, but, from my point of view, it is practically impossible.
Well, for example, how to expel a corrupt judge C. Thomas from the US Supreme Court? Only through impeachment by the House of Representatives and conviction in the Senate, but since «the corrupt merger of state and corporate power» in the US really exists (Mr. Thomas has long been accepting expensive gifts from a major Republican donor Mr. Crow), no impeachment is possible. Judge Thomas himself will not leave and Americans will have to endure him until his resignation or death. And this will be so in all other cases, unless the US Constitution is changed, but everyone has pledged to support it, i.e. this is a vicious circle. In addition, the US aristocratic system, which is built under the guise of democracy, will strongly resist such innovations, right up to the elimination of Mr. Kennedy, so I think that “... replacing corporate-friendly agency leaders with reformers and whistleblowers dedicated to the national interest " won't work either.

2. Next Mr. Kennedy gives his assessment of the current state of affairs in the country: «food is unhealthy», «environment is a toxic mess», etc., and all this is because of the “big corporations”, i.e. “everything is bad,” but at least the enemy has been identified correctly. It is very important to identify the enemy, because otherwise it is impossible to fight him. However, says Mr. Kennedy, it’s not too late and «we can turn it around» if, of course, the Americans elect him, because «… only an independent President beholden to neither major party can free our government from corporate capture».

I disagree here and think that America is heading towards its collapse under the leadership of any presidential candidate, and nothing can stop that, including Mr. Kennedy’s propositions. Only the US people could stop the process, but they are “fragmented, ignorant and do not see their strength.”
Mr. Trump can accelerate the country’s moving towards the collapse if he becomes the president. The Americans will really have to choose in November between a gradual slide towards collapse within maybe 10-15 years and the collapse of the US over the next 4 years into groups of states. I think this collapse is inevitable, but it will benefit the Americans (unless there is a civil war) despite the fact that the country itself will cease to exist, like the USSR, Czechoslovakia or Yugoslavia once did.

3. Then the platform correctly states that «Being able to afford a decent life doesn’t mean working more hours. It means higher pay and lower bills.»
Mr. Kennedy proposes various reforms and plans to finance them through:
- ending all wars and redirecting the money that now goes to military contractors to the needs of Americans, closing American military bases around the world and returning military personnel home;
- eradicating corruption in Washington, D.C.;
- forcing large corporations to pay more taxes.

I also have big doubts here.
People’s incomes are already higher than, let’s say, 20 years ago due to constant inflation, but “lowering bills” will not work in the US. Try, for example, reducing your medical bills, which cause almost 67% of bankruptcies among US citizens. American elites write laws for the country being guided by the principle «slightly larger pay, much larger bills», which in the aggregate still leads to the impoverishment of the people. The middle class is practically exterminated and even President Biden admits that, being himself an active element of this extermination over the past 50 years.
US rulers are forced to “pay slightly more” to the people (which is very relative due to inflation and the accompanying devaluation of money) in order to issue “much larger bills” after, otherwise it would be too obvious and pure robbery, as it was done in the USSR.
Living in America is quite expensive thing and everything is rising in price, partly due to inflation, but now an interesting and clearly noticeable phenomena has arisen: inflation is decreasing, yes, but prices are not. This means that the matter is not only about the inflation which is artificially and openly created by the Fed. This happens also because the US elites (not only big corporations, but politicians from both major parties) have written laws to legally extract maximum funds from pockets of the working population through the cost of living, taxes, medicine, education, etc.

In addition:
- it is impossible to eradicate corruption in Washington. Corruption is created by the very politicians who constantly fight it, and the corporations that feed these politicians. Big business and big politics are basically the communicating vessels of corruption. Major donors are behind both major parties and every president, who is considered to be “the most powerful person in the world”;
- forcing the corporations to pay more taxes will also not work for the same reasons. Corporations support the politicians and they will not pass any law against the will of the “Wall Street”.
- it is probably possible to return military personnel from some American bases abroad, but the military guys themselves will be against that just like the US military contractors will be against the redirection of money from them to civilian needs, and those are also the donors of Republicans and Democrats.
As you can see “the corrupt merger of state and corporate power” does really exist in the US and it’s quite a task to do something with that.

4. The problem of environmental pollution occupies a large place in Mr. Kennedy's platform. Yes, you can probably fight against it (like Greta Thunberg does, for example), but at the same time you must also see that to really solve the problem you need to remove humans from the Earth, which is actually now happening as a part of the 6th Mass Extinction of species. Therefore, there is no need to do anything special, but if Ms. Thunberg, Mr. Kennedy and Mrs. Felton really want to do something in this direction, they can get rid of their cars, A/Cs, fridges, washing machines, TVs, Internet, electricity, and move to live in some “off-the-grid” commune somewhere in Wales, for example. Otherwise, all these calls “to protect our environment from corporate corruption and contamination” are simply hypocrisy.

The current human civilization (which, by the way, is only about 5 thousand years old) is a one-way road leading to a dead end, and we are already close to our destination. Our civilization has become highly technical and technological, but also too complicated, it passed the peak of its development and now is going downhill. We destroy the environment at an unprecedented pace and cannot reverse. Try to persuade your relatives and friends to give up at least a car or Russia to give up its nuclear weapons. Nothing will happen. Now.
But within 50 years, humanity will move to living only in “off-the-grid” communes in a natural way, because the process of destruction of the state as the main form of human existence is unfolding on our planet in parallel with the 6th Mass Extinction, and there will no longer be centralized provision of food, water, heat and energy (electricity, gas and oil products) for humanity, which means that all other conveniences and achievements of civilization will become useless.

Mr. Kennedy's platform: what's unclear and why that matters.

In general, the platform is contradictory and not very clear because of the fact that the main problems of the country are not highlighted. This is important because people don't vote for complicated things.

As for me, the main problem of the US is the division of the country into a rich minority and a poor majority. This problem gives rise to and aggravates all other problems of the US, in particular, the conflict between Republicans and Democrats, which led to a split in the country along party lines, stagnation (stop of development) and the threat of collapse.

The main cause of the division of the US into rich/poor and degradation of the country, from my point of view, is inability of the ruling parties (both Republicans and Democrats) to effectively manage the country’s rich economy, and creation national debt, inflation and corruption. I explained this in detail, in particular, in the article «True Democracy vs American Aristocracy: Protest Voting.»

In Mr. Kennedy's platform:
1. It is only said about the US national debt that «We will stop racking up unpayable debt to fight one war after another». Not only wars require money, but also other unnecessary projects. The US began to actively incur debts under President George H.W. Bush in 1989 and kept to actively doing so under any administration. The main causes for the accumulation of US debt are not indicated (which are the ineffective monetary and fiscal policies of the government which brings financial crises time after time and various abuses of the elites).

2. Inflation is mentioned in the platform 4 times and without specifying its causes.
It is accepted by Mr. Kennedy like almost all the Americans as bad weather despite the fact that it is a product of the Fed, a way for the elites to make money and the main cause of dividing the nation into rich and poor. In addition, inflation destabilizes the country's financial system, constantly depreciates the national currency, citizens' savings and brings constant mess into international calculations.
In my opinion, a new order must be built from the foundation, and the foundation of any state is an adequate exchange of energy between its parts. The exchange of energy within a country and between countries is carried out using money, this is the generally accepted equivalent. Until now, the US dollar is such an equivalent in the world, which is regularly depreciated by the Fed. Money is lifeblood of the economy, and now this blood is an emasculated surrogate; it does not bring enough nutrients to the organs and cells of the state’s body (which are us), that is why they waste away.
This situation needs to be changed, but such an understanding is apparently not available to Mr. Kennedy (and not a single party/candidate in the US) which means that Mr. Kennedy proposes to repair the building without touching the foundation that stands on the sand.
The pegging the US dollar to Bitcoin is correct and very necessary thing to do (this is needed to avoid the Fed's inflation-targeted policy, which depreciates the US dollar), but there is no clear explanation of that, so I think that here Mr. Kennedy simply repeated someone else's words without understanding the essence.

3. Corruption is mentioned 6 times in Mr. Kennedy's platform.
The causes of the corruption in the US government and the path to victory are not indicated, nothing is said about the lack of results of many years of struggle against it, there is only a bare declaration to “root it out” . This is pure populism, which Mr. Biden, for example, has been using also for about the last 50 years. It is impossible to defeat corruption; it is a “shadow” of doing business in any unhealthy economy. Corruption can only be minimized.

4. A separate, very particular and important issue for the Americans: medicine. This is a problem even bigger than expensive childcare in the US: around 100 million people in America are saddled with medical debts. This is a huge electoral potential, which for some reason no one wants (can’t?) take advantage of.
Medical services in the US are very expensive and ineffective. Mr. Kennedy does not know how to solve the medical problem in the country (just like Mr. Obama, Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden do): “healthcare” is mentioned only in the context of «… Increase funding for Medicaid and other programs that provide healthcare to low-income individuals» in his platform. There are no any ideas about how to reduce the cost of medical services. In my opinion, the ideal we should strive to is when a working person pays for his/her own medicine, just as they pay for the food, without resorting to insurance.
Mr. Kennedy’s “Cut drug costs by half to bring them in line with other nations» sounds as funny as Mr. Biden's $35 insulin for Medicare patients.
All presidents and presidential candidates refuse/cannot reform medicine in the US because it is a very profitable business of the“big corporations”.


Since the main things which I consider to be important are not adequately reflected in Mr. Kennedy's platform, all the rest (healing farms, for example) is not interesting to me. That’s why I wrote to Mrs. Felton that I didn’t want another blind man in the presidency.

It is not surprising that the only thing Mrs. Felton remembered from the entire economic part of Mr. Kennedy’s platform was the 3% loan to young Americans for their first home. This sounds a bit shallow and it is because the platform is vague, crude and poorly explained. In order to explain well, you need understand the subject well yourself. Who clearly thinks that clearly states.

A bad sign for Democrats and Republicans: decent people are turning away from them.

Judging by the photo on Substack, Ms. Felton is a decent, pleasant, modest and, therefore, reasonable educated woman of about 50+ years old, who has her own opinion, prefers a healthy lifestyle, loves her good home, cleanliness, her family and fairy tales with happy endings. Such people are the foundation of every nation and the guarantee of its well-being.

Mrs. Felton obviously gave a lot of her life's energy to Democrats and Republicans, but now she noticed they didn't deserve that. So she chose a “third force” - Mr. Kennedy, who is not very much different from his opponents in his vision/blindness. He will not solve the country's main problems because he does not see them, but he is certainly not worse than Mr. Trump or Mrs. Harris in this sense. And let Mrs. Felton decide for herself to classify Mr. Kennedy as a “fool” who believes in his fairy tales, or as a “scoundrel” who also tells fairy tales, but in order to take advantage of this for his own selfish purposes.

I have already expressed my opinion on how Mrs. Felton and others like her could vote in the upcoming presidential (and other) elections if they want to really influence their elites, but everyone, of course, is free to choose whoever he/she wants within the framework set by the US Constitution. Popular vote is advisory since the US president is actually elected by Electoral College, not by the people.


P.S. I thank Mrs. Felton for inspiring me to write this article and for reading Mr. Kennedy's platform at last, otherwise I would never have done that.


Update on August 23, 2024.
Life is unpredictable thing.
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced at a news conference in Phoenix that he is suspending his campaign and endorsing Mr. Trump, who promised to RFK Jr. a position in his administration.
I wonder how Mrs. Felton feels about that.