RFK Jr. vs. The Man of System, Part 1

Declare your independence

Yesterday in Philadelphia, RFK Jr. announced his independent candidacy for president.

I believe Kennedy can win, but as he said, this is not a prediction but a choice. His victory will require our choice to value liberty and our Constitution.

Kennedy’s campaign slogan is “declare your independence.” Kennedy hopes we chose to break free from “corporations that have highjacked our government,” the “mercenary media” which stirs divisions to maintain the current power structure, and “cynical elites.” Their interests, he believes, are “incompatible” with our unalienable rights.

In this essay, I would like to explain two things Kennedy (and we) will need to overcome—what Todd Rose called “collective illusions” and what Adam Smith called the “man of system.”

Propaganda campaigns lied about “safe and effective” vaccines. They twisted your mind about vaccines with slogans that stir compliance and hate, such as “nobody is safe until everybody is vaccinated.” Propaganda campaigns will spring into action to shape your mind about RFK Jr.

As with vaccine propaganda, words will be repeated until you think they are your beliefs. The “mercenary media” will tell you RFK Jr.:

Can’t win. Is wasting your vote. Is a spoiler. Is a threat to democracy. Will elect Trump. Will elect Biden. Is a conspiracy theorist. Is antisemitic. Is racist. Is a Putin stooge.

A recent Pew Research Center poll of Americans found “63% express not too much or no confidence at all in the future of the U.S. political system” and only 16% “trust the federal government always or most of the time.” We will be told to vote for Biden or Trump anyway.

Just as those who did their own research about vaccines were mocked by the media during the COVID pandemic, those who explore the merits of a RFK Jr. candidacy will be ridiculed. Propaganda will declare that to vote for Kennedy is to back a dangerous man.

On that, Kennedy's detractors are correct. He is dangerous but dangerous to them—not you. Dangerous to the ongoing bipartisan destruction of America’s well-being.

Here is what defenders of the status quo are counting on: Hearing the non-stop attacks, enough people either will not explore RFK Jr.’s views or, if they support him, will silence themselves, believing their opinions are socially unacceptable.

When we remain silent, we co-create “collective illusions,” which Todd Rose called “social lies.” Collective illusions take hold “in situations where a majority of individuals in a group privately reject a particular opinion, but they go along with it because they (incorrectly) assume that most other people accept it.”

The mercenary media will be spewing propaganda against RFK Jr. designed to convince you that your neighbors share the beliefs it is peddling. If the propaganda is effective, you will keep silent out of fear.

Rose explained, “We often conform because we’re afraid of being embarrassed. Our stress levels rise at the thought of being mocked or viewed as incompetent, and when that happens, the fear-based part of the brain takes over.” 

The choice to remain silent, to self-censor, is connected to the erroneous belief that by going along with the majority, our “personal responsibility for our decisions” is diffused, “making it easier to bear mistakes.” 

Almost certainly we are moving into an age of totalitarian dictatorships — an age in which freedom of thought will be at first a deadly sin and later on a meaningless abstraction. The autonomous individual is going to be stamped out of existence.

--George Orwell, Inside the Whale

In his The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith explored how most of us seek to avoid the disapproval of others, and we adjust our behavior to fit in with norms. It’s in our innate nature, in Smith’s words, “to respect the sentiments and judgments of [our] brethren; to be more or less pleased when they approve of [our] conduct.” When everyone seems to accept an idea, we may feel more comfortable going along than sticking out by questioning the idea or expressing our thoughts. 

Smith had contempt for what he called the “man of system” who aims to remake society according to his master plan. “The man of system,” Smith wrote, “is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamored with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it.”

Today, such people are legion. And as Smith saw clearly, they have no “regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose [their plans].”

The “man of system” has contempt for you as an individual. Your views and your rights don’t matter. Smith continued, “He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess–board.” Deluded, “[the man of system] does not consider,… in the great chess–board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might choose to impress upon it.”

I don’t like feeling contempt for others; it is a dehumanizing emotion. But I will be honest: I sometimes feel contempt for the likes of Bill Gates, Anthony Fauci, Klaus Schwab, etc. They see us as pawns in their mad schemes. These men of system threaten the future of humanity.

Men of system have given us Big Pharma, endless wars, insane dreams of defeating Russia and China, diets of toxic industrial food, mechanized sick care, schools that don’t educate, crime-ridden cities, a degraded environment, and coming soon the destruction of our debt-based financial system.

In the BBC documentary Orwell: A Life in Pictures, a fictionalized Orwell issues his final warning:

In our world, there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement… There will be no loyalty except loyalty to the Party. But always there will be the intoxication of power. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who’s helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever.

By his leadership, RFK Jr. shows us how free people can live in mutual respect without being lorded over by any man of system. But he cannot save us from tyranny. As “Orwell” concludes, “The moral to be drawn from this dangerous nightmare situation is a simple one: don’t let it happen. It depends on you.”

Real hope lies in changing ourselves. We must refuse to be silenced by collective illusions. We must withdraw support for any man or woman of system who would impose upon us their master plan for an authoritarian social order.

Be aware, not only are there external men and women of system; we each have our own “man of system” living inside our mind, narrating and controlling our lives. Here is one of the essays and talks I have written/delivered about this issue.

Downsizing Your Inner Central Planner

In Part 2 of this essay, we will consider how RFK Jr. first had to overcome his internal “man of system” to become a moral leader of the freedom movement.