Stop the Idiocracy: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Showing posts with label Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 25, 2026

The harvest of mistrust

A satirical illustration depicts a visibly feverish young Amish woman staggering beside a farmhouse in rural Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Wearing a revealing dark-blue dress, white apron, bonnet and stockings, she presses one hand to her forehead as a conspicuous red rash spreads across her face, chest and limbs. Countless glowing red particles drift from the house and across the surrounding countryside, visually representing measles transmission. Behind her, an Amish horse-drawn buggy passes fields of maize, a red barn and traditional farmhouses beneath an idyllic summer sky. The pastoral tranquillity sharply contrasts with the spreading contagion, whilst a roadside sign reading “A Simple Life …Or So We Thought” gives the scene an ominous, ironic edge.

image generated via ChatGPT

First US measles deaths of 2026 recorded in Pennsylvania; Gov. Shapiro lambasts RFK Jr. for spreading disinformation on vaccines. {CNN 25 August}

https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/25/health/measles-deaths-pennsylvania

The article does not expressly state so, though the circumstances strongly suggest these were Amish folk: notorious for evading all sorts of obligations — paying Social Security and Medicare taxes, sending their children to compulsory high school education, serving on juries, registering for the draft, and vaccinating their offspring — that most of the rest of us are not at liberty to avoid. As a child on a road trip with family in the late 1980s, whilst visiting Lancaster County, it was surreal to observe people living as though the seventeenth century had never ended. I am no longer certain I regard them as quite so quaint and charming these days, all things considered. —

FTA: Both of the Pennsylvania deaths were in residents of Lancaster County. Health officials said they will not release any additional details.

Pennsylvania has confirmed 393 measles cases in 28 counties in 2026, Bogen said in a news conference Tuesday. Roughly half of them have been in Lancaster County, she said.

About 20% of cases in Pennsylvania this year have required hospitalization. Among measles cases confirmed by the health department, none have been in people who have received both recommended doses of the MMR vaccine, she added.

The highly contagious virus has continued its historic resurgence in the US this year, with a second record-breaking year in a row. The country has recorded more cases than 2,700 cases this year, more than any other year since 1991 – surpassing a grim milestone that was just topped last year.

The disease was declared eliminated in the US in 2000, but more cases have been recorded in the past year and a half than there have been in the previous 25 years combined. Experts expect that the US will soon lose its elimination status, the recognition by the World Health Organization that measles is no longer transmitting regularly within a country.

linktr.ee/arthurnewhook

🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈

Friday, August 14, 2026

COVID on the uptick again in a nation that learnt nothing from the pandemic

A stylised editorial illustration juxtaposes carefree summer life with the renewed threat of infectious disease. Families socialise beside a swimming pool beneath a bright sun, while oversized representations of a virus, mosquito, rodent and microscopic pathogens loom symbolically overhead. In the foreground, a vaccine vial and syringe stand amid a tangled red cord resembling an epidemic curve. At right, an infant sleeps in a cot beside medical symbols and an anxious older woman. A red graph rises and falls dramatically across the composition, linking seasonal recreation with resurgent illness, vaccination and public-health vulnerability.

image generated via ChatGPT

COVID-19 rears its ugly head once more this summer, though ‘evidence of growing herd immunity’ may likewise be present. {NPR 14 August}

https://www.npr.org/2026/08/14/nx-s1-5927115/summer-vaccine-covid-19-surge

Fear not: the government of Trumpistan has matters thoroughly in hand —

FTA: Unlike previous years, the CDC hasn't issued updated recommendations for the vaccines because of litigation over the Trump administration's efforts to overhaul immunizations in the U.S. The administration no longer recommends that everyone aged 6 months and older routinely get an annual shot.

But major medical groups still do recommend it. And insurers have indicated they will keep covering vaccines. The shots are likely to remain available for free through government programs like the Vaccines for Children program.

Public health experts worry that conflicting messages will cause confusion, discouraging people from getting another shot.

"The message is that COVID vaccine and flu vaccine will be available, they're covered by insurers, they're recommended by medical societies. People should get them and get them for their kids," says Clare Hannan, executive director of the Association of Immunization Managers, which advocates for immunization programs.

On second thoughts… perhaps, just when nobody is expecting it, a newer and more lethal strain of COVID shall emerge — resistant to existing vaccines and more readily transmissible than prior strains — to wreak havoc anew, as though 2020 were repeating itself in full. A karmic reckoning visited upon those belligerent individuals who still have not finished crying and fearmongering about masks, social distancing, vaccination, and ‘muh freedumb’, and who did so much to prolong the pandemic with their lack of cooperation. Verily, this nation hath been tempting providence through its wholesale rejection of science and reason, and through its restoration to the presidency of the very incompetent imbecile who so catastrophically mismanaged the pandemic’s initial wave. People no longer trouble themselves even to wash their hands, let alone don masks whilst unwell or extend to others the most rudimentary courtesy of physical distance — that very simple concept somehow seems lost on most everybody now, even the few and far among thee who actually are well-meaning.

Then again, it need not even be COVID: the next major public-health emergency — whatever form it ultimately assumes — shall find America considerably less prepared than circumstances demand. So many possibilities, more so now than in decades thanks to the dominant white working-class electorate deciding to return an elderly felon, probable paedophile, and certified destroyer of nations to the presidency; and that orange motherf**ker’s subsequent decision to place foxes (led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.) in charge of the proverbial henhouse that is public health and safety. We have not, of course, even addressed here the irreversible damage this cabal is inflicting upon national security, human rights, the environment, America’s international standing, or the global and domestic economies alike.

The people in our lives who cast their votes for this man — particularly those who did so three times over — are going to be brought to understand that America’s reputation in the world is never going to be restored. At least not in our lifetimes. History has a habit of rendering its own verdicts. Whether they acknowledge it or not, those who empowered this administration shall forever be obliged to live with the consequences of that choice. Something along the order of another pandemic — one perhaps two or three times more devastating than the COVID pandemic of 2020–22 — would likely prove insufficient to induce some ninety-five per cent of these individuals ever to concede their error in following this reprobate president. They voted as they did out of pure spite, and each shall go to their grave with spiteful hearts, unsatiated by whatever fleeting thrills Daddy Trump furnished them in their miserable, grievance-filled lives.

linktr.ee/arthurnewhook

🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈

Wednesday, August 12, 2026

The fragile weight of hope

A symbolic illustration depicts an enormous antique balance standing upon cracked, barren ground. Its lower pan contains a cluster of glowing glass medicine vials enclosed within a fragile, luminous protective sphere. The raised pan holds only a feather and scattered fragments of paper, some blowing away into the air. Fine cracks radiate from the scales’ ornate base, while a small, solitary child stands beneath the weighted pan, gazing upwards. Torn documents litter the foreground as dark reddish flecks rise behind the scales, reinforcing an atmosphere of instability, vulnerability and threatened protection.

image generated via ChatGPT

Washington Post editorial: ‘The arrogance of Trump’s vaccine policy’. {11 August}

https://wapo.st/4xAzGzx

FTA: Previously, the government recommended universal childhood vaccines for 18 illnesses. Trump’s schedule reduces that to 11 and recommends administering them at separate medical visits “to the maximum extent feasible,” stressing “maximal parental choice.”

That would further erode Americans’ faith in lifesaving vaccines and undermine herd immunity.

In the Oval Office, Trump claimed that the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine might be “quite lethal,” and that if the components were delivered separately, they would be “not at all lethal.”

The claim is irresponsible, possibly deadly. The MMR vaccine has been available in its combined form since the early 1970s, and research has repeatedly affirmed its safety. It’s also not possible to simply administer the vaccine as three separate shots. Developing such an option would take years of clinical trials.

Yet Trump’s assertion might convince parents to forgo the vaccine at a time when measles is spreading at its highest levels in more than three decades.

linktr.ee/arthurnewhook

🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈

Wednesday, July 22, 2026

Teaching abstinence, cutting answers

A warmly lit editorial-style illustration depicts a visibly pregnant young woman seated casually upon the edge of a classroom desk. She has long, wavy red hair, fair skin and a gentle, confident smile directed towards the viewer. A fitted white blouse stretches naturally over her advanced pregnancy, while a grey-and-red plaid skirt rests comfortably beneath her rounded abdomen. One hand supports her baby bump as the other steadies her upon the polished wooden desk. An open textbook lies beside her, and a globe with neatly arranged books upon a classroom shelf reinforces the academic setting. The softly painted background and golden light create an atmosphere of warmth, dignity and quiet optimism, presenting pregnancy with realism, composure and humanity rather than sensationalism.

generated via ChatGPT

Trump regime shifts teen pregnancy policy to abstinence and marriage, echoing Project 2025's theocratic vision. {NYT 22 June}

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/22/us/politics/teen-pregnancy-prevention-trump.html?unlocked_article_code=1.zlA.Ha1r.i8N3P--W_B9M&smid=url-share

As one who believes our world is already profoundly overpopulated, and that humanity's present trajectory is environmentally unsustainable, I have no desire to see more teenagers becoming parents… or most anyone else. Bringing a child into the world ought to be among the most carefully considered decisions any person ever makes, not something undertaken casually or because of social pressure, religious dogma, or political ideology.

Suggesting that teenagers delay sexual activity is not, in and of itself, unreasonable. Expecting abstinence, however — particularly as the centrepiece of public policy — is another matter entirely. Decades of evidence tell us that comprehensive sex education and reliable access to contraception are far more effective at reducing unintended teenage pregnancies than abstinence-only programmes. Teen pregnancy rates have fallen dramatically over recent decades, and access to contraception is absolutely the reason why. It works, and it ought to be readily available to anyone who needs it without any shame or guilt.

Alas, the Christian Nationalists (or ‘Christofascists’) will never be satisfied with that conclusion because abstinence is not truly the destination they seek. Their broader vision places marriage and childbearing at the centre of young adulthood, reflecting a social order more reminiscent of the nineteenth century than the twenty-first. Modern societies are more complex than agrarian communities of centuries past; young adults spend longer in education, enter stable careers later, and face housing costs and economic pressures unknown to previous generations. Encouraging earlier marriage and parenthood does not resolve those realities; it does not merely ignore reality, it openly defies it.

Ideology is increasingly replacing evidence. Public-health policy ought to be judged by measurable outcomes rather than theological preference. If a programme demonstrably reduces unintended pregnancies, improves maternal health, and gives young people greater control over their futures, abandoning it for ideological reasons strikes me as not merely profoundly irresponsible, but sinister in its intent.

Humanity already consumes resources at a rate the planet cannot sustain, whilst climate change increasingly demonstrates that ecological limits are not theoretical abstractions. Obviously some level of reproduction is necessary to keep the species from extinction, but we should be encouraging thoughtful, deliberate parenthood, not treating reproduction as a cultural or political obligation. Bringing children into the world should be an act of responsibility, not ideology, and I do not believe every man or woman deserves the privilege (another rant for another day).

I predict, within a few years, America shall begin seeing teenage pregnancy rates climb once more as comprehensive sex education and access to contraception continue to be undermined. When that day comes, we shall know exactly who bears responsibility. After all, this is what y'all voted for, #Muricans.

linktr.ee/arthurnewhook

🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈

Saturday, July 18, 2026

Muscles, mirrors, and make-believe

A richly detailed illustration in a classic adventure-comic style depicts an older silver-haired man standing before an ornate bathroom mirror, proudly flexing both arms while admiring his own muscular reflection. He wears a fitted grey sleeveless shirt and dark lounge trousers, his expression one of unmistakable self-satisfaction. Behind him, reflected in the open doorway, two young women in elegant satin nightwear pause, smiling warmly at one another while holding hands, seemingly amused rather than impressed by his display. The luxurious bathroom features polished black marble, gilded fittings, crystal perfume bottles, folded towels and a vase of white roses, all rendered with bold ink linework, warm hand-painted colours and meticulous vintage-inspired detail.

generated via ChatGPT

Closet homosexuality, perhaps? — Inside #MAGA’s creepy obsession with testosterone as a marker of national strength. {The Telegraph 18 July}

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/4c55efbff4de55b1

Truth be told, I may be one of those ‘low T’ men: I am pale, anaemic, underweight, a lifelong smoker and drinker, and I hate exercising anything other than my mind. The only reason to believe otherwise is that I have a very manly voice: I have been told at certain times that I should be in radio, and did consider attending broadcast school when I was considering my college options. Perhaps I should have pursued it, but even thirty years ago it was clear that radio was no longer a growth industry (the Telecommunications Act of that very year, 1996, ruined it). More pertinently, I also lacked greatly in confidence, as a childhood of constantly being made to feel inferior to peers will do that to a human being. I have never been athletic, cut out for military service, and cannot fight my way out of a wet paper bag. Nor hath any of this ever bothered me very much, apart from the lack of confidence in myself and much regret over lacking a backbone to stand up to more than a few motherf**kers who should have been put in their place.

Perhaps my nature hath bothered some other folks I have been unfortunate enough to know over the course of this thankless life, but they may kindly kiss my Anglo-Saxon ass. What the hell do I care about ‘measuring up’ physically to other men, when most other men are complete and total f**king bores and are nothing to emulate? I have never cared what other men look like, do not like most of them on any level, and it is so nonsensical and a bit peculiar to my, admittedly unorthodox, brain that anybody would. Beyond basic biology, I often wonder why women are attracted to us. On the whole, we are ugly creatures, inside and out.

Frankly, I have a hard time imagining how all these men can be so obsessed with their manhood, and the vitality of other men, and there not be some pent-up sexual frustration at play. How can so many men be endlessly preoccupied with other men's bodies and sex lives, yet insist this is simply normal masculine, heterosexual behaviour? I do not even know if I can explain in a paragraph or two, but it is just so bloody gross to me. Bodybuilding in particular… yuck. These fellows spend half their lives admiring themselves in mirrors and spending the other half evaluating other men's physiques, and we are supposed to think this is the epitome of manhood? People are too caught up in other people’s affairs to begin with, but having to engage in virtual dick-measuring contests all the time is not something I am interested in, particularly not at forty-eight.

Like most of these moral panics the extremes of American politics cook up, there is a basis of truth. Falling testosterone levels are a scientifically proven phenomenon, and may well contribute to why many men — to my ears, at least — my age and under have high, effeminate voices now. Have we noticed that not many men have distinctive voices anymore? I notice it most when watching baseball games: nearly all the younger play-by-play announcers have these flat, indistinct voices and there is not a new Jack Buck or Harry Kalas coming along. But I digress. Ultimately, it is simply a question of how grave a 'crisis' we believe this to be. My opinion is that there will always emerge ‘alpha’ males in society, for better and for worse. Basic human nature does not change, and boys are going to be boys, men are going to be men, and most — regardless of their ‘T’ levels — shall be forever insecure in their manhood.

And there will always be grifters such as Trump, Andrew Tate, Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, Dana White, Pete Hegseth, and the rest of these ‘manosphere’ figures ready to take advantage of the weak, insecure, and pathetic.

linktr.ee/arthurnewhook

🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈

Sunday, July 12, 2026

Summer beyond the window

A highly detailed illustration depicts a glamorous blonde woman resting inside a vintage iron lung in a rustic ranch-house bedroom. Only her head and neck emerge from the polished metal cylinder, which stretches across most of the room and is fitted with gauges, portholes, valves, and mechanical components. Her hair is styled in elegant mid-century curls, and she gazes upward with a calm, reflective expression while resting on a white pillow. The warmly lit room features wooden panelling, framed photographs, a bedside lamp, a saddle draped over a chair, and a view of open countryside through the window. The contrast between the sophisticated portraiture and the imposing medical device creates a poignant atmosphere, evoking themes of resilience, isolation, and life sustained through technology.

generated via ChatGPT

The last American polio patient to still rely on an iron lung device hath died, aged 78. {AP 12 July}

https://apnews.com/article/iron-lung-last-patient-died-polio-41e5b4da4f4e710344dd0872d7fcf987

FTA: Polio was once one of the nation’s most feared diseases, with annual outbreaks causing thousands of cases of paralysis. The disease primarily affects children.

Vaccines became available starting in 1955. According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a national vaccination campaign cut the annual number of U.S. cases to fewer than 100 in the 1960s and fewer than 10 in the 1970s. In 1979, polio was declared eliminated in the U.S., meaning it was no longer routinely spread.

If Americans had thought in the 1950s the way so many do today — and if public-health policy had been dictated by the likes of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — the widespread adoption of Jonas Salk's vaccine would never have been possible. There would be far more individuals like Martha Lillard in the world (albeit most would not live anywhere near as long), and the polio virus would likely remain a scourge upon the planet.

Martha Lillard was told not to expect to live beyond the age of twenty, and the fact that she reached seventy-eight is undoubtedly a testament to the human will to live. I would have thrown in the towel decades ago, so she hath my deepest respect.

Fare thee well.

linktr.ee/arthurnewhook

🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈

Monday, July 6, 2026

The return of an old scourge and the lessons we forgot

A warmly lit, nostalgic hospital-room illustration depicts a compassionate red-haired nurse attending to a young blonde woman recovering in bed. The nurse, dressed in a traditional white uniform and cap, gently places a cool cloth upon the patient’s forehead while resting her other hand reassuringly on the bedding. The patient reclines against crisp white pillows beneath neatly arranged sheets, gazing upward with an expression that combines fatigue, vulnerability, and gratitude. A red spotted rash is visible across her face, neck, shoulders, and upper chest, indicating illness. Sunlight filters through a nearby window, illuminating floral curtains, polished wooden furnishings, glass medicine bottles, and a vintage metal bed frame. Rich golden tones and careful period detail evoke a mid-twentieth-century atmosphere of attentive care, quiet dignity, and human compassion in the face of sickness.

generated via ChatGPT

Measles returns with a vengeance in the former US, 25 years after ‘elimination’, forcing doctors to relearn how to combat it. {Washington Post 6 July}

https://wapo.st/4gjahFm

Entirely shameful, and entirely preventable. Religious freedom should not mean religious supremacy. As was demonstrated very clearly during the COVID pandemic, these anti-vaxxers and assorted types chanting muh freedumb do not believe in the freedom of others to be protected from them and their bloody germs. Liberty to them is the liberty to impose themselves on others. They are the types who blast obnoxious music at all hours of the day, and become offended when asked to stop and shout ‘it’s a free country!’ They have been the types, throughout my thankless life, who have hassled me at every turn when my aching psyche just wants everything around me to slow the hell down and quiet down. Respect for others is tyranny to these people, and all too many of them out there.

Hell, most Americans — and not even merely the anti-vaxxers and Christofascists — could not even handle the simple concept of social distancing. They would be miserable living in Germany, where quiet on Sundays is simply a societal custom that doth not need enforcing by law; it is just respected by nearly all people.

Call me insane, in what we are still told is the most prosperous and educated nation on earth — obviously less and less true with each passing year, but stay with me — for expecting to be able to step outside and be reasonably certain I am not going to contract a deadly disease on any given day. Diagnose me with 'TDS' if some simple civility and respect for others is infringing upon the individual ‘rights’ of lunatics, bullies, religious zealots, and other assorted tyrants of society who make up the Trump/GOP base. Call me a bigot against people of faith — and I do consider myself a Christian, albeit a very poor and not particularly devout one, and my faith is not particularly strong at present — if the right of the general public to be protected against a scourge that was supposed to have been eliminated decades ago is less important than the feelings of bigamists, cultists, and all these assorted and dangerous weirdos who are only growing in number in this most horrific of timelines.

Somebody shoot me, I am so over all of this bulls**t.

linktr.ee/arthurnewhook

🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈

Sunday, June 28, 2026

Who is Natalie Harp?

Getty Images

The POTUS’s 34-year-old aide is rumoured to be feeding his delusions. {The Mirror 27 June}

https://www.themirror.com/entertainment/donald-trump-natalie-harp-relationship-1908669

If this is all true — and what reason hath anyone, other than the deluded who believe he is actually faithful to Melania, to doubt it? — then this woman, Natalie Harp, ought to be charged with sedition. The implications are extraordinarily serious. Deliberately misleading the President of the United States about key economic indicators is not merely unethical, it must be considered a crime against the state, yeah?

Albeit, he wants to be lied to, but it does not matter what he wants, only that which is lawful. Or, at least, that used to be the way, and ought to be once more: the entire purpose of opposing this man, instead of just blindly supporting him as he leads the nation off a proverbial cliff, is to restore law, order, and reason.

FTA: Speaking on The Daily Beast Podcast, host Joanna Coles and executive editor Hugh Dougherty dissected the claims, suggesting Harp's role stretches far beyond that of a typical presidential aide. According to the book, Trump has even turned to Harp to overrule Cabinet officials whenever he wants trade figures that better fit his own views.

Dougherty said, "So, she is fueling his delusions: she is providing him with endless praise that she prints out off random social media, and then it’s all being put out in public, and she is with him ‘round the clock."

The book also alleges Harp left deeply personal letters for the 80-year-old president to discover in his private spaces. In one, she reportedly wrote, "You are all that matters to me." Trump is said to have responded with his own declaration of loyalty, reportedly telling others that Harp, unlike his other aides, "will never leave me."

As I posted in the past day, these Republicans know there will be retribution coming ‘if’ (key word) they lose control of the government. The majority of those who would face justice probably would not be elected officials, but rather insiders such as this individual, Stephen Miller, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Linda McMahon, Jared Kushner, and all the other insiders who have, or have had, Trump’s ear. The ones who know where the bodies are buried.

They are telling him lies, and that, in turn, influences his decision-making. Do I really need to expound upon why that is wrong? Well, probably, but not today.

linktr.ee/arthurnewhook

🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈

Saturday, June 27, 2026

‘TDS’: Trump regime moves to classify political opposition as mental illness — the insane reality of living under a dictatorship

A dark, stylised illustration of a distressed young blonde woman lying upon a metal examination table in a dilapidated institutional ward. She weareth a light dress and appeareth frightened and tearful, her face contorted in anguish. Broad leather straps secure her wrists, torso, thighs, and legs. Three nurses in white uniforms and red caps surround her beneath a harsh overhead lamp. One recordeth notes on a clipboard; the other two stand close, observing with serious expressions. The room hath cracked tiles, stained walls, barred windows, and ageing furnishings—an oppressive mid-century psychiatric atmosphere. Muted colours, heavy shadows, and stark lighting heighten fear, confinement, and vulnerability. A dramatic allegory of institutional authority, coercive treatment, and emotional distress.

generated via ChatGPT

Not science fiction, but the reality of living in a burgeoning dictatorship: the Trump regime is taking serious steps to classify any and all opposition from individuals as mental illness (‘TDS’). {Right Wing Watch 25 June}

https://www.peoplefor.org/rightwingwatch/its-all-very-scientific-government-going-declare-trump-derangement-syndrome

“I’m not crazy, you’re the one that’s crazy!”

Unfortunately for sanity, the truly mad have won the day, and the remaining sane people in the former United States are in serious, serious trouble.The regime is telling us as much. But do enjoy your cheap gas and eggs, #Murica. Oh wait, about that.…

linktr.ee/arthurnewhook

🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈

Saturday, June 20, 2026

What cannot be measured

A richly detailed surreal-fantasy illustration of two young women embracing in an intensely emotional moment at the centre of a dreamlike environment. Their foreheads nearly touch; eyes closed, they hold one another tightly. One gently cradleth the other’s head; the other wrappeth an arm about her companion—tenderness, grief, comfort. Both wear translucent flower-embroidered gowns with beads and filigree; floral ornaments adorn their hair. Warm, luminous light batheth their faces, highlighting tears and delicate expressions. About them, classroom desks, books, toys, and educational materials mingle with IV stands, anatomical models, and monitors—caregiving, healing, vulnerability, and childhood development. Swirling golden filigree, cherubs, and heart-shaped emblems form an ornate canopy. Compassionate, dreamlike, intimate, and deeply sentimental.

generated via ChatGPT

Fox guarding the henhouse: Trump puts RFK Jr. in charge of special education, sparking backlash over views on autism. {NYT 20 June; image generated via ChatGPT}

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/20/us/politics/special-education-rfk.html?unlocked_article_code=1.rlA.eXHj.ZZMJW4DS3WKD&smid=url-share

linktr.ee/arthurnewhook

🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈

Friday, December 19, 2025

Strip both names from it, for neither merits the honour: a reflection upon the ‘Trump–Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts’

$Seen from across the Potomac in the waning light, the Kennedy Center—newly rechristened the Trump-Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts—rises as a monumental, marble-clad prism against a washed, peach-grey sky. Its long, rectilinear massing and regimented vertical window bays evoke a kind of austere civic grandeur, softened only by the faint roseate glow catching the upper cornice. The still water in the foreground mirrors the building’s pallid façades in fractured ripples, lending the scene a subdued, almost ceremonial calm. Sparse winter trees and a thin procession of cars at the base of the structure underscore its scale, while the distant Georgetown shoreline hints at the city beyond. The image conveys both the architectural severity of the late-modernist landmark and the moment of its politically charged rebranding.$

Hulton Archive/Getty Images

{WP 19 December} ‘Kennedy Center adds Trump’s name to building, despite legal concerns’

The Trump–Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts: I confess I indulged in no small measure of sentimental reverence for the Kennedy dynasty over many years, but it is time—well past time, in truth—for such nostalgia to be laid to rest. Howsoever towering John F. Kennedy may appear when set beside the present holder of the office—and I do freely acknowledge his true heroism in war—we must at last reckon with the full measure of the man: he was corrupt; his fumbling hand brought the United States perilously close to the brink of a third world war (albeit he was not the architect of that crisis); and he behaved appallingly toward Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, toward Marilyn Monroe, and toward Heaven knoweth how many other women.

The dynasty’s moral deficiencies did not begin nor end with him. Joseph Kennedy, the family patriarch, held an admiration for Hitler. Ted Kennedy, lionised by many, bore responsibility for a woman’s death. And today we behold Robert F. Kennedy Jr., dragging American public health discourse back unto the intellectual standard of the colonial age—an erstwhile advanced medical system now obliged to genuflect before a man whose understanding is, at best, mediæval.

For generations there hath existed an almost tribal fealty toward the Kennedys within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, most especially among the predominantly Irish Catholic working class. Yet these have never been my people. As a nominal Protestant of largely English and German descent, I understood from childhood—keenly and unforgettably—that I did not belong, nor was I welcome, within my overwhelmingly Catholic community situated scarcely ten miles north of Boston. (Think somewhere in the vicinity of Spot Pond). It was no phantom of my imagination; I was told so in the plainest, most wounding terms on countless occasions—most vehemently by the Irish kids, and, to a lesser but still palpable degree, by the Italian ones. Why, then, have I spent so many years idealising the Kennedys, a clan whose mythology I was never invited to share? Only Jacqueline ever embodied genuine grace or dignity.

So let us say it plainly: enough of the Kennedys, and curse the cult built around them. And as for Trump—his name, and that of his brood, deserveth no sanctified place in the public square. Strip both names from the façade. We are not the Soviet Union, and no civilised republic ought to plaster the monuments of its cultural life with the surnames of dubious dynasties.

—Arthur Newhook (pen name), somewhere in the vicinity of the Middlesex Fells and severely pissed-off, 19 December 2025.

Thursday, October 9, 2025

Make America Mean Again: the vulgarian's coarseness is a contagion—Therapists warn that Trump’s bad behaviour is rubbing off on the general public

image generated via Google Gemni

{Huffington Post 9 October} ‘Therapists Warn This Normalized Trump Behavior Is Causing Real-World Harm: People often look up to the president — and in this case, that’s clearly a problem.’

“At the end of the day, at the core of it all, we are normalizing bullying,” Believe it or not, there are those of us in this rotting #Murica who saw through the orange charlatan from the moment he waddled into the political spotlight during the 2016 presidential election: all bluster and hollow pomp, a grotesque fusion of snake-oil salesman and a game-show host gone feral. Even then—and it was as plain as the noonday sun—many of us warned that his dark little genius was to offer his followers the most seductive narcotic of all: permission. Permission to be vile. To wallow in their worst instincts. To spit, to sneer, and to call it honesty, faith, and love of country. He told them, in essence, “Be monstrous—it’s patriotic.” And they bloody well believed him.

And so the poison spread. The result? A nation turned septic. It was plain to behold amid the pandemic: tantrums over mask mandates, anti-vax derangement, the whole ghastly carnival of ignorance dressed up as rebellion. Hundreds of thousands needlessly dead—martyrs not to liberty, but to pride: gross, swollen, and witless. They mistook selfishness for freedom, and obstinacy for courage.

And did anyone learn a damned thing from that grotesque morality play? Not a whit. We have stumbled straight into a moral sinkhole—truth now counteth for nought, cruelty is held a grace, and irony lies entombed beside empathy. The temper of the multitude hath soured to gall. Everyone is furious, yet few hearken, and the whole place feels like a sorry rehearsal for the end of civilisation.

One cannot build a functioning society upon spite and delusion. One cannot write a decent song—much less govern a free polity—when every voice screams in its own discordant key. All is but clamour now: harsh, unmelodious, and void of delight. The spirit of this age? A nation of amplifiers, each howling into the void, drunk upon the echo of its own folly. Verily, few tyrants in the annals of the world have so perfectly mirrored the collective nature of their countries in their appointed ages as hath Donald Trump. —Arthur Newhook, 9 October 2025.

“Psychiatrists have joined other public health groups in calling for the removal of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary.” {NPR 7 October}

The eighty-seven-year-old former publisher of the Soviet-era Pravda found dead after a so-called ‘nervous breakdown'. - One does begin to wonder—what is it with Russians and their perennial tendency to fall from windows? Granted, it is among the more miserable places on earth to dwell, yet the pattern remains curiously consistent, yeah? {The Times 6 October}

“Peter Thiel does not want to build a better world like he claims. He wants to build a world where he decides what ‘better’ means. No one else gets a vote.” {Jacobin 6 October}

{alternate text for the above image} A digitally rendered dystopian tableau depicting a young woman with silver-blonde hair standing solemnly in a deserted urban canyon. She wears a bright yellow dress that glows defiantly against the cold, blue-grey gloom of the city. In her hands she clutches an American flag—not as a banner of triumph, but as an emblem of anguish and endurance. Towering screens on all sides project the shouting face of Donald Trump, his mouth frozen mid-harangue, echoing the omnipresent propaganda of an authoritarian state. Around her swarm identical men in suits, their faces contorted in mockery, fingers jabbing accusingly toward her as they chant slogans of populist fervour. The cracked pavement beneath her feet and the discarded placards reading Make America Great Again evoke the moral ruin of a nation intoxicated by cruelty. Her stillness, luminous amid the jeering mob, becomes the lone act of grace in a society drowning in its own hostility.

Wednesday, December 1, 2021

Pentecostal TV network founder Marcus Lamb – a staunch anti-vaxxer – dies from COVID-19 complications

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Sad, and sick, that these people have allowed dogma and ideology to overwhelm their common sense. -

Marcus Lamb, the co-founder of the leading Christian TV network Daystar who railed against Covid-19 vaccines, has died of Covid-19. He was 64 years old.
Lamb, who was the chief executive of the conservative network that reaches an estimated 2 billion viewers worldwide, died on Tuesday, weeks after contracting the coronavirus.
“It’s with a heavy heart we announce that Marcus Lamb, president and founder of Daystar Television Network, went home to be with the Lord this morning,” the network announced in a tweet on Tuesday. “The family asks that their privacy be respected as they grieve this difficult loss. Please continue to lift them up in prayer.”
Under his leadership, Daystar aired repeated baseless anti-vaccine conspiracy theories and claims that vaccines were being used to take freedoms away from Christians. In July 2020, the network spent an hour of air time complaining about “censorship” around the pandemic and also gave an hour’s slot to Robert F Kennedy Jr, who has spread misinformation about the Covid vaccine.
Covid vaccines have been repeatedly found to be safe and effective at preventing severe illness from the virus. Evangelical Christians have been getting the vaccines at lower rates than the general US population, however, and several prominent Christian broadcasters have died of the virus in recent months. (Read more)