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I’m the worm that ate part of RFK Jr.’s brain, and I’m asking for your vote

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I am brave enough to say: I am a parasite, and I don’t understand what is best for the country!

Satire from The Washington Post, by Alexandra Petri:

Good afternoon, fellow Americans, from the interior of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s brain. I am a parasitic worm. You might be wondering how I got here, or perhaps not! Most people who learned that a piece of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s brain was missing because a worm ate it responded with what I would characterize as “disappointment but not exactly surprise.”

Maybe you heard about me from the New York Times. Or possibly you got the news directly from the Kennedy campaign announcing that the worm that ate part of the candidate’s brain and then died in there would not affect his ability to serve as president. You know what they say: no such thing as bad publicity! Indeed, RFK Jr. has gone so far as to offer to eat five more brain worms. This is not the first time one of his statements have given me pause.

When I first arrived here, I was so excited to discover all the knowledge that the human brain must hold. But when I looked around, all I saw were conspiracy theories and mercury poisoning. Candidly, if you had said, “What do you recommended the holder of this brain do next?” I would not have said, “Run for president.” I would have said, “Get somebody else to do that. This person should go sit down.”

That is why, today, I have an announcement to make. I am eliminating the middle man and running for president myself. Yes, I am the worm that ate part of RFK Jr.’s brain, and I’m asking for your vote. I am the only candidate brave enough to say: I am a parasitic worm, and I don’t understand what is best for the country.

To those who ask, “Why should I vote for you? You are a worm somewhere around one-third of an inch in length with a knob-like attachment at one end called a scolex that sometimes is mistakenly referred to as its head!” I say: That is more medical transparency than you are going to get from any of the other candidates! I bet they have not even disclosed whether they have body cavities. (I don’t! I’m an acoelomate!)

To those who reply, “We don’t actually know that! That’s just what the symptoms are consistent with! We haven’t done a complete examination of the exact type of worm that died in Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s brain after eating part of it,” I say: That is fair, and I am worm enough to grant it to you. Thank you, and I hope to receive your vote in November. Please just write in “Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s WORM, NOT THE MAN, THE WORM” on your ballot. As long as you are throwing away your vote, throw it away on a worm. That’s also my slogan.

There are many issues on which people are basing their votes in this election. Bodily autonomy. Keeping our democracy a democracy. Do you want to know my stance on the issues? I will tell you: I have no stance! I am a worm who died no later than 2012. I do not possess higher brain functions, although I have attended several, at which I feasted.

And that is exactly the sort of plenty I promise you will enjoy under rule by worm. Just look at life under Leto II, God Emperor of Dune! Jabba the Hutt (an honorary worm) ran Tatooine with very few problems for a very long time until the intervention of a rude woman in a metal bikini.

If there are worms in the brains of the other candidates, I hope they will join me in issuing statements of their own. Perhaps a simple statement covering whether they exist and whether they consider what they may or may not have eaten to be mission critical.

RFK Jr. has justified his candidacy by saying that people are overwhelmingly frustrated with the options presented to them and need a third choice. Well, I see that third choice and raise you a fourth choice: a candidate you can trust not to have any brain worms because that candidate is a brain worm. I am also not currently under indictment for any reason.

So, good people of these United States, I exhort you: Ask not what this parasite can do for you. Ask what you can do for your parasite!

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We Are Very Sorry To Hear About RFK Jr.’s Brain Worm And Mercury Poisoning

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Holy god, this poor bastard has a medical history that makes him sound like one of Magellan’s sailors.

From Esquire, by Charles P. Pierce:

The New York Times took a deep dive on Tuesday into the medical history of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., whose raison d’etre as a presidential candidate is primarily based on crazy-assed Do Your Own Research vaccine denialism and the fact that the two major candidates are older than he is and, therefore, not up to the job, cognitively. Judging from the Times story, RFKJ needs to find himself some new raisons d’etre tout suite.

Several doctors noticed a dark spot on the younger Mr. Kennedy’s brain scans and concluded that he had a tumor, he said in a 2012 deposition reviewed by The New York Times. Mr. Kennedy was immediately scheduled for a procedure at Duke University Medical Center by the same surgeon who had operated on his uncle, he said. While packing for the trip, he said, he received a call from a doctor at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital who had a different opinion: Mr. Kennedy, he believed, had a dead parasite in his head. The doctor believed that the abnormality seen on his scans “was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died,” Mr. Kennedy said in the deposition.

Well, that sounds awful.

For decades, Mr. Kennedy suffered from atrial fibrillation, a common heartbeat abnormality that increases the risk of stroke or heart failure. He has been hospitalized at least four times for episodes, although in an interview with The Times this winter, he said he had not had an incident in more than a decade and believed the condition had disappeared. About the same time he learned of the parasite, he said, he was also diagnosed with mercury poisoning, most likely from ingesting too much fish containing the dangerous heavy metal, which can cause serious neurological issues. “I have cognitive problems, clearly,” he said in the 2012 deposition. “I have short-term memory loss, and I have longer-term memory loss that affects me.”

Mr. Kennedy said he was then subsisting on a diet heavy on predatory fish, notably tuna and perch, both known to have elevated mercury levels. In the interview with The Times, he said that he had experienced “severe brain fog” and had trouble retrieving words. Mr. Kennedy, an environmental lawyer who has railed against the dangers of mercury contamination in fish from coal-fired power plants, had his blood tested. He said the tests showed his mercury levels were 10 times what the Environmental Protection Agency considers safe.

Brainworms? Poisoned fish? Holy Lord, this poor bastard has a medical history that makes him sound like one of Magellan’s sailors. How did he avoid scurvy?

It’s easy to assume that the latter condition has played a serious role in his entire public life. His effort to clean up the country’s rivers concentrated heavily on the threat posed by mercury byproducts from coal-fired power plants. And, of course, his vaccine denialism began as a crusade against the mercury-based vaccine preservative Thiomersal, which was in fact removed from use by the Food and Drug Administration. Kennedy attached himself to the phantom threat of the preservative as a causal agent for autism, which discredited his warnings about mercury in vaccines generally.

His medical history is now a legitimate topic for political discussion because he chose to engage in long-distance diagnoses of the president. Every one of his verbal stumbles and every moment of public forgetfulness is going to be counted against his fitness for office because that’s the field on which he’s chosen to compete. Personally now, I think he should stop with the YouTube calisthenics and the TikTok iron-pumping and accept the fact that he’s not that much younger than the president is.

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Velociraptor-in-Chief

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From Civil Discourse, by Joyce Vance:

An interesting side note: It was Jeffrey McConney’s son Justin, fresh out of film school, who was Trump’s first social media manager. Before he arrived on the scene, Trump didn’t know how to use social media. In 2013, Trump posted his first tweet, an innocuous thank-you to someone who complimented him publicly.

After leaving the company in 2017, Justin McConney said, “The moment I found out Trump could tweet himself was comparable to the moment in ‘Jurassic Park’ when Dr. Grant realized that velociraptors could open doors. I was like, ‘Oh no.’”

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The Time Profile

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From The Bulwark, by Jonathan V. Last:

The piece is excellent and Cortellessa doesn’t both-sides, or horse-race the situation. He knows what time it is and his story is a public service for our democracy.

The question is whether or not The People care. I mean, in what country could voters read the following paragraph and still say, “Shit Lurleen, we needs more of that Trump feller.”

“To carry out a deportation operation designed to remove more than 11 million people from the country, Trump told me, he would be willing to build migrant detention camps and deploy the U.S. military, both at the border and inland. He would let red states monitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute those who violate abortion bans. He would, at his personal discretion, withhold funds appropriated by Congress, according to top advisers. He would be willing to fire a U.S. Attorney who doesn’t carry out his order to prosecute someone, breaking with a tradition of independent law enforcement that dates from America’s founding. He is weighing pardons for every one of his supporters accused of attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, more than 800 of whom have pleaded guilty or been convicted by a jury. He might not come to the aid of an attacked ally in Europe or Asia if he felt that country wasn’t paying enough for its own defense. He would gut the U.S. civil service, deploy the National Guard to American cities as he sees fit, close the White House pandemic-preparedness office, and staff his Administration with acolytes who back his false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen.”

Understand, these aren’t the hysterical predictions of Never Trumpers or socialist antifa cucks. This is Trump’s own representation of his wishes.