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| Dear Friend, |
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| During my announcement speech more than a year ago, I said that I
have so many skeletons in the closet that if they could vote, I would
be king of the world. I knew much would be made of my past. I have
been around politics. I know of its hazards. |
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| I also knew that my vision and policies would inspire resistance
in the establishment. |
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| When you declare yourself foe to widespread
corporate-government corruption and declare yourself opposed to a
runaway war machine (a war machine killing innocents and draining
our country’s coffers), you will inspire resistance in the
establishment. Put another way, many powerful people want to make sure
the gravy train never stops. And I derail gravy trains. |
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| When you point out the morbidity of our two-party system -- a
system that our first president warned us about, a system that is now
largely predicated on hating fellow humans -- you will inspire
resistance in the establishment.
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| When you’ve spent much of your life successfully fighting against
our biggest corporations and worst polluters; fighting against mining,
timber, hydroelectricity, and oil industries on behalf of the
voiceless and the indigenous; fighting against agribusiness barons
blithely ravaging the lives of small farmers and small towns, you will
inspire resistance in the establishment. |
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| When you remind Americans that censorship and other curtailments
of our civil liberties always arrive burnished with a moral and
patriotic gloss, you will inspire resistance in the
establishment. |
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| When you invoke our crisis of meaning, our deaths of despair, the
addiction, and the many children lost to screens, ill health, you will
inspire resistance in the establishment. |
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| When you are wary of reductive partisan ideology and group-think;
and when you refuse the common coin of today’s public discourse -- a
glib second-rate cruelty delivered via the screen -- you will inspire
resistance in the establishment. |
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| When you assert that to better our country we must work toward a
politics that heals this divide and affirms our mutual belonging, you
will inspire resistance in the establishment. |
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| As you perhaps know, I am used to such resistance -- used to the
bile and malign distortions that accompany speaking out on high-stakes
issues. And I know that the establishment’s treatment of me -- while
challenging -- makes perfect sense. |
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| The dark and elaborately refined arts of partisan politics
deployed to end my campaign (the documented censorship and
shadowbanning; the out-in-the-open, anti-democratic, and well-funded
attempts to keep me off ballots through expensive, complex,
time-consuming legal challenges; the thwarting of debate access; the
withholding of secret service protection; the paid staged protests;
the sundry campaigns of defamation and scandalmongering) are the
logical reactions of a threatened -- and very unwell -- status
quo. |
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| And underneath all of this -- underneath much of this election
cycle, underneath much of this moment in our nation’s politics -- is a
sort of destitution. A destitution of heart. It’s no small wonder so
many people have withdrawn from civic life and democracy
altogether. |
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| A broken bond needs to be reestablished in our country. We
need more soul-searching and less partisan warfare. |
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| Our work as Americans, whether we like it or not, transcends all
labels and all parties. It seems we will recognize this reality and
act accordingly; or be broken into it. History is not made
occasionally on great stages by the privileged few but made daily in
the depths of each human soul. Ours is a beautiful nation, still. |
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| According to the Internet, our country (and our world) is in
chaos. But in post offices, parks, and grocery stores our beauty still
heartens and shines. We all see it every day. It is in the name of
that beauty that I work. |
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| It is in the name of that beauty that I run to be your next
president. |
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| The true power of America is not its comfort, wealth, or
military might, but its ideals of liberty, democracy, and generosity.
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| This campaign is about honoring and restoring those ideals --
regardless of the defamation, evasion, and trickery. We knew those
were coming. |
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| We will not be deterred on this necessary journey. |
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| Yet,
this dream will not be possible without your help today. |
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| Please let me hear from you right now. Take action. Tell your
friends and neighbors. Together, we can rebuild America. |
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| Sincerely, |
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| Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. |
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