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The incoming Secretary of Health and Human Resources, Robert F Kennedy Jr., used to be a Democrat. A year ago, he was running a campaign for the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party. RFK Jr. remembered that as he gave his speech this year announcing his final surrender as a presidential candidate. He started out as a Democrat, but now, he’s running with the Republicans.

RFK Jr. declared that he was throwing his lot in with the Republican Party, and endorsing Donald Trump for President. An appointment as Secretary of Health and Human Resources was Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s price for endorsing Donald Trump.

Just a few days before, RFK Jr. had offered to endorse Kamala Harris for President if Harris would give him a position in the presidential cabinet. Kamala Harris refused, because of RFK Jr.’s history of spreading dangerous pseudoscience, including opposition to vaccinations and the belief that fluoride poisons drinking water. RFK Jr. even claimed that the COVID-19 virus had been scientifically designed in China to attack the world while sparing Chinese people and Ashkenazi Jews. Kamala Harris knew that giving someone with these kinds of pseudoscientific beliefs a position of power in the federal government was a bad idea.

In April of this year, RFK Jr. denounced Donald Trump as “unhinged”, “corrupt” and “barely coherent”. Then, when Donald Trump offered him power, RFK Jr. flipped and began to praise Trump effusively.

Did RFK Jr. rationalize his submission to Donald Trump by convincing himself that he could do some good for public health within the Trump Administration? Maybe. We can’t see inside his mind to know what he was thinking.

We know that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has wanted for a long time to do something about processed food. In the same speech where he endorsed Donald Trump, RFK Jr. insisted he would stand against the dangers of the processed food industry.

Now, any justifications RFK Jr. may have had about using his power within the Trump Administration to fight processed food were destroyed yesterday, with the release of a photograph from the Trump Transition publicity team. The photograph showed RFK Jr. sitting down on a private jet with Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Donald Trump Jr., eating a meal of processed food from McDonald’s, consisting of a large order of French fries, a Big Mac, a 10 piece box of Chicken McNuggets, and a bottle of Coca Cola. Behind RFK Jr. was Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, who was on the same flight but apparently wasn’t allowed to sit at the table to have his own feast of McDonald’s processed food.

This photograph was not a mistake. It was a purposeful humiliation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. by Donald Trump. It was a demonstration that RFK Jr. is now the property of Donald Trump, proof that RFK Jr. will do anything Donald Trump tells him to do, including eating a horrible meal of sugar-packed processed food from McDonald’s while being photographed doing so. Just months after declaring his opposition to processed food, RFK Jr. is now advertising for a corporation that serves nothing but the kind of unhealthy processed food he used to complain about.

The photograph was a dominance display, a demonstration by Donald Trump that he will not allow anyone to ally themselves with him without a complete and degrading surrender. It’s not just on the matter of processed food that Robert F. Kennedy was humiliating himself for the pleasure of Donald Trump, either.

RFK Jr. used to be known as an environmentalist activist. In this photograph, however, he was shown riding with Donald Trump on a private jet that flies that around the world burning fossil fuels.

A recent study by Professor Stefan Gossling of Linnaeus University in Sweden found that there has been a 46% increase in emissions by private jets over the last 5 years. A typical private jet flight, Professor Gossling found, “emits in one hour as much as an average human being emits in a year.”

Not only has RFK Jr. abandoned his public health principles in a display of obedience to Donald Trump, but he has ritually destroyed his environmentalism as well.

The message from this ritual humiliation is clear. There are only two paths forward under the second presidency of Donald Trump: Either you give Donald Trump total obedience, doing anything he says, or you are an enemy of Trump. No in-between position will be recognized.

Donald Trump’s political ideology is totalitarian. Trump demands absolute loyalty from his followers, and he seeks unlimited power as President. Under Donald Trump, there is only one source of power, and people can only choose whether to surrender to that power or oppose it.

This totalitarian form of leadership has its roots in Christian Nationalism. In demanding absolute obedience through rituals of humiliation, Donald Trump is imitating the example of the god of the Christian Bible, in which he will force his followers to do anything he likes, just to show that he absolute power.

Think of the story of Job in which the god of the Bible absolutely destroys Job’s life, while demanding that Job continue to worship him, in order to prove Job’s absolute obedience. Consider the biblical story of God’s demand that Abraham slit the throat of his son Isaac and then burn his body as a sacrificial submission to the absolute power of God.

Don’t think that this biblical model of bloody totalitarian power is restricted to the Old Testament.

In the New Testament Book of Revelation, Chapter 2, verses 26 and 27, Jesus declares: “To the one who is victorious and does my will to the end, I will give authority over the nations. That one will rule them with an iron scepter and will dash them to pieces like pottery, just as I have received authority from my Father.”

Again, in Chapter 19, verses 12 through 16, the Book of Revelation confirms that the rule of Jesus over the Earth will be violent and totalitarian: “His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. Coming out of his mouth is a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. He will rule them with an iron scepter. He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written: king of kings and lord of lords.”

In this Christian Nationalist model of leadership, there can be only one leader, to whom everyone else offers complete blind obedience.

There are no democratic elections in the Christian Bible. There are no senators or representatives in Christian texts. There are only kings and lords, and over them all, one leader who rules them all, with complete power, listening to no one, one leader who knows everything, and can do anything he wants.

Under the Christian Nationalist second presidency of Donald Trump, the gloves will be off. There will be no one in the White House who dares to stand up to Trump. There will be no one telling Trump what he can and cannot do. Even the US Supreme Court has declared that nothing Donald Trump does as President can be resisted, because he has immunity from prosecution. Like an omnipotent god, Donald Trump has been declared by the Supreme Court to be above the law.

So, under the Christian totalitarianism of Donald Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will eat processed food if that’s what Trump tells him to do.

What will Donald Trump tell you to do?

Will you obey the commands of this absolute leader?

Once a person submits to the power of Donald Trump, there is no going back.

Now is the time to stand up and be counted among those who will resist.