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Donald Trump has vowed to let Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “run wild” in his new role as secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services. The environmental lawyer, anti-vax conspirator, and brainworm survivor assembled an oddly shaped coalition of COVID-deniers and almond mothers on his way to the White House, all of which were successfully folded into Trump’s platform during the waning months of the campaign. It’s hard to know exactly what Kennedy has in store for public health, or whether some of his more radical ideas (like, say, removing fluoride from the water supply) will ever make it through “advisory board” purgatory. But we have at least one clue about how the man intends to structure his executive branch: a test allegedly designed to locate potential hires during RFK’s tenure at HHS. Among other things, Kennedy would like to know if you have ever experienced clairvoyance.
The full assessment, first reported by Puck and confirmed by Trump’s transition team, is available to all. Unlike more concrete tests of one’s ability to serve in a public health regime—like, for example, any tangible experience in medicine or health policy—the test reveals itself as a free-associative chimera of IQ logic puzzles and some sort of discredited Meyers-Briggs quiz you’ve taken in the Computer Lab. It would be a hilarious joke if her intentions weren’t apparently dead serious.
As an American, I decided to determine my fitness for a role in RFK Jr.’s Cabinet of Horrors. It was a disturbing experience. The first 17 (17!) All the questions in the test are pattern recognition, where you are asked to place geometric graphics in a row of three without breaking the order. After that, you are introduced to some good old word association and asked to determine, by multiple choice, the closest definitional relative of a particular part of speech. (Like, say, conflating “envy” with “jealousy.”)
Remember those standardized tests you took in high school? Where was everyone trapped in the basketball court for six hours on a Monday afternoon? It kind of is, except with, you know, the fate of the entire American medical apparatus at stake.
Things get even weirder when you get to the second half of the test, which is a MySpace-style personality quiz in form and function. I was asked to rank a series of attributes, from 1 to 5, on how well they matched my psychological makeup. And given how disparate and unrelated these attributes were, this proved to be an impossible task. Do I “make people feel at ease” more than “spend time thinking about things”? Do I feel like I’m “neglecting my duties” more than any of these benefits? what? What a question! The whole thing smacked of neo-psychological quackery, in the Gladwellian tradition, where the vast gradient of human experience can be neatly organized into, like, three smooth categories.
And yet, after that first round of personality unraveling, RFK’s assessment becomes much more concrete, and somehoweven more bizarre. The quiz presented me with a long list of weird personal insecurities and asked me to name the five I most identified with. That sounds simple enough, but the available choices have combined into a person who is largely unhealthy. One reads: “I tend to have unstable and intense personal relationships, in which I alternate between the extremes of idealizing and devaluing the other.” Another adds, “I’m not that interested in having sexual experiences with another person,” which I decided to interpret as clever management of the incel coalition. Speaking for myself, I was self-aware enough to tick “I demand excessive admiration,” but I made sure to leave out “I don’t feel much empathy for others” to ensure the next regime didn’t think of me as a sociopath. (The question of “having clairvoyance” also comes up here, but honestly, compared to the other options, it might be among the least disturbing.)
And just like that, the test is over. No result or evaluation was presented to me, just a quick “thank you” and that’s it. I guess I have to live with the fact that the government now has a record of my darkest inclinations—an RFK-sanctioned investigation into my morals—but I don’t feel like he has any better idea of whether or not I’m fit for health and human services. Perhaps that should come as no surprise, because when journalist Timothy Burke dug into who exactly was responsible for this deeply strange revision, he learned that the publishing company was called ExamCorp. The president of ExamCorp? None other than Jordan Peterson, the psychologist turned right wing.
I know we’re all numb to the outrageous stupidity of this political climate, but I don’t think we can hammer this point home hard enough. Robert F. Kennedy – the guy who dumped the bear carcass in Central Park – should take a major role in this country’s health policy. Helping him round his stick? Peterson, who is closer to the levers of power than ever before. What a terrible timeline. This carnival of MAGA grift will continue to spread until it blocks out the sun. It can and will get worse from here. Hey, maybe I’m clairvoyant after all.
