RFK Jr. and Kelly Slater Sat Down to Talk Voting, Questioning Authority, and Surfing

Kelly Slater isn’t afraid to wade into waters outside of surfing. Politics especially, and he’s made no bones about the fact he’s a fan of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who recently announced that a worm had eaten part of his brain. What a timeline we’re living in, right?

According to Wikipedia (I know, I know), RFK Jr. is an “American politician, environmental lawyer, anti-vaccine activist, and conspiracy theorist.” He’s also the son of U.S. attorney general and senator Robert F. Kennedy, and nephew of U.S. president John F. Kennedy and senator Ted Kennedy. He’s got politics in his genes, doesn’t he? Anyway, Slater and RFK Jr. spent a bit of time palling around in Hawaii a few months ago and found time for a quick on-camera chat.

Slater isn’t the only big-name athlete that’s thrown his lot in with RFK Jr. Back in November, American Values, the Super PAC supporting Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s candidacy for President, announced that ex-Green Bay Packers Aaron Rodgers and Ken Rutgers, championship mountain bike racer Kyle Warner, and NBA Hall of Famer John Stockton were all backing him.

Slater and RFK Jr. do seem to have quite a few of the same beliefs about certain things — vaccines, for one — but their conversation does unearth a few issues.

“I’ve never voted,” Slater admitted. “To be honest, there’s never been a person who has a chance that I felt like I would vote for. Essentially I felt like my vote wouldn’t matter.”

That sentiment does, of course, fly in the face of the whole “everyone has to vote” train of thought, but that train of thought only works if everyone does it. Kelly is correct that one single vote doesn’t really matter all that much, but every one of those single votes counts up to all the votes. If everyone declined to vote… well, no one would have voted. Math!

“It feels to me,” Kelly says, “that the people out there saying ‘you need to vote, you need to vote,’ they want you to vote for who they want you to vote for.”

It should go without saying that people who lean certain way politically would prefer everyone leaned their way. That doesn’t make voting for who you want to vote for any less important.

They went on to talk about the importance of questioning authority and the importance of personal freedom, which are indeed very important. From where I’m sitting, though, our ability to both question authority and have some semblance of personal freedom likely wouldn’t be as readily available if wars weren’t fought and won to protect civil rights, like the right to vote, so not voting feels a bit at odds.

Then they went surfing, which is a fun thing to do. Real quick: you should vote. For whoever you want to vote for. Just make sure you’re well informed, which can be a tall task in this day and age.

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