Posted on 11/17/2013 1:06:31 PM PST by smoothsailing
Via pretty much everyone in my Twitter feed, I ran across a remarkably silly piece in the New York Times this morning about “Dallas’ Role in Kennedy’s Murder.” It’s peppered with a sort of liberal self-loathing—James McAuley is taking to the newspaper of record to slag his ancestors and demonstrate to his peers that he is not like them no siree bob! as much as grapple with Dallas’ “role” in the assassination—as well as the typical liberal notion that Dallas served as a special cauldron of hate, the toxic brew of which contributed to Kennedy’s killing.
It’s telling that the only time the word “communist” is used in McAuley’s piece is in this sentence:
Those “men of Dallas” — men like my grandfather, oil men and corporate executives, self-made but self-segregated in a white-collar enclave in a decidedly blue-collar state — often loathed the federal government at least as much as, if not more than, they did the Soviet Union or Communist China.
The name “Lee Harvey Oswald” goes entirely unmentioned. As does the name “General Edwin Walker,” an arch-conservative Oswald tried to murder. As does the phrase “Russian defector,” which is what Oswald was. No no. The fact that Kennedy was killed by a communist is not worth mentioning at all; rather, McAuley chooses to pronounce that the people of Dallas hated Kennedy even more than they did “the Soviet Union or Communist China.”
The kind of cognitive dissonance it takes to write something so remarkably foolish long ago lost the power to surprise. James Piereson, in his remarkably smart book Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism, laid out the myriad ways in which the left has been trying to cope with the killing these last 50 years. Wrote Piereson:
President Kennedy’s assassination stalled the advance of twentieth-century liberalism, then the nation’s reigning public philosophy and, in the opinion of historians at the time, our only genuine public philosophy. It did this in several ways: first, by undermining the confidence of liberals in the future; and second, by changing their perspective from one of possibility and practical reform to one of grief, loss, and frustrated hopes. It also compromised their faith in the nation because many concluded, against all factual evidence, that in some way the nation itself was responsible for President Kennedy’s death. A confident, practical, and forward-looking philosophy, with a heritage of genuine accomplishment, was thus turned into a pessimistic doctrine—and one with a decidedly negative view of American society and its institutions.
McAuley, of course, is just the latest in a long line of writers at the Grey Lady to deflect blame for Kennedy’s murder from the left and try and pin it on the right. Indeed, immediately following the assassination, James Reston penned a remarkably ugly and stupid piece entitled “Why America Weeps: Kennedy Victim of Violent Streak He Sought to Curb in Nation.” Wrote Reston,
The indictment extended beyond the assassin, for something in the nation itself, some strain of madness and violence, had destroyed the highest symbol of law and order. … From the beginning to the end of his administration, he was trying to tamp down the violence of the extremists from the right.
Liberals were so perturbed by the fact that a man of the left had killed Kennedy that they simply waved away the inconvenient truth like so much smoke. It wasn’t left wing ideology that killed our dear prince but the meanies on the right who created a culture in which something so senseless could happen.
You see this attitude not just in news reports but popular culture as well. In his book about a man who goes back in time to stop the Kennedy assassination, 11/22/63, Stephen King compared the city of Dallas to the fictional city of Derry, which some of you will remember as the hate-filled pit that served as the home of the child-eating Pennywise in It. Here’s the protagonist of 11/22/63, deciding that he will move out of Dallas until closer to the assassination:
I could move out from beneath the suffocating shadow I felt over [Dallas]. I could find a place that was smaller and less daunting, a place that didn’t feel so filled with hate and violence. In broad daylight I could tell myself I was imagining those things, but not in the ditch of the morning. There were undoubtedly good people in Dallas, thousands upon thousands of them, the great majority, but that underchord was there, and sometimes it broke out. As it had outside the Desert Rose. Bevvie-from-the-levee had said that In Derry I think the bad times are over. I wasn’t convinced about Derry, and I felt the same way about Dallas, even with its worst day still over three years away.
Simply put, the Kennedy assassination drove the left kind of batty. And it obviously hasn’t stopped doing so 50 years later.
The Kennedy assassination was part of Lyndon Johnson’s coup d’état to take over the government.
Lunacy.
For years I was open to some conspiracy theories with regard to Kennedy. I wasn’t a zealot, but, just had reason to believe that Oswald could not have pulled it off alone. However, after all the years and revelations, it now seems pretty clear the LHO was a lone gunman and did the deed.
-Oswald above all else was an attention wh@re. All of his prior hi-jinks (defecting to Russia, returning, attempting to kill General Walker, instigating for Cuba in N.O. and then finally killing JFK) were all attempts by he for attention. Most of them blew-up in his face. He never received notoriety in Russia for his defection (KGB just thought he was a little weird guy but nothing else and he had do good info to provide unlike what he personally thought) and then upon his return there were no throngs of reporters to greet him. He was upset that his attempt at Walker got him no attention either as their turned out to be no good witnesses to what he did. His final big con finally did the trick though.
-The shot itself wasn’t all that terribly hard. I’m still intrigued with the number of shots reported to have occurred in such a short period of time but the shot was make-able. The “Magic Bullet” hasn’t turned out to be so magic after all and later studies and recreations, using the seating configuration that the POTUS car was using on the day indicates that the bullet that wound up in the Governor went exactly where it should have.
One thing I still don’t understand that strange dog-leg deviation that the procession took through Dealey when it would have been so much easier to simply continue straight toward the interstate. It seems so completely dangerous and needless today. Not a sign of conspiracy in and of that but just weird in hindsight.
Bump
He was an avid admirer if Hitler and the nazis too. Enoug already of the kennedy worship.
Bobby Kennedy and Richard Nixon both apparently believed that LBJ had Kennedy killed. Similarly, E. Howard Hunt, the former CIA agent and Watergate burglar, made a deathbed confession to his son that LBJ was at the center of a plot that relied on CIA officers and mob types, with Hunt having a peripheral role.
Notably, the two major official investigations -- the Warren Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations -- came to differing conclusions, with the later House Committee finding that Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy set up by Mafia bosses Carlos Marcello and Santo Trafficante.
Two bits of information that I learned through personal friendships also incline me to think that there was a conspiracy.
Although publicly denied by the CIA, I know for a fact that CIA officer David Atlee Phillips used the cover name "Maurice Bishop." That being so, there is reason to credit a witness who swore to the House Committee that he saw Phillips using that cover name and meeting with Oswald before the assassination.
Also, among at least some of Santo Trafficante's family relations who were not involved in organized crime, it was believed that he had something to do with the killing of Kennedy. As my source explained, when, in his early twenties, he flatly asked his parents if the rumors about "Uncle Santo" being involved were true, he was told yes, but to never ask about it again, and that among his wider family, to never refer to JFK or the Kennedys and to especially never mention Dallas.
Not just run over, but cut in half.
Honestly, I can’t see any reason to think of Kennedy as
anything more than your typical tard. He did print about
5 mil. dollars backed by silver which really ticked the
FED off though. Just a meth addicted libbtard.
“LBJ weak opportunistic leech very similar to Obama”
I have heard a lot of adjectives applied to LBJ but weak was never one of them. He successfully bullied the entire Congress for four years.
Before deciding that he didn’t have the manparts for another run.
Indeed. Weak he wasn’t, until the Viet Nam War sapped his strength and the Left turned on him and stabbed him in the back.
Poetic Justices, I’ve always said.
“If Oswald were alive today he’d have the top rated show on MSNBC.” Top Rated Show on MSNBC? Whaddat?
It was Jackie plugged both her two-timing husband and Connelly ‘cause she thought it was him set Marylyn up with the boys. Then she tried to cheese it over the trunk of the car, but the Secret Service nabbed her.
Not wanting to start a nationwide panic, authorities kept her heavily sedated and she was constantly monitored from then forward until Aristotle Onassis got hold of her as she reminded him of Maria Callas.
As they were then married it was feared all those years that her role as Camelot’s primary assassin and gatecrasher would be spilled. But she maintained her silence to the end.
I’m not saying it was Aliens, but it was Aliens
Top rated for MSNBC.
He was also addicted to methamphetamines. Check out the book "Dr Feelgood" for the story of St Jack's addiction.
He was a despicable human being and a lousy President and the hagiography which attaches to his life is pure bull.
Looking into anything about JFK, including his vaunted WWII record which should have resulted in a Courts Martial and which is not the kind of incompetence and dereliction of duty that we normally associate with “heroism”, shows a JFK different from your lefty hero worship indicates.
Reagan thought him a Marxist threat to America.
As it is, the election of JFK, which many think the depraved soul stole, meant the end of the United States, we never recovered and never will, his immigration policy to replace the American voters guaranteed that.
Oh my bad. That’s an MSNBC show with over 10 viewers. Right?
And JFK was a terrible commander of the only PT boat to get run over by an enemy destroyer in WWII.
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Too damn bad nobody on that destroyer heard the crunch as they ran over his boat. How does and ENTIRE CREW fall asleep with nobody on watch?
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