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.
RONALD REAGAN in a private letter to the Vice president in 1960.
""shouldn’t someone tag Mr. Kennedy’s bold new imaginative program with its proper age? Under the tousled boyish haircut is still old Karl Marx - first launched a century ago. There is nothing new in the idea of a Government being Big Brother to us all. Hitler called his ‘State Socialism’ and way before him it was ‘benevolent monarchy.""
Right you are. There is not a "Kennedy Democrat" among the Socialist/Communist Demonrats of today. Kennedy was actually pro-American. There no "Truman Democrats" around either. Today's Dems are among those who condemn Truman and America for being the first to use "the bomb" against those unfortunate Japanese.
Oswald did it. There was no conspiracy; there is no mystery.
Wasn't that old Joe Kennedy?
I was in the 4th grade on the playground when the teachers all came out and took us inside to tell us what had happened in November 1963. I was too young to have any oppinion on lone shooter or otherwise at that time. I I grew older I listened to all the conspiracies and established in my mind Oswald acted alone by the time I was 18. I was comfortable with that until a week or so ago. There was a special on the History Channel or one of the other such channels about the final days of JFK. I haven’t taken time to research one thing that was said that somehow I missed all these years so I don’t know if it is a fact. They said Oswald was an employee at the Dallas Book Depository. They also showed a map of the route from the Dallas Airport to where JFK was to speak. The route wound all over Dallas. If Oswald was an employee, how long had he worked there? How much advance notice was the public given that JFK was coming? Did they release a map of the route he would take in advance? Until I research these things I’ll maintain the thought that Oswald acted alone.
But it sure seems like a perfect storm if Oswald did work there and wanted to kill JFK and the parade conveniently went by the place he worked and he knew far enough in advance to be ready. If anyone knows whetehr what they presented is accurate I welcome your comments. Otherwise I’ll find the time to research it sooner or later.
exactly right...and the underlying intent of all the conspiracy non-sense, is to try and rewrite history and claim that J.F.K would have pulled out of Vietnam...in the end, that’s what they all end up claiming. Never mind that there’s no evidence of that either..plus the fact the L.B.J. kept all of Kennedy’s Defense people..Mcnamara etc..
Sure, there are many questions regarding the fact that a little tiny PT Boat could be sliced in half by a Japanese Destroyer.
But the fact remains, it was.
JFK, notwithstanding his incompetence as a navigator, saved most of his crew through heroic efforts. You CAN NOT fault him for this. Nor, can you ignore his heroism.,
True, the election of 1960, was probably stolen through the efforts of that pro-Nazi Sympatico Joseph P. Kennedy, the guy that ended up in the White House, was NOT the Socialist that is in office today...
Shows what one motivated Marine and his rifle can do.
JFK was having an affair with an East German spy. The press knew about it, and were running scared that the information would leak out to the American public. What kind of light would that shed on The Bay of Pigs and The Cuban Missile Crisis? The boy wonder was so horny and stupid that he got caught in a communist honey-trap. Think he’d have had a second term? Now it’s all Camelot and good times.
I remember a lot of people thought at the time that the JFK hit was revenge for the coup that bumped off Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother just three weeks earlier.
I was a senior in high school at the time. Over the years since, the most intriguing theory I’ve heard is the one about the SS agent accidently firing the head shot with his AR-15 from the followup car. Even with that I’m still certain Oswald fired the first two shots from the book depository and meant to kill Kennedy, and most likely actually did.
What heroism? What he did, the crew did as well, they swam to safety after his incompetence and dereliction of duty and sleeping on the job, there is a reason the Navy wanted to court martial him, but being the depraved individual he was, he and his family fixed it, and turned into a medal, it wasn’t a “navigation” error, it was sleeping and being dead in the water.
JFK fixed his military fake history, JFK stole the 1960 election which killed America, not someone else, the corrupt JFK used his father’s power and influence to advance his self serving career and dreams of grandeur and vanity.
How is it that the left has people pushing their agenda here, their mythology, their phony liberal heroes at FR?
I’ve never heard that theory. I think Oswald was the shooter of all three shots. I could make the 3 shots
with my Browning 270 A-bolt Composite Stalker with Leupold 3X10 50mm objective scope in less time with a tighter grouping. I took down 3 wild hogs at a greater distance. The first shot was at a slow moving target. The second and third were hauling rump roast through trees and brush in 2 different directions. On the video camera the 3 shots took 5 seconds. But by what coincidence did his target end up at the “drive by window” of his alleged place of employment is something I must research.
No one has ever questioned his efforts after his PT Boat was sunk. He personally saved the life of at least one of his crewmen.
It’s very easy to denigrate JFK as a Liberal POS. But for me, bravery in the heat of conflict, is something I cannot question. The guy was an American, all-the -way
Bill Clinton, James Earl Carter, Barack Obama, LBJ ?
The jury is still out...
And doing Capital One commercials and calling his daughter a spoiled little pig.
They all did the same thing, swam to shore, if JFK had managed to kill himself instead of the crew member he did kill, do you think no one would have towed their injured friend and boat mate?
I don't know where you get this "All-American" guy from, he was in many ways the anti-American that Reagan read him as, or else his election would not have meant the end of America.
Kennedy set out to destroy America, by replacing it's people and voters and culture.
When a human is as corrupt and depraved in every sense, as JFK was, it comes out in his actions.
Like I said, the theory is intriguing, even perhaps compelling. Here are two source links.
http://www.reelz.com/smokinggun/
http://www.jfkthesmokinggun.com/
The forensic investigation and findings are very interesting, particularly as they compare Mannlicher-Carcano ammo to AR-15 ammo:
.........
FORENSIC EVIDENCE
BALLISTICS/MEDICAL
BULLET PERFORMANCE
OSWALD’S FULL METAL JACKET BULLET
The 6.5 mm bullets in Lee Harvey Oswald’s WWII Mannlicher Carcano rifle were medium velocity and had thick copper jackets (called full metal jacket) designed to pass clean through a target. Oswald’s first shot hit the road near the limousine and peppered the area with fragments. A ricochet fragment hit President Kennedy on the scalp. Oswald’s second shot (the “Neck Shot”) struck the President in the back of the neck just to the right of the spine. It exited from his throat below the Adam’s apple, struck Texas Governor John Connally beneath and behind his right armpit, shattering four inches of Connally’s fifth rib, exited below his right nipple, crashed through his right wrist and thigh and was found virtually intact on a stretcher at Parkland Hospital. This bullet passed neatly through Kennedy and Connally causing seven different wounds. This was the classic behaviour of a full metal round.
THE AR-15’S SOFT POINT/HOLLOW POINT FRANGIBLE BULLET
The .223 rounds in the AR-15 assault rifle were high velocity, soft-point or hollow point, frangible bullets with a diameter of 5.56 millimeter. The accidentally fired bullet shattered the President’s skull and sent bone and brain matter exploding outwards. It left an exit wound the size of a small plate. As it exploded, molten droplets of lead solidified in the brain matter and left between 30 to 40 tiny lead fragments in Kennedy’s brain, according to the Warren Commission and the official Autopsy Report.
I didn't catch all of it but I doubt he asked Kathleen about her godfather, Sen. Joseph McCarthy.
Even if Oswald fired the shots which killed Kennedy, the fact that Oswald was killed two days later strongly suggests that there was a conspiracy--the other members of which had to make sure Oswald was silenced.
Oswald made a big show of defecting to the USSR and later of passing out pro-Castro literature...but was he really a Communist or was that an act?
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