“I’ve never fully looked in to the Diem business and who ordered the hit, but from what I have heard on the subject, JFK was to blame for it and it was just another thing he effed up in a long line of things. Yet another reason he should never have been President.”
You can look up the Politically Incorrect Guide to the 1960s (which has a slightly more sympathetic view on Kennedy, admittedly, but not enough to really say he came out an angel at all). I definitely remember that book definitely gave more details about the events that led to Diem’s... “ousture”. I think I even quoted that part of the book in one of my old posts on FreeRepublic, now that I think about it.
“Lodge was the incumbent Senator and was popular in his state. JFK most certainly did need to use the popularity of McCarthy, who was the premiere Irish Catholic politician in America at that time. There was a book I read, the name escapes me, which detailed that Senate contest. The family, led by Joe, Sr., was trying to navigate a road to power by center-right means, and to acquire allies. They backed Nixon for Senator in 1950 against the leftist Helen Gahagan Douglas (an Irish-American pol), for example. No doubt expecting a return on their investment in the long run.”
Unfortunately, I’ve seen plenty of leftist politicians outright screw over people simply for more leftist points, even if they are conservative, and literally got reelected despite it otherwise being a stupid and suicidal method (case in point, Harry Truman reigning in Douglas MacArthur during Korea and forcing him to resign, and he somehow managed to win reelection after that despite literally conceding to Communism and ensuring a victory for them). Even with McCarthy, I’m doubtful the Kennedys would have backed him if they wanted to curry with various voters. As you yourself said, Nixon was running against Douglas, who was Irish-American politician and very left-wing. They could have just as easily backed her instead of Nixon, and if anything curried even MORE voters from the Catholic bloc. If Barack Obama and several CBC members can keep on getting reelected despite promoting policies that blatantly stabbed their constituents in the backs, I’m pretty sure the Kennedys could do the same thing even back then.
“When ? In 1961 ? The time to have gone against China was a dozen years earlier. No sane politician or elected official could’ve won on a platform of massive nuclear bombardment of these nations. The whole point was to avoid such a horror that would’ve resulted in tens of millions of casualties, perhaps hundreds of millions. You’d be ending civilization as we know it. Even the Soviets didn’t really want to provoke that even if they enjoyed sabre-rattling. Lunatics like Che Guevera, however, did want a nuclear war to ensue in order to satisfy his bloodlust. He’d prefer (to quote Milton) to rule in hell rather than serve in heaven.”
I would prefer not using nukes at all, but unfortunately, ESPECIALLY considering what’s been going on lately in the world, including the rise of Communism in places like Venezuela, our own Catholic Church being run by a blatant Marxist, plenty of Christian churches of protestant and even Eastern Orthodox sects already being taken over by Communists, the fact that we’ve got a lot of communists in media who right now aren’t even TRYING to hide their Marxist ties, not to mention how we literally bankrolled the Soviet Union, and via Capitalist institutions no less, based on what a book mentioned about how Bankers bankrolled the Bolsheviks despite the latter publicly vowing to lynch the so-called “fatcats” like themselves, and our having had a Marxist president from 2008-2012 (maybe even during the 1990s as well if we count Clinton), and Communism has thoroughly infested out College Campuses, and we’ve even got countries that really should have been our allies by this time like Germany, France, and even Japan promoting Communism in various media that they export to us (Metal Gear, especially by the time of Peace Walker, probably is as blatant about its Communism promotion as either the Prequel Trilogy of Star Wars or The Last Jedi), and how even the most conservative of our presidents just let Communism grow due to essentially lacking a spine to say “no”, and there’s already growing evidence that Russia hasn’t actually fully given up Communism at all, I am really beginning to think we really SHOULD have nuked the various Communists from the get go, and not just in Communist countries, I’d even launch them at allies that have an infestation of Communism as well such as in France, heck, even launch them at America if that’s what it takes. Heck, I even suspect from various articles that the UN is essentially the reason the Hungarian Revolution failed, due to them transmitting rebel identities to Stalin after literally forcing the guy to name names to “cite sources”. I’m that broken at what I’ve seen go on regarding Communism making too many inroads for my comfort. In fact, unlike Che, I don’t even plan to rule in Hell as a result, I just plan to get myself blown up as a result, anything to get rid of Communism, even if it costs me my life. Doesn’t help either that “Not a Shot Was Fired” already made it clear that even threatening to deal military force on the Soviets if they dared militarily invade is going to do any good, since they did that without even needing to use any guns at all, so extermination campaign is indeed the only way to go, not stop until ALL communism is destroyed, even if it means ending all of humanity in the process, myself included.
As far as the Soviets’ self-preservation methods, I’m still doubtful about that. Let’s not forget that the guy who founded Communism as we know it, Karl Marx, openly desired a gorier remake of the worst excesses of the Reign of Terror (and based on that, he most likely knew about the events in the Vendee, especially the bit where fellow Republican Army soldiers often killed each other just to satiate bloodlust under Grignon’s orders), and Vladimir Lenin even demanded that they not hold back in inflicting cruelty onto each other, which most likely meant if Lenin was still alive by that time, he’d openly RISK launching nukes at the US by that time. Heck, the fact that the Soviets had absolutely no problem with lionizing Che Guevara after his defeat in Bolivia as a leftist saint for pure propaganda value despite the fact that he literally nearly caused Nuclear War makes me think they ultimately WOULD have tried to push for nuclear war if push comes to shove. And while Mao Zedong didn’t necessarily go as far as to outright attempt to launch nukes at the United States, he nevertheless made it very clear he would have welcomed nuclear war, even implying they’d survive whatever we launched at them simply because they’ve got more people. Heck, the fact that the Soviets even GOT nuclear missiles via embedded spies in the Manhattan Project indicates they ultimately had a desire to use them.
“Apparently. I remain baffled at your hero worship of JFK. He was neither the leader nor the hero this nation needed. It’s like seeing a piece of cake with a thin layer of yummy frosting, but when you bite into the cake, it’s utterly rotten and disgusting.”
It’s not hero worship, it’s just recognizing that he did something good. Want my overall opinion of JFK, completely ignoring his anti-Communism, which, BTW, the Conservative site Conservapedia stated was valid in his article here: https://www.conservapedia.com/John_F._Kennedy, is that he is a retrobate who probably shouldn’t be dogcatcher. So I don’t have a very fond view of him at all. Maybe more fond of a view of him than Ted Kennedy, but then again, a rat with the bubonic plague would be more preferable to interact with than Ted Kennedy. And for the record, I suggest you take it up with Conservapedia, which as indicated by its name is very unapologetic with pushing Conservative views as its POV and eschews Neutrality due to viewing it as a leftist tool. And if you really don’t want to do it, I’ll do it in your stead. I made sure to address your views about MLK on the latter’s talk page as well.
“The better candidate lost in 1952. Taft should’ve been nominated (with Gen. MacArthur as his running mate). Eisenhower would’ve been better off having been the Democrat nominee. The GOP would’ve been preserved as a viable national majority party, for which it ceased to be thanks to him, after 1958.”
Perhaps so, but then again, after MacArthur got forced to stand down by Truman, the latter somehow got reelected despite literally sabotaging American victory in that war, so I have no way to be sure of that.
“No, I said you hero worship the guy and he isn’t worthy of it. His administration helped put this country on a rapid downward spiral from which we haven’t ever recovered. Politically, socially, ethically, morally. You look at 1960 vs. 2020. It is simply astounding. We may have better technology, but our culture and government are as rotten and corrupt as at any time in our history. We may have had differences on some issues, but we were far more united as a people and the culture wasn’t sick. We may have won the Cold War over the Soviets in the short term, but the left has destabilized us as a country, society and people in the long run. That we now, as of this writing, see a very frightening attempt by the corrupt Derp State left to steal the Presidency and countless other offices to install a corrupt, senile, child molester and puppet of America’s enemies shows just how far we have fallen. It’s curious that just as in 2020 that JFK’s media and pop culture allies in 1960 installed “their guy” by lying about who he truly was (a physically ill, drug dependent sex addict). Add murderer to the mix, because I absolutely believe he and RFK had Marilyn Monroe permanently quieted when she threatened to expose her sexual affairs with them both, and on the brink of the midterm elections.”
You think I don’t know that bit about JFK’s various character flaws? Of COURSE I know about those bits, and I even made it very clear that were it not for his even holding to any anti-Communist views at all, I’d view him as scum who deserved to die painfully, him and his brother Robert and his father. So like I said, I don’t “hero worship” him at all. Just because I recognize some good he did doesn’t automatically make me a hero-worshipper of him. And as far as your other point, believe me, the left diseased our country far before what you claimed, before even when Gold got deposed. In fact, I’d argue the rot started with Thomas Jefferson during the late 1700s to early 1800s, as does Christopher A. Ferrara, especially when the latter sang praises for the Jacobin murders even when it became extremely apparent to the other founding fathers that they were horrible by the time of the September Massacres.
“He didn’t cut taxes, he only proposed doing so. That was a no-brainer regardless, since tax rates had been punitive for decades, and kept economic growth rates down. It ought to be in the Constitution that taxes cannot be higher than 10% for persons. If 10% is good enough for God, it’s good enough for America. Conversely, if you’re a Demonrat, I favor a 90% tax rate. You want Socialism, you pay for it.”
I agree fully. However, my idea of God is that he won’t tolerate any taxes at all, precisely because he literally wants 100% of everything, leave humanity to starve. That’s the main reason why I’m not too fond of that whole “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and give to God what belongs to God”, since in my view, God would feel betrayed and angered that Jesus just advocated denying even a miniscule percent toward God and proceed to furiously slay Jesus via his powers, not even caring if that sabotaged his plan of saving our souls. Yes, my view of God comes across as exceptionally selfish.
“Ideally, they should’ve wiped each other out. How we ever sided with the Soviets, who were worse than the Nazis, boggles the mind. Up until FDR, we did not even maintain diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and did not recognize them after they deposed the Russian Czar. I’d have maintained such a policy of non-recognition.”
Yeah, I agree, though I’d probably not take the chance of even one of them surviving the fight, as that inevitably means they’d take over the world after winning their internal squabble. Think of it along the lines of the Light/Dark ending of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and how to get the true ending, you needed to face both Darkhon and Galeem and wipe them both out.
“Easier said than done. Sometimes you have to deal with pesky issues you’d rather not as President. Reagan didn’t really want to because of the situation with Communist support of Mandela. Unfortunately, the South African government there created the problem and should’ve found a way to resolve it without keeping clear racial discrimination laws.”
Come to think of it, after what Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson pulled, to say little about several of the so-called Civil Rights leaders, including Malcolm X, I ought to add, I’m actually beginning to think segregation may be better off for all of us, and I’m not fond of the thought myself. We did what they want, and they still race bait us. What’s the point of ending segregation when they’re clearly still going to act like they’re treated like dirt for pure money raising to line their own pockets?
“That’s what you get for not having put the 1960 winner in the White House. Nixon would’ve.”
We’ll see. I still think his making that deal with China was a mistake (like I said, I’d prefer wiping BOTH sides out, period). He definitely deserves chops for Vietnam, though.
“Khrushchev agreed to a nothingburger “removal.” JFK gave away the store. Khrushchev also couldn’t renege on such deals, because it would be tantamount to a declaration of war.”
Not if they knew JFK was a weak and inept president and couldn’t do a thing if they decided to keep the missiles in Cuba. If anything, removing the nukes made JFK look stronger, which would have been a huge PR blunder for the Soviets. Heck, the fact that LBJ had to suppress Soviet involvement in JFK’s assassination (and based on his comments to the Chiefs of Staff when planning the Vietnam War, he outright FEARED even the tiniest prospect of nuclear war) would suggest that if anything we Americans were far more afraid of nuclear war than the Soviets ever were. Khrushchev actually won far more in his last encounter with JFK in Austria than he did in Cuba. And like I said, Ion Mihai Pacepa, who was a former DIE agent and had a hand in various Soviet disinformation campaigns, not to mention his boss at the time, Gheorghe-Dej, gives some pretty credible evidence that Khrushchev was upset at how they had to remove the Cuban missiles, or at the very least KGB ordering a blockade: http://www.scientiapress.com/kgb-kennedy And it also suggests that, at the very least, Khrushchev was indeed responsible for Mary Meyer (the question’s up in the air as to whether the Soviets deliberately tried to kill JFK or if LHO went rogue, but their Operation Dragon disinformation campaign definitely points to Soviet involvement in the latter’s assassination, which is the main reason why I’m definitely not going to call JFK a deep state victim). In fact, if I were in Khrushchev’s shoes, I’d deliberately let the missiles stay in Cuba precisely BECAUSE I know JFK’s too weak to do anything about it due to conceding everything, and thus obviously can’t actually declare nuclear war on me at all.
“All-out nuclear war was not a serious option.”
If the Soviets can outright lionize the guy who came the closest to anyone to actually causing nuclear war as a left-wing latter day saint who could do no wrong post-mortem in a pure political propaganda move to bolster Communist morale despite such a move being even MORE damaging to their reputation towards being against nuclear war than assassinating Kennedy would have been (especially given the Cuban Missile Crisis was still in human memory), it’s pretty obvious all-out nuclear war would have still been a serious option. And that’s not even counting Mao’s following statement during his “American Imperialism is a Paper Tiger” speech: “I’m not afraid of nuclear war. There are 2.7 billion people in the world; it doesn’t matter if some are killed. China has a population of 600 million; even if half of them are killed, there are still 300 million people left. I’m not afraid of anyone.”
“There’s some FReepers who think Putin is the boogeyman. I don’t. Strongman and authoritarian, yes. Not a Communist. He knows that economic system was a total failure. The Russians want to dominate the planet again as they did in the pre-1991 days, but not under that Communist system. They are our opponents, of course, not strictly allies. Putin may cut deals with America’s enemies (such as Venezuela), but it’s not about rebuilding a Communist network, but to build up a network of dependent allies (and that VZ has a lot of oil plays a part, too).”
Even if that were the case, there was absolutely no reason for Putin to actually declare solidarity for the Communist World Peace and Youth Movement or compare Christian relics/statutes to that of Lenin and Marx’s dictates/relics, or for that matter keeping Karl Marx’s bust up for public display on Teatralyana Square, or even pulling the same crap Stalin did during World War II, or even bragging about still retaining his KGB badge. I know if I were in Putin’s position, including being an authoritarian and ESPECIALLY anti-Communist, I would have made SURE that Marx’s statue met the exact same fate as the various Lenin and Stalin statues throughout the old Soviet blocs, made sure the Lenin Mausoleum was bulldozed, and have Lenin publicly hung from a streetlamp so all passerbys can see how Communism kills and have them watch as crows eat him out, among other things, and I sure as heck wouldn’t compare Communist literature to the Bible or for that matter compare Christian relics to Lenin (far from it, I’d actually go out of my way to emphasize how they are irreconcilable and that’s yet another reason why Communism must NEVER be reinstated). Believe me, if he merely focused on restoring Tsarist Russia, then authoritarian figure or not, I’d have no problem at all, heck, I’d even support him if it means restoring the Tsars and bring Russia back to Christendom sooner. But when he’s invoking Soviets as the good guys, he’s an enemy, no ifs ands or buts. And for the record, some of those sources I cited included New American, which was owned by the JBS, which is probably up your alley.
“I’m more partial to saying that one is entitled to their own OPINION, but they are NOT entitled to their own FACTS. I see a lot of nitwits running around saying they’re “living their own TRUTHS.” “Truth” as they define it, might mean believing they’re a dolphin trapped in a human woman’s body. Too much insanity in the culture.”
Pretty much, though in my case, I view opinions as no different than lies. If it’s not a fact, it’s a lie (and there’s only one set of facts at all, and facts are NEVER individual at all).
“Slavery was the “peculiar institution.” Sadly, too many states were so CULTURALLY attached to it that they couldn’t rid our nation as a whole from it. Jefferson and many other slaveowning men were personally attached to the benefits of it (sexual domination of slaves). One other FReeper flipped his lid on a vigorous discussion of the slave issue when I brought that up, as if I was airing his personal dirty laundry. But imagine a situation where, as a slaveowning man, if your wife turns you down, he can go and satisfy his lustful desires with his property who cannot refuse their advances. You can see why the slaveowning class did NOT want to give this arrangement up.”
I can see the pragmatic reason why the slave holding business couldn’t just end immediately, so I’m not quite as willing to fault Jefferson there (though I AM willing to fault him for never actually freeing his slaves on his deathbed, which Washington at least had the decency to do). My ire against Jefferson has more to do with his singing praises for the French Revolutionaries and their slaughters, even helping set up their Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and reign of terror actively (and in his case, he KNEW what that was actually like due to actually seeing up close what would later being known as Bastille Day, in person, based on his journal entries. At least the other founding fathers, even Washington, who did make the mistake of accepting one of Bastille’s keys from the Jacobins, had the obvious complications with timely communication between the Atlantic Ocean during that time as an excuse for initially being unaware of what was truly going on. Jefferson KNEW from direct first-hand evidence that what they were doing was absolutely nothing like what we did (the difference between the Bastille raid’s results and those of, say, the Boston Massacre between regarding how the rebels of both events handled their enemies is as different as night and day, for example. We did a fair trial via John Adams against the Brits, and only scalded their thumbs in response. Those guys chopped the guards up to pieces and paraded them through the streets without even a trial of any sort, let alone a fair one.), yet still cheered them on anyways and even encouraged them to kill the king and made remarks you’d expect from the likes of Trotsky, Rohm, or Che Guevara about permanent revolution, which is much worse.). Even moreso considering that by doing that, Jefferson essentially and openly cheerleaded the French Revolutionaries into massacring scores of Catholics and other religions in the first instance of state atheism, something that not even MLK and JFK would ever have done, whether out of genuine kinship for their religion or even just for pure political points is irrelevant. So yeah, I have a LOT more contempt for Jefferson than I do for MLK or JFK for that reason alone. What Jefferson did, to put it another way, is closer to what Pope Francis did to those Chinese Catholics who refused to be under state control, where he not only did absolutely nothing to help out his flock, but even gave the go-ahead to slaughter them to the Chinese Government. I’ll give him credit for the Louisiana Purchase and the creation of our navy. Nothing more, and quite frankly, he should have suffered for what he did to us Catholics during that time. It’s actually rather fortunate that he wasn’t at the Constitutional Convention at the time it was occurring, or else we would have had a French-style Revolution of our own (and we nearly did with the Whiskey Rebellion).
Sorry, that should have been “or at the very least JFK ordering a blockade”.