-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.zolatimes.com/V3.30/pageone.html <A HREF="http://www.zolatimes.com/V3.30/pageone.html">Laissez Faire City Times - Volume 3 Issue 30 </A> ----- Laissez Faire City Times July 26, 1999 - Volume 3, Issue 30 Editor & Chief: Emile Zola ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Viet Nam Part 4: John Kennedy, Playing in the Sandbox by Robert L. Kocher For many of us the Kennedy presidency came at the time when we were in the prime of youth. I will always look back upon that period with great fondness for I was in my 20s and would be invincible forever. Kennedy's death happened to occur at a time when we were scheduled to make the transition out of our youth. There has been an unconscious tendency for many people to idealize the period, to blame Kennedy's death as having been the cause of that transition to adulthood, and to suppose if Kennedy had remained president we somehow would not have had to leave our young world as it existed at that time. There was also an unconscious tendency to make Republican presidential candidate Goldwater, and to a lesser extent Lyndon Johnson, the target of unconscious resentment over loss of our youth. This muddled, and still muddles, the conception of the politics and events of that period. But, when Bobby Kennedy was running for the presidency, his supporters began to make what was for them a horrifying observation. Bobby was beginning to develop gray hair and look older. It had to happen--to all of us. For many of us the world would never be the same after John Kennedy died. What doesn't seem to be understood and accepted is that the world would still never have been the same if he had lived. Time marches on. Several years ago, upon returning to the town where I spent my teenage years, I was saddened to find the old hamburger drive-in that had been the teen meeting place for many years, and had the memories of what had once been twenty thousand high school kids invested in it, was gone and replaced with a shopping center parking lot. It wasn't gone because of Kennedy's death or Viet Nam. It was gone because that's the way life is. It's part of the sadness of growing older. It was the end of picnics on the beach and picking up dates at the girl's dorm. It was the beginning of the time when some of us would make the personal mistakes that would mean the end of our dreams and innocence. Kennedy's death became a spiritual marker for many of us. It happened to accidentally coincide with the passage of a period we will forever look back upon with longing. However, it is a mistake to let one's longing for the period be confused with a belief in the Kennedy Presidency. Many people confuse the two. Many members of the Kennedy administration are still around and continue to write books idealizing Camelot. For many of them association with the Kennedy period will have been the only significant event in their life, and in magnifying Kennedy they magnify their own significance. The Kennedy public relations corps, living in its idealized memories, as well as its political commitment, continues to be active. It plays into a wishfulness and nostalgia. For this, and other reasons, there are people who will continue to view Kennedy as a god until their final moments and nothing will change it. It has become a sacrilege to view Kennedy realistically. In the media and the bastions of liberalism, criticism of the Kennedys evokes postures of melodramatic horror which induces panic within the suggestible segment of the public. The Reality of the Kennedy Presidency Kids, we can survive the supposed horror and it is about time we did. It's a necessity to understand the Viet Nam war--and a great many other things. I an aware that the recent book by Seymour Hersh and several other books preceding have documented ugly aspects of Jack Kennedy's personal life. Little in the way of concrete events will be added here. It is not my intent to cash in on what has been said by repeating it for reader titillation. My concern, here, is that reasonable interpretation of what is known points to a condition of the presidency that was far more serious than even these highly critical investigators are inclined to conclude. Their interest was one of investigating and cataloging, not inference. The interest here is the condition of the presidency and its impact on foreign policy, including the war. To paraphrase a series of catchy lines started by Lloyd Bentsen in the 1988 presidential debates: I remember John Kennedy and believe me, John Kennedy was no John Kennedy. The idealization of John Kennedy has had a stranglehold on this country for more than thirty-five years. My political involvement began during the Nixon-Kennedy debates. As might be imagined, I was much younger then. I was a college student. Until the Nixon-Kennedy debate, I had no interest in politics. My political conversion came as Kennedy was speaking. The other guy sitting watching Kennedy frowned, looked at me, and said, "Why he isn't saying a damned thing!" There was no disagreement from me. It was a simultaneous observation. We were young, but we had our eyes open and were smart enough to see what was taking place. We could see Kennedy was attempting to deceive and use us and the American people. We knew what Kennedy was and exactly what was going on. Kennedy was transparent. We were insulted, disgusted, and angry. His debate performance was highly insulting. I didn't know who Joe Kennedy (John�s father) was in 1960. I didn't know how Landslide Lyndon Johnson got into office. I didn't know the history of the political manipulations of the previous 20 years. But, I knew what I was seeing. What I saw was a lack of integrity. I would have been too ashamed and embarrassed to have said what Kennedy said in front of people. He had neither shame nor respect for people in the country. Either that or he wasn't very bright, or all of the above. One way or another, my evaluation of John Kennedy was that he was slick, shallow, devoid of integrity, and dangerous. In cartoons we see people portrayed with eyes slanting downward toward the side for sadness, upward for happiness or exhilaration, etc. The evil witch has a hooked nose with warts. Those of us who by genetic accident are born with various physical shapes have characteristics attributed to us according to what those shapes typically are associated as expressing. I recently read a psychological study of physical appearance versus court criminal sentences. Women get five and one-half years less sentence than a man for the same crime. Ugly people are more apt to get convicted and serve more time. Attractive looking people were judged trustworthy in their denial of having committed crimes. If your outside looks a certain way, people will fanaticize you an inside that fits with it, regardless of what you really are inside. Richard Nixon, with his jowls and unusual nose, would always be forgiven nothing. Teflon Physiognomy It is difficult to look at pictures of John Kennedy and believe what all objective evidence proves he was. John F. Kennedy was genetically conferred with a physical appearance, along with a veneer of charm, that for some people was as instantly addictive as heroin and produced blindness. Those who were susceptible, and there were many, would meet or take one look at Kennedy, and then, in a thirty-second period, be mesmerized or become willing slobbering lackeys for the rest of their lives without ever really knowing anything about him. People he barely knew, and who barely knew him, would compromise all law and ethics in his service. No lie became too big to believe or cover for. The most illegal of acts would be hidden and forgiven. The most egregious acts of incompetence would undergo contorted interpretations until they were made to appear triumphs. John Kennedy would be protected by the teflon of blind adoration. Marvelous capacities and characteristics were attributed to Kennedy by the addicted. Few of these capacities and characteristics existed. It was said, for example, and is still maintained by his followers, that John Kennedy could read at the incredible rate of up to 10,000 words a minute. [1] Kennedy did not discourage that belief. However, in the real world, to read at that rate with comprehension would get a college freshman a doctorate in mathematics or physics within a week. I've associated with some very brilliant minds, but I don't know of anybody who has ever come remotely close to doing that in two years. Yet, people would look at Kennedy and believe he had such capacity without qualification. They would be offended that anyone would challenge it. Such charisma, as it came to be known, can be a magnetic force enabling moral leadership. When accompanied by immorality or incompetence, it can be the Pied Piper of corruption and destruction. The Kennedy period was marked by superficial attractive style. The Kennedy period, in the event of restoration of sanity in this culture, will also eventually go down in history as a bizarre administration which introduced large scale pathology into the government and culture of this country. It was without any doubt the most corrupt and pathological presidency in American history. Some people were, and are, entranced by the style above all else. Others see the pathology and corruption. Jack Kennedy became president after one of the closest elections in history, accumulating what was recorded as 49.7 percent of the popular vote. The entire presidential election outcome hinged on a few thousand votes in key places. There is very strong evidence to support the serious contention Kennedy was never elected, but that the election was stolen from Nixon by a coalition of Kennedy operations that falsified and overturned the presidential election. The book, The Dark Side of Camelot, by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh documents how organized crime figures, played a key role in Kennedy's winning the 1960 election by rigging ballots in six critical states. The Hersh book, published in November 1997, has been subjected to shrill accusations and denunciations by Kennedy supporters trying to institute damage control. There are attempts to discredit the book by quarreling with marginal issues about how much money went where. Such attempts at diversion are not the substance of the issue. During the storm raised by the book's publication, several pieces appeared in the November 17, 1997 issue of Time. In the Richard Lacayo piece, "Smashing Camelot" the following appears: And although historians like Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who was a member of Kennedy's inner circle, insist that it is "an exercise in political fantasy," Hersh helps elaborate stories that Chicago Mob leader Giancana helped deliver Illinois to the Democrats in 1960. He says the support came largely by getting out the vote among the rank-and-file in Mob-controlled unions and through "campaign contributions from the corrupt Teamsters Union pension fund." G. Robert Blakey, a Mafia expert and former federal prosecutor, confirmed to Time what he told Hersh--that FBI bugs picked up Mob conversations about the deal. "The substance of it was that money went to the campaign through [Joe Kennedy]," says Blakey. "There was an expectation [by the mobsters] that life would be better because of it." Buying Votes and Sundries The Time piece opens with a scene in which John Kennedy, at a private dinner party for three, not including his wife, is casually sending a bag containing somewhere in the order of $250,000 to Giancana through Kennedy's girlfriend and courier, Judith Campbell, in April of 1960. Where the money went, how many times it happened, and who was bought, will never be fully known. Quibbling about how much money went where does not dismiss intent and basic criminality. A prospective president has no business being involved with any of it. From the standpoint of morality and ethics, from the standpoint of intentional subversion of the American electoral and governmental process, if part of it is true, then it's all true. It is hard to deny wiretapped evidence. Arguing over the fine points of exactly how much was got away with, and in what places, is thinly disguised continuing collusion and little more than obstruction of justice. It's worth noting that a seriously criminal situation, or at least a very serious breach of ethics (which any honorable citizen should have reported in the national interest, and should have even avoided serious complicity in) has taken years to extract from people who were in public positions of power. The Kennedys had an intense personal distaste for Lyndon Johnson, who they would treat with unconcealed contempt after the presidential election. Johnson and Jack Kennedy hated each other. Johnson, never at a loss for rustic use of words, referred to Kennedy as a piss-ant with the rickets in ridiculing Kennedy's sickly physical stature and expressing his absolute disgust with Kennedy. However, the Kennedys also knew Lyndon Johnson could deliver endless numbers of ballots mysteriously written in alphabetical order with the same pens and handwriting. It is undisputed historical fact that Lyndon Johnson was elected to congress through ill-concealed vote fraud, earning him the sarcastic title "Landslide Lyndon." In the world of bawdy, corrupt Texas politics of the period, that was considered sharp maneuvering and earned him respect. Jack Kennedy needed that kind of respect to get elected. That required Lyndon Johnson be on the ticket. That united two of the most corrupt and psychopathic forces in American national politics. Concurrently, Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago, the last of the old style Democratic political bosses, had massive, and that means massive, vote fraud at his command. In Cook county people could rise from the dead after twenty years to vote Democratic. Others could vote five or six times. In a close election, Mayor Daley could deliver the state of Illinois, and its electoral votes, in any direction he wished. Mayor Daley and the Cook County machine, by itself, could determine the presidency with what was then referred to as "a little help from some friends". Along with help from the mob, Johnson and Daley together would be far more than enough to falsify and overturn the presidential election and install Kennedy into office. While there was, and is to this day, public denial that this happened, there was private chuckling and congratulation while a helpless Richard Nixon could only sputter and lapse into depression. There are indications there may have been substantial manipulations in other states. The entire truth may never be known because too many of the people involved are dying or dead. If people in this country had known anything about the real Jack Kennedy, he most certainly would not have been elected. A movie some years back idolizing Kennedy was entitled Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye (1977). The title was correct. Most people hardly knew anything about Kennedy. If they had, they would have been in for a shock. Public Charm, Private Ambition Jack Kennedy was a man of public charm, but of private ambition combined with shallowness and emptiness. The Kennedys could be ruthless and indifferent to moral and ethical principle, and often were. Disregard for morality or principle is casual and without hesitation or introspection. Morality, depth, and intelligence simply do not run in the Kennedy family. Probably the only person with the last name Kennedy that was worth a damn was Ted's wife, Joan Kennedy, who was known to be an intelligent, cultivated, and sensitive woman. The rest of that crowd drove her to alcoholism and almost killed her with their shallow trashiness. There was no hope or support for her anywhere in that family because each one of them was as shallow and trashy as the next one. As the only human being of quality in the family, she was isolated and so completely out of place that it nearly destroyed her. Jack Kennedy had begun to position himself, or be positioned, for the presidency with the guidance and financial support of his father as early as 1939. He was being slickly packaged at that time. Jack Kennedy's eyes had been poor since the early 1930's requiring him to use glasses. He would not be seen in public wearing glasses, nor would he allow pictures to be taken of him wearing glasses. Most of Jack Kennedy was a carefully managed superficial image. The image of Jack Kennedy as a model of youthful strength playing football like a college sophomore was a public relations creation. Kennedy's personal health was poor from birth. He was a frail man. As an adult, he weighed as little as an incredible 125 pounds. Kennedy was six feet tall. His weight was typically 140 to 150 pounds during much of his adulthood. Serious physical contact of any kind during an athletic competition would break Kennedy in half and send him to a hospital. Hard running for any distance would jar his body to pieces. During periods of his twenties and thirties it was painful for him even to drive an automobile. Chronic medication was required to bloat his weight up to the attractive levels later seen in public. His body and bone structure could not tolerate the weight and he wore corsets to support himself. This gave him a strait rigidity of stance noticeable in pictures. Occasional incorrect doses of the cortisone necessary to keep him going would produce bloating of the face and slight eye protuberance. The serious extent of Kennedy's physical condition was kept hidden. There is nothing morally wrong with physical illness. The point is the vast difference between the manufactured image people associate with Kennedy, and the reality. Kennedy men show a persistent pattern of using women, but do not have interest or capability for developing relationships of depth or duration with women. They marry women, often very beautiful women, but continue active promiscuous single life styles with indifference to the affect it has on their wives or marriages. Jack Kennedy was no exception. The marriage between Jackie and Jack was a fa�ade behind which there was great coldness and bitterness. Jack and Jackie posed cosmetically in public, but didn't like each other very much in private--for very good reason. Jack and Jackie Jackie came from a background of social aristocracy, a world where people could trace their ancestors back ten or twenty generations. It was a necessity for many of them to trace their ancestry back a hundred or more years in order to find someone who had done anything. It is a world of guarded social order and social status. Preservation of artificial social status is all most inhabitants of that world have going for them. Snobbery, bloated social position, and talk about ancestry is all that stands between them and the single remaining naked distinction of being some of the most useless people on earth. Within that world, Jacqueline Bouvier, who was mostly Irish, would encourage the impression that she was French. Jackie, an attractive looking and somewhat shallow woman of social elegance, had been involved with several men but discarded them because they weren't spectacularly rich, and she considered money, enormous amounts of it, of primary importance as a qualification for someone to marry her. That's not the best basis in the world on which to found a marriage. The Kennedys were one of the richest families in the country. The Kennedys wanted an aristocratic-looking showpiece to adorn their political ambitions. A marriage contract of mutual convenience was made between two photogenic people, neither of whom had much emotional depth. As has been pointed out in recent books, there was mutual hostility from the start. Even during their first year of marriage, Jack was openly involved with numerous other women. When Jackie was eight months pregnant with a difficult pregnancy, after already having had one miscarriage, Jack was on a yacht in the Mediterranean with other women while Jackie nearly died during an emergency caesarean to deliver a stillborn baby. Jack was coaxed into returning home three days later. Public relations teams smoothed over the event by claiming it was impossible to reach Jack on the yacht. But what man would leave for a yacht on the Mediterranean knowing his wife was seriously ill in America? Jack Kennedy was a man without conscience and without concern about anything but personal ambition and passing amusement. Jackie Kennedy was a very bitter woman in her private life. The Camelot marriage never existed. Camelot never existed. Kennedy was a shallow man of coarse taste and morality. He would jump two, three, or more women a day. One that he toyed with for some period was reputed Mafia boss Sam Giancana's girlfriend. Sam helped organize the mob to work for Kennedy's election. "Mr. President, your hooker is here" According to the Hersh book, and since confirmed elsewhere, Kennedy engaged in sex with call girls brought to the White House. It has since been openly confirmed by at least one FBI or Secret Service agent on national TV. The women were threatened with commitment to insane asylums if they spoke of what happened. The threat was probably unnecessary because the truth was so unbelievable that nobody would have believed it, and the women would have been considered certifiably delusional had they spoken it at the time. This is the same John F. Kennedy that has worshippers naming schools, cultural centers, and everything else after him. This is very serious stuff. The problem with writing the truth about Jack Kennedy and the people surrounding him is that the reality is so unbelievable that speaking the truth makes one sound crazy. Kennedy and the Kennedy administration have been protected by the unbelievability of their reality. The events of the period read like a bizarre movie plot written by a hallucinogenic mind. Behind the photogenic mask, Jack Kennedy, and some of those around him, had mentalities so pathological as to be inconceivable to normal healthy human beings. If he were to walk into a psychiatrist's office, John Kennedy was what would probably be diagnosed as a narcissistic or psychopathic personality. Such people don't generally present themselves for treatment because they experience little amount of emotional pain that ordinarily motivates seeking help. In most cases their exploitation of others and flawless mask of charm sends other people to psychiatrist's offices and a psychoanalyst will need to spend hours trying to explain to the unbelieving patient how the patient was involved with a psychopath--now revised in much of the diagnostic literature as a "sociopathic" personality. To say psychopaths do not seek treatment is not completely correct. They do not seek treatment in the sense of being motivated by remorse or conscience. They may seek treatment or wind up in treatment when they get caught or get in trouble. John Kennedy probably would have wound up in serious trouble with the law and otherwise. The Kennedy millions and the charm which brought the willingness of others to cover for him or do the actual dirty work kept Kennedy's tail out of the screen door. For years, there had been suspicions that Kennedy had been married in 1947 and that operatives got Kennedy out of it by expunging it from Florida legal records. This was steadfastly denied for years. Investigation coordinate with the Time article found confirmation from Charles Spalding, a Kennedy operative in the cover-up, that the marriage did in fact occur. Apparently, Kennedy simply acted as if he had never become married and left after a brief period. Spalding referred to the marriage as a "childish scamp." But Kennedy was approaching thirty years old and was what should have been a mature man at the time. His days of being a college sophomore and childish scamps should have long been over. This was one of a series of incidences in which Kennedy showed no judgement or ethics, but people covered his trail, or tail. In this case, his later marriage to Jackie was bigamy. Each of these escapades contributed to the belief that he could get away with more. It came to the point where he felt omnipotent or invincible to outside morality or rules. There were absolutely no limits to his behavior. In practicality, this invincibility turned out to be true. He never experienced any serious consequences, and felt above the reach of law, ethics, or morality. Fun and Games The problem was, everything was a childish scamp to Kennedy, and always would be, including running for the presidency and the presidency itself. There was never the seriousness that a mature man of stature should have. It is a family trait. Brother Ted was was caught cheating in college, was involved in the death of a young woman, and has been involved in scandal after scandal which would ordinarily have resulted in legal prosecution, loss of reputation, or imposition of other penalties. Bobby was involved in various liaisons and possible felonies. Among the younger generation, one was in trouble for involvement with a his kid's teenage baby sitter, while another has had his marriage annulled (annulled?) after years of marriage and two children. And so forth on a rap sheet two feet long that makes the name Kennedy the country's elite crime family. Yet, they all seem to exercise a hypnotic effect on the public, on legal authorities, on church authorities, on the media, and on those around them, such that they escape reasonable consequences and retain public and media adoration. As a partial summation, and as something to think about in reading further, the Hersh book raised storms of protest, the Reeves essay, to be mentioned in a minute, raised storms of protest; and Reeves was a Kennedy supporter. Half of what has been said in these books is far too well documented and confirmed to dispute. Arguing the other half to be in possible error makes very little difference in refuting the overwhelming evidence of absolute absence of character in this group of people, and John Kennedy in particular. The question we should begin asking ourselves is, how is it possible to find minds confused or sick enough, and what kind of country have we become, that there is any attempt to defend these people, including John Kennedy, in any way whatsoever? In front of me are several psychiatric texts on borderline/ psychopathic/narcissistic personality types. In them are descriptions of patients showing poor judgment, emotional shallowness, lack of enduring close interpersonal relationships of any depth. Some such personalities are quite successful in entertainment and the performing arts. (Isn't politics a performing art?) Of particular interest is that a detailed examination of their work shows a lack of depth and content. John Kennedy could perform superficially, but showed no depth or content. He would be dismissed as completely superficial by the mature serious critical eye. The essay "Richard Reeves on John F. Kennedy" in the book, A Question of Character, may be the definitive work on Jack Kennedy, and should be required reading for any education in American history and politics. Reeves describes the writing of an undergraduate thesis, and its publication as Kennedy's first book. After a whirlwind tour of Europe, Kennedy, a marginal and uncreative student, returned to Harvard and decided to write a paper on international politics. He did so with considerable help from other people. Faculty readers accepted it and awarded Kennedy Magna Cum Laude standing in spite of reservations about poor writing and faulty analysis. How someone receives Magna Cum Laude for poor writing and faulty analysis is an interesting exercise in application of high intellectual standards. Two professional writers were found by Kennedy's father to help young Kennedy turn the thing, which was a mess, (my term, not Reeves's) into a book. Winston Churchill had just written While England Slept. In an attempt to play off Churchill, Kennedy's book would be called Why England Slept. After its publication, according to Reeves: The ambassador (Kennedy's father) sent copies to Prime Minister Churchill and Harold Laski. Laski's response was brutally frank: "For while it is a book of a lad with brains, it is very immature, it has no structure, and dwells wholly on the surface of things. In a good university, half a hundred seniors do books like this as part of normal work in their final year. But they don't publish them for the good reason that their importance lies solely in what they get out of doing them and not out of what they have to say. I don't honestly think any publisher would have looked at that book of Jack's if he had not been your son and you had not been Ambassador." Mrs. Laski thought that in twenty years Jack would be sorry he had written it. She was wrong, he would always be extremely proud of his youthful book, and his authorized biographers would echo that pride. A lad with brains? Laski had no idea that what he was reading was substantially the work of other people brought in to rescue the project. The Reeves account is well documented and should be read for particulars. It is well worth reading for a historical understanding of the Kennedy presidency and the Kennedy mind. The following comments and conclusions are mine, and should not be attributed to Reeves. --[cont]-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Published by Laissez Faire City Netcasting Group, Inc. Copyright 1998 - Trademark Registered with LFC Public Registrar All Rights Reserved ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Kris DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. 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