The author left out the most important and damaging conspiracy theory in US history: the Trump Russia collusion narrative. Fringe elements like QAnon and Roger Stone vs. the Federal intelligence agencies, DOJ, FBI, Congress and corporate media? A scheme involving all DC power centers vs. a gadfly like Stone and a group I have never encountered in real life? Hamstringing a duly elected President vs. Reddit posts?
We are to believe that a foreign internet troll-farm or some Facebook ads threw the election. But the entire security-intelligence-law-enforcement-media-academic-Democratic "Trump is a Russian agent" did NOT illicitly influence the election of 2020.
We won’t be talking about the Trump Russia collusion narrative in 60 years, so I’ll pass on calling that the most important and damaging conspiracy theory.
We may be talking about Trump‘s trying to steal the election by having his minions overrun the Capitol since Mike Pence, a proper Republican and actual patriot, wasn’t willing to be his stooge. Or maybe we’ll just call it the biggest tantrum and US history.
I disagree. The behavior of our govt agencies in cahoots with he media and the Dems is nothing less than an attempted coup. The continuation of this corruption is the greatest threat to the nation since the Civil War. This will be studied by historians for a very long time. It is no less important than the deterioration of the Roman Republic into Empire.
Trump, Clinton, Kerry, Gore all believe they won. Richard Nixon did too. He was the only one who probably did. In 1960 the fraud was there to be exposed. Mayor Daley’s vote early and often philosophy secured Illinois. LBJ stockpiling dubious migrant votes in the Rio Grande Valley turned Texas. Nixon ironically was gracious enough to think of the country and step aside. A Nixon Presidency in 1960 would essentially be a third term for Eisenhower. Today few could locate Dealey Plaza, none would know of Lee Harvey Oswald and the Warren Commission wouldn’t have happened and maybe the world be a better place.
The consequenc of the stolen 1960 election have rendered a devastated Cuba. There were some short term benefits from the brain drain from Cuba and into the US by some very capable people in the immediate aftermath of the Bay of Pigs debacle. The long term liabilities of the endless stream of economic exiles schooled in the ways of the cleptocracy that is every strata of Cuban society has been a net loss for the US. Couple that to Cuban export of Marxist revolution into Africa, South and Central America and the Caribbean and we have an avoidable mess had not an election been stolen.
Stolen elections have consequences as we are living the sum total of many.
Don't forget MA Dem Tip O'Neill driving around WV handing out wads of Kennedy cash - he himself admitted as much on screen in the 1992 The Kennedys docuseries...
It’s hard to take seriously a piece like this that relies so heavily on figures like Roger Stone and QAnon. It feels like such inside the beltway MSM nonsense that it’s jarring to see it in The Free Press. A rare miss for Bari and team.
Not just that. The author cites for unknown reasons Jack Schlossberg on RFKJr’s candidacy. Schlossberg? Huh? He is nothing. A privileged child of a weirdly omnipresent mommy - every Democrat presidents fave ambassador. That was really weird.
I can't help but notice that the more of an ideological agenda is present in a writing the worse the quality of that writing. The author stretches to drive home their points at all costs, ultimately depriving the reader of a fluid and fulfilling experience. A couple of prime examples come to mind such as the meandering dreck of Ta Nehisi Coates or Michelle Obama's god-awful graduate thesis.
This piece is a mess. It starts off with a facile comparison that America's cultural innocence was affected the same by a tragic murder of an unknown man as by the broad daylight assassination of our president and it just gets sloppier from there.
The fact that most Americans believe elements within the "deep state" (do we really still put that in quotes in 2023?) were responsible for JFK's assassination may be a signal that times are dangerous but whose fault is that, and who is really in danger? US state institutions, and many private ones as well, have lost their legitimacy. They have become corrupted beyond anything imaginable before JFK's assassination. I would argue that event led us to where we are.
We all know who killed Kennedy and have for a long time now. If powerful cabals can get away with that what kind of corruption isn't permissible? Bankrupting the nation to enrich war profiteers and funnel tens of trillions to banks that should have failed and been taken over in 2008? Perverting government entirely away from strengthening the national interest towards globalism, deindustrialization and decay? Comparing the era when finance was handmaiden to a robust manufacturing base, when things actually worked and problems were manageable, to the slow and now fast collapse of the last 40 years, is to miss the forest for the trees.
I guess if you lived through this era and things basically worked out for you it's easy (and characterless) to ignore the 90% or more of Americans for whom it hasn't. People who can really see that everything is corrupt, that lying (PR) is used as substitute for leadership, and the class that governs us is no longer fit for purpose.
Yes, it is a dangerous time. The class this piece implicitly supports with its bland assumptions and loose comparisons brought this dangerous time upon all of us while guaranteeing we won't be governed by anyone they don't select. It will not end well and they only have themselves to blame.
"We all know who killed Kennedy and have for a long time now...". Well, I don't, though I have my (short) list of suspects, and I've read about everything there is on the subject. What I AM sure of is that the "lone gunman" (Oswald) thesis is bunk. Another point: All Assassination records were to have been opened up a few years ago, yet some are redacted to this day. Really? We are told it is to protect "sources and methods". Well, the "sources" would be in nursing homes, and the "methods" are widely understood. I can't escape the conclusion that there's something the keepers of state secrets just don't want us citizens to know.
We know, but we don't know. We can't positively say specific guys did it, or didn't. But we know they did. Since Oswald didn't do it then it had to be very powerful interests tied into the CIA. Otherwise they would've found the culprits. If it was just the US Mafia they would've been caught. If it was just a foreign govt plot it would've been discovered. Since it wasn't Oswald it had to be elements within the US power elite. That's what I mean when I say we know. And yes, we have some very good ideas who those people were. Just look at who was involved and who flourished afterward. People like George H.W. Bush, Arlen Specter, LBJ, and a whole host of CIA and FBI goons from E. Howard Hunt to G. Gordon Liddy and others.
Yes, that's a good summary of my short list. The Mafia would be most likely to get caught and had the most downside if caught, so they barely make my list. The Russians are pretty good at this stuff and lots of threads lead to their involvement. But that's highly risky and could trigger WW III. And, as you say, they would have been found out, unless some element of our Deep State was on board with removing Kennedy and chose to cover up their involvement. Also, if the American people discovered that the Russians were behind his assassination, they would have demanded revenge.
I think the weak point is that anyone who "flourished" afterwards might have been somehow complicit. That's overreach on an otherwise sound set of observations.
Always hated that line. It wasn't you and me. It was the same corrupt power brokers that brought us the Iranian and Guatemalan coups; the Korean and Vietnam wars, etc., etc.
The FBI investigated the possibility of someone other than Lee Oswald shot Kennedy with the same diligence they investigated the ownership of the White House cocaine found earlier this year. My money is on the CIA - for the assassination not the coke.
Also we can never ever figure out who leaked the SCOTUS abortion ruling. It’s totally unsolvable. But Trump’s house and attorney’s office can be raided.
At the risk of sounding just like one of the conspiracy theorists we are all lamenting, I pulled this paragraph from Tinline's post:
"Joe Biden, another East Coast Catholic, began his political career in the 1970s by modeling himself on Kennedy. To Gillon, the biographer, Obama and Biden alike “flexed their political and legislative muscle to push through legislation that was far more ambitious than anything JFK could have imagined, yet even they, and their accomplishments, appear diminished by the comparison to a mythical Kennedy.”
The bias in this statement is obvious.
Their accomplishments? What accomplishments and what legislation did Biden and Obama push through? Was it Biden's criminal justice reform, the negative consequences of which are still being felt today? And is it Obamacare?
The biggest accomplishment of Joe Biden was being elected President in spite of a decades-long career of mediocrity. Our country is suffering mightily as a result.
The unmitigated disaster which is Obamacare is still considered a major accomplishment by many, largely because the media and the Dems constantly tell them so. That such sweeping legislation passed purely on partisan lines escapes them.
And Biden wasn't elected he was installed. He has spent 50 years stumbling towards while never actually achieving mediocrity.
Thanks for asking. Difficult to have any meaningful conversations with friends and many of us have grown apart intentionally. That's why I appreciate the Free Press so much and being able to participate in the comment section. Some brilliant minds and astute observations make this comment section one of the best among the Substacks I am aware of.
I'm in eastern Massachusetts and worked in Boston. For $1 one can get 6 months of the Boston Globe. I did that once and could not believe how nasty reader comments are. I was a political pariah in Boston.
The JFK 'towering-great-leader-we'll-never-see-his-like-again-Blah-Blah' mythology is perhaps most significant as one of the earliest instances of an emerging world in which people began to pick up their proxy-opinions (on everything beyond their real life experience) entirely from the mass media industrial complex. George Orwell was prescient: "people will believe what the media tell them they believe".
Dennis Lehane's recent book on Southie called "Small Mercies" is a great read. Fictional, but set during school desegregation and forced busing in the 1970's. Many a reference to every apartment in the projects having a portrait of JFK hanging on the wall
It was brilliant. Did any of you ever listen to that contemporary 33 record about life in the White House? It was called "The First Family". It was sort of a comedic spoof. Absolutely brilliant - it made everyone fall in love with the Kennedys.
JFK was the first made-for-TV President. Remember the Nixon/Kennedy debate? Those who listened on the radio (as was the custom for every Presidential debate since radio) believed it was Nixon who won, while those who watched it on this new fangled boob tube thought Kennedy has won because his visible charisma and youthful good looks outshined his actual policies.
Yes the MSM juggernaut has been able to so completely wrap its chosen bogeymen in a devil's cloak that even the mention of their name causes Progressive bien pensants to recoil in faux-virtuous horror....Nixon was an early example.
I remember that, and you recounted it perfectly. It really was a turning point. Since then, our Presidents are generally prettier to look at, with less policy chops and integrity as the trade off. As you say, downhill ever since...
Tinline is correct to acknowledge the danger of conspiracy theories in the modern world. This tendency is likely a byproduct of a dishonest news media, which can not be trusted to present reliable information to the public. Regrettably, he himself is one of the main purveyors of conspiracy theories, and those whom he accuses of being conspiracy theorists are in fact making interpretations of historical truth that are more fact based than the conventional and widely accepted narratives advanced by government and mainstream media. His chief conspiracy theory, based on no data, is that those who see nefarious activities in government are products of right wing extremism is highly polarizing rubbish. In fact those who support the CIA's role in the JFK assassination have presented a far more evidenced based and convincing argument than those who wish to dismiss the evidence out of hand as a conspiracy theory. Now that the term conspiracy theory is an accusation that has been widely brandished willy-nilly by supporters of a more conservative status-quo protecting bias (often masquerading as "liberals") the term has ceased to have any real meaning. Like "anti-vaxxer", the term conspiracy theorist is nothing but a slur intended to malign and discredit those whose opinions differ from one's own or from those paying the piper to write such tripe. They succeed only because there are sufficient numbers of individuals who are sufficiently ignorant and gullible to be swayed by such demagoguery, who refuse to investigate the evidence themselves, which would quickly give the lie to such propaganda artists.
Read The Devil's Chessboard by David Talbot about Allen Dulles and John Foster Dulles, OAS and CIA and names you know. No question Allen had JFK killed, LBJ knew beforehand, done by mob hit at behest and assistance of CIA and FBI and collusion with Secret Service. Two shots from front. Oswald could not hit a thing when hunting in Soviet Union when he was there. Nixon got into office with CIA money in CA. They hated JFK for not invading Cuba, talking with Kruschev and wanting to take down the CIA. Things are worse than I thought.
I do not much like this report. But I find much of the ranting here absurd also. It has always seemed pretty obvious to me that Oswald did it and why. How, for example, that mysterious "They" got the parade route to go by the Book Depository where, had it not, Oswald would have had to continue with his warped frustrated existence waiting his chance yet again and again. Contingency always disappears in the rearview mirror, but none of you here can come close to accounting for it in your notions of the schemes of the secret cabals. All this speculating, by the way, began hours after the event and reflected the same sorts of myopia as I see here and in most of the posts. (The media was blaming Americans and hatred in Dallas almost from the start -- despite the welcoming spirit of the crowds lining the street that day.)
Also, the idea that Kennedy was some kind of moderate about prosecuting the Cold War is especially laughable. He was a reckless Cold War hawk starting with the Bay of Pigs, going on to the sending of "advisers" into the jungles of Vietnam, then the eyeball-to-eyeball mythology about the Cuban missile fiasco, and ending with the botched coup against Diem. Reckless also in his private life with a parade of bimbos the likes of which Trump would only be able to joke about. A mediocre pretty-boy who does not deserve even one of the past 60 years of adulation and mourning. Give the guy a rest already.
While I like your thoughts, the parade route was published as the lines of crowds along the way point out. Anyone could have planned that one and chosen that spot for an assassination. It wasn't someone "waiting his warped frustrated existence waiting his chance." What was always questionable for me was the ability to fire that many shots in so short a time.
This is the kind of reasoning that leaves me perplexed. The route was published the day before. So somehow, in that time, "they" located the book depository, got the rifle up to the sixth floor to set it all up in a place without anyone noticing, and somehow arranged for Lee Harvey to be working there already, for how long? With the idea they could shoot JFK from somewhere nearby, but not too far off from there so that people wouldn't accept it came from that window.
"Reasoning" doesn't work when you start with the conclusions and work your way back.
Oh well, I know this will go on and on and on. He was a third-rate president, a sex maniac hot shot who had nice hair, and he knew how to give a good speech, or at least on that looked good on TV. Oh, and he went to Harvard, which we now know is also worth very little.
Well, back then there was a several day advance notice needed in getting something like that published. So, whoever they were, could have easily had several days to plot. I think there are many holes in the official Warren commission report, but have no idea who actually killed JFK. I even allow for the possibility of the official report being close to the truth. FYI, one of my earliest memories is standing there at the plaza with my family peering up at that window, as we were heading overseas.
"We have transformed Kennedy into a metaphor of American greatness and judged all of his successors by that standard. "
"We??" Not me. Kennedy was a reckless sex addict and Camelot was a myth propagandized by his well financed Democrat allies. Heck even the PT-109 story was mostly fiction, elevating Kennedy's dereliction at the time to a tale of courage and sacrifice. Then there's the dalliances with an East German spy, a mafia don's girlfriend and Marilyn Monroe, whom he might have shared with his brother. Don't forget that he almost led us into WW III with his incompetence, which the media quickly spun into a fairy tale of resolute steadiness. And let's not forget that Kennedy led us into Vietnam, and the claim he would have gotten us out had he lived is a howler. JFK was nothing if not a talented actor. Nothing more. And if he was killed by the CIA? Just of a piece with his intrigues. The old man was a crook and a narcissist. The sons no different. The brother who left a young woman to die horribly and was reliably re-elected by the deluded denizens of MA until he died. Or the endless cousins and children who either murdered or abused women. Now we have another Kennedy seeking the presidency. Does his family name disqualify him? Well. I sure wouldn't cast my vote for one. And, if he weren't a Kennedy, would he even be in the mix of aspirants? Doubtful.
All true. JFK also cut taxes and resisted the advance of tyranny led by the Soviet Union. Best Democrat president of my lifetime, obviously an extremely low bar.
'Don't forget that he almost led us into WW III with his incompetence, which the media quickly spun into a fairy tale of resolute steadiness.' You mean Cuba?
Had Kennedy listened to Lemay and the rest of his trigger happy Joint Chiefs of Staff and bombed those Cuban nuclear missile sites, how do you or I know if those pesky Russians manning said missile launchers wouldn't have launched a few once they saw on their screens American fighter jets or heavy bombers approaching? We don't.
Those SS4's and 5's had a range of 1500 to 2500 miles. That's the entire East coast of the USA. And that's you and me. It would have been nice talking to you, but we wouldn't have been given the chance.
The blockade was boring, but effective, and it gave Khrushchev time to respond to back channel communications.
The Soviets put the missiles in Cuba because they perceived Kennedy as weak. Or maybe distracted by his East German squeeze. Kennedy had great propagandists working for him. Nothing more.
So basically what you're criticizing Kennedy for are the events which led up to the crisis, not his actions during the crisis? Regardless of how Kennedy found himself there - his stupidity in not cancelling the Bay of Pigs operation the year earlier would be the primary culprit - he defused the situation. No missiles were launched. I'm curious, what would you have done in his shoes? Attack Cuba and cross your fingers?
So what was good about him? The Berlin Wall went up. He escalated the Vietnam War. He brought us to the brink of war. He ran the dopey Bay of Pigs catastrophe. He cavorted with spies and mob molls. Sure he had good speechwriters and publicists. Anything else?
I get it. But putting one's self in the pickle in the first place doesn't confer a lot of glory for extricating one's self from it. Even if relatively well done.
Maybe LeMay's idea would have ended that multi-decade disaster 90 miles from Key West, lol
Honestly, Bruce, you're a very smart guy and generally well informed. I respect your judicious comments. I would suggest you read "JFK and the Unspeakable" by James Douglass and "The Devil's Chessboard" by David Talbot. The book "Oppenheimer" indirectly corroborates these books, although the movie was inevitably less detailed; let it suffice to say that Oppenheimer's nemesis was a close collaborator of Allen Dulles. For a deeper dive, find a remaindered copy of "The Declassified Eisenhower" by Blanche Wiesen Cook.
Be prepared to set aside your assumptions.
I come from a family with many members who serve, and have served, in the military and intelligence communities--for many generations.
These books shocked and persuaded me--to my great dismay. I am still re-thinking my entire worldview in the aftermath of this research.
Dulles was not a good guy. Was Kennedy killed by the CIA? Who knows. But that doesn't address whether he was a good president. And right from the start - that his party likely stole the election - he was not. And we know that Camelot was an absolute fantasy - a lie concocted by his very able propagandists such as White, Sallinger et al.
Briefly, the military-intelligence state evolved under Eisenhower to confront Communism in ways that would not trigger nuclear war, ie secret action, often in cooperation with organized criminals, to ensure Europeans didn't elect Communist parties and to topple the heads of government in Iran, Guatemala, Congo and elsewhere. There were many assassinations, kidnappings and the use of torture by CIA and its allies. In addition, important segments of the military believed the optimal time for a nuclear war was 1963 while the US still had an overwhelming nuclear advantage, and could obliterate Russia and "only" lose 10 - 20 million Americans.
Kennedy was elected as a Cold Warrior but the murder of Lumumba in Congo (done by Dulles without Presidential authorization) between JFK's election and before his inauguration, and the Bay of Pigs a few months afterwards, shocked JFK and made him realize his military and intelligence agencies were out of control. CIA had set JFK up, knowing the Bay of Pigs invasion would fail without air support from an American air craft carrier and sending in the Marines to invade as well, and assumed JFK was weak and would authorize this extra use of force. JFK rejected escalation and the CIA operation failed. This grievance produced the core of the operational-level operatives who conspired to murder JFK: CIA, Cuban exiles, and American mafia who had lost their Cuban casinos and brothels. Also important American industrialists in Texas and elsewhere hated JFK for allowing the Bay of Pigs invasion to fail.
JFK fired Allen Dulles and a couple of his senior people, but CIA was still totally loyal to Dulles, and he continued to run it from his home in Georgetown. Nota bene Obama has executed a similar strategy by living in Washington DC and being the real boss of the Biden Administration.
The Bay of Pigs was Strike #1 for JFK. Strike #2 was either the Berlin Wall or the Cuban Missile Crisis or both. JFK resolved the Cuban Missile Crisis by creating a secret back channel to Krushchev, who had also realized he was the captive of his military and intelligence advisors, and between the two of them they stepped back from the brink of nuclear war, against the strong advice of their advisors on both sides.
Strike #3 was JFK's American University "Peace Speech" at Commencement in 1963 and he was doomed by the time he signed a National Security Directive in autumn 1963 to withdraw all American military personnel from Vietnam. This NSD was immediately rescinded by Johnson who then escalated the Vietnam War on the recommendation of his Joint Chiefs of Staff and CIA.
I personally found this narrative so compelling because the descriptions of JFK by Dulles and the various members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as other senior military and intelligence figures, exactly echo the assessment of JFK I heard growing up from my own military and intelligence family members. The murder of JFK was a coup d'etat by men who saw themselves as patriots who had to remove a dangerously reckless President and Commander in Chief. Once it happened, the US establishment passively accepted what had happened as a fait accompli and closed ranks to obfuscate and conceal the facts. After all, the business of America is business, and JFK had made it clear to lots of leaders of the American establishment that he was bad for business.
In the aftermath, more than a few key witnesses to the truth were killed to keep the Lee Harvey Oswald hoax from being disproven. In 1968 RFK was killed because he was well on his way to becoming President and exposing the conspirators and what they had done. Sirhan Sirhan has all the signs of being an MKULTRA-trained killer--and, by the way, did not fire the fatal shots, which came from behind RFK with the muzzle close to his head. The LA coroner Noguchi who performed the autopsy lost his job for telling the truth, and again the establishment closed ranks and obfuscated the truth.
I won't go into the many operational details of the murder, and the near-murder of JFK in Chicago only a few weeks before his death in Dallas. You can find all that out from those books and other sources.
BTW I noted with great interest that Bruce Miller, who is a very intelligent and educated reader and frequent commentator, also has an assessment of JFK (in another reader comment to this article) that is exactly the same as the negative opinion of JFK's military and intelligence foes--and my family.
Not having read any of those books I nevertheless hold that opinion. Kennedy was the reckless and petulant child of a criminal. Once the mafia was double crossed and with the homosexual gambler J Edgar effectively muzzled for his peccadillos the way was clear for an organized criminal cabal both within and outside of government to eliminate the pesky playboy.
I'll be ordering those books.
If you haven't already read it I'll suggest Bay of Pigs The Leader's Story by Haynes Johnson, W W Norton & Company, Inc. as an interesting light read on the topic
Eisenhower was the first to put military advisors into Vietnam listening to Allen Dulles. As an aside, my father was one of the military advisors sent to Vietnam at the time.
JFK wouldn't be allowed within a mile of today's Democrat party. He was flawed, but basically an anti-communist who believed in the free market and in America. He'd be as horrified as any conservative by radical gender politics, open borders, and debt counted in the tens of trillions.
Is it possible to find a JFK quote that the Left would not fundamentally disagree with?
His most famous quote--"Ask not what your country can do for you"--is the polar opposite of the current ideology and policies of the Democratic party. Today's Democrats think the government should give away endless amounts of "free stuff," while expecting nothing whatsoever from citizens (except their votes for Democrats).
I've heard it said that JFK was the last Democratic POTUS who genuinely loved America.
Back in the day, the famous Kennedy quote was "those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.". How times have changed.
Meh. I tend to dismiss anything that relies on "Q" or "QAnon" as a draw. Because I think that it is a tool to sow division. And boy does this piece do that. I also dislike articles, and comments, that position the writer as some sort of all-knowing, all-seeing centrist. Talk about a tell.
The mainstream theory of Kennedy's murder, promoted by our media and political elites is that he was killed by the flaws of middle America. We are guilty because we are traditional, garden-variety Americans.
The political manipulators (cue the chorus "conspiracy theorist!") downplayed that the killer was a devoted Communist. After all, if there were to be found culpability in Moscow, the required response would be horrific.
The campaign to demoralize America has only accelerated since 1963.
Most of the “conspiracy” theories you dismiss here have quite a bit of evidence at least warranting investigation (covid origins, JFK assassination, etc). This reads like a dismissal of any criticism of security state organizations. I could have read this in the Post or NYT...”hey, don’t worry about the evidence that these powerful figures are acting in self interest. It’s just that you’re crazy”
Ugh! Bari come on with the editing- just like there was no correction to the biracial piece that totally got an Iowa law wrong- in fact it said the opposite of what the author said now you’re pushing conspiracy theories from “Trump” voters at MAGA rallies? Are you sure those weren’t journalists at CNN? As the left say “Do better!” With your reporting of those on the right!
I regard this article as a waste of time. I don’t care about fringe conspiracy groups and theories, nor do I need more speculation about what JFK would have done in Vietnam, or musings about his enduring political influence. Any given human event is the product of countless variables coalescing at once. It’s impossible to know the extent to which one person’s beliefs and actions derive from what somebody else is perceived to have done decades before. This article is full of surmises, both the writer’s and those he interviewed. I was left thinking that my guesses are as good as theirs.
Who is qanon? I have never ever met one and this author seems to feel that anyone who is not ok with this weaponized justice department is a qanon conspiracy theorist. That is not true. In the same way I would never tell Bari that Jewish students on campus are telling conspiracies when they document how they are being treated unfairly, I would not expect Bari to say that conservatives who feel abused are just repeating a conspiracy theory. It’s not right Bari
I loved your speech Bari - when you said never leave something go unchallenged - and am trying to live those words. So when I see you equating all conservative complaints with a fringe qanon group that no one has ever actually met I think you are better than that. If you cannot see or admit that the conspiracy about the government using the justice dept to go after regular American people then you are either willfully blind or you get your information from
CNN and the New York Times. I urge you to branch out
The author left out the most important and damaging conspiracy theory in US history: the Trump Russia collusion narrative. Fringe elements like QAnon and Roger Stone vs. the Federal intelligence agencies, DOJ, FBI, Congress and corporate media? A scheme involving all DC power centers vs. a gadfly like Stone and a group I have never encountered in real life? Hamstringing a duly elected President vs. Reddit posts?
What a joke.
We are to believe that a foreign internet troll-farm or some Facebook ads threw the election. But the entire security-intelligence-law-enforcement-media-academic-Democratic "Trump is a Russian agent" did NOT illicitly influence the election of 2020.
We won’t be talking about the Trump Russia collusion narrative in 60 years, so I’ll pass on calling that the most important and damaging conspiracy theory.
We may be talking about Trump‘s trying to steal the election by having his minions overrun the Capitol since Mike Pence, a proper Republican and actual patriot, wasn’t willing to be his stooge. Or maybe we’ll just call it the biggest tantrum and US history.
I disagree. The behavior of our govt agencies in cahoots with he media and the Dems is nothing less than an attempted coup. The continuation of this corruption is the greatest threat to the nation since the Civil War. This will be studied by historians for a very long time. It is no less important than the deterioration of the Roman Republic into Empire.
Cite a prior instance of the intelligence agencies, FBI, DOJ, and Congress interfering with a Presidency with a false narrative, please.
The only people still talking about this are fans of Donald Trump. Nobody else cares. It may be a sad state of reality, but it is reality.
nothing did more to poison politics then the attempted coup against president trump and the russia hoax
Trump, Clinton, Kerry, Gore all believe they won. Richard Nixon did too. He was the only one who probably did. In 1960 the fraud was there to be exposed. Mayor Daley’s vote early and often philosophy secured Illinois. LBJ stockpiling dubious migrant votes in the Rio Grande Valley turned Texas. Nixon ironically was gracious enough to think of the country and step aside. A Nixon Presidency in 1960 would essentially be a third term for Eisenhower. Today few could locate Dealey Plaza, none would know of Lee Harvey Oswald and the Warren Commission wouldn’t have happened and maybe the world be a better place.
The consequenc of the stolen 1960 election have rendered a devastated Cuba. There were some short term benefits from the brain drain from Cuba and into the US by some very capable people in the immediate aftermath of the Bay of Pigs debacle. The long term liabilities of the endless stream of economic exiles schooled in the ways of the cleptocracy that is every strata of Cuban society has been a net loss for the US. Couple that to Cuban export of Marxist revolution into Africa, South and Central America and the Caribbean and we have an avoidable mess had not an election been stolen.
Stolen elections have consequences as we are living the sum total of many.
Don't forget MA Dem Tip O'Neill driving around WV handing out wads of Kennedy cash - he himself admitted as much on screen in the 1992 The Kennedys docuseries...
It’s hard to take seriously a piece like this that relies so heavily on figures like Roger Stone and QAnon. It feels like such inside the beltway MSM nonsense that it’s jarring to see it in The Free Press. A rare miss for Bari and team.
I am A-OK with the odd miss on Bari's site. A truly free press will produce, tolerate and find amusement in the occasional wacky article.
This wasn't a miss it was a gunshot to the sky. And the bullet has to fall somewhere.
All those Q Anon references had me questioning where, exactly, was this writer coming from?
What I love most about The Free Press that it is neither right or left...it is, in fact, free, as is implied in the name.
I does seem sometimes that The Free Press exaggerates the numbers and influence of those on the alt-right.
Still running that tavern, ogden?
Not just that. The author cites for unknown reasons Jack Schlossberg on RFKJr’s candidacy. Schlossberg? Huh? He is nothing. A privileged child of a weirdly omnipresent mommy - every Democrat presidents fave ambassador. That was really weird.
So now you think the Free Press is involved in a conspiracy theory? And the beat goes on.
If congress wants to dispel the myth that the USA is run by a conspiracy of pedophiles, they can release J. Epstein's flight logs.
The list is out there. Hitlery Killerton might hunt you for posting that though.
Lost me at QAnon. Are there really any supporters of Q in real life other than hard left wingers who use it as a club and a pejorative?
Up until then the lesson of the piece is don’t worship a politician. They really don’t care about you, just power and what it gets them
I found my myself skimming this one, it was too disjointed.
I can't help but notice that the more of an ideological agenda is present in a writing the worse the quality of that writing. The author stretches to drive home their points at all costs, ultimately depriving the reader of a fluid and fulfilling experience. A couple of prime examples come to mind such as the meandering dreck of Ta Nehisi Coates or Michelle Obama's god-awful graduate thesis.
QAnon is a transparently obvious FBI/CIA InfoOp, albeit a very effective one. Fools are easily fooled, and more than once.
Indeed. As an example look at how many leftists take themselves seriously.
This piece is a mess. It starts off with a facile comparison that America's cultural innocence was affected the same by a tragic murder of an unknown man as by the broad daylight assassination of our president and it just gets sloppier from there.
The fact that most Americans believe elements within the "deep state" (do we really still put that in quotes in 2023?) were responsible for JFK's assassination may be a signal that times are dangerous but whose fault is that, and who is really in danger? US state institutions, and many private ones as well, have lost their legitimacy. They have become corrupted beyond anything imaginable before JFK's assassination. I would argue that event led us to where we are.
We all know who killed Kennedy and have for a long time now. If powerful cabals can get away with that what kind of corruption isn't permissible? Bankrupting the nation to enrich war profiteers and funnel tens of trillions to banks that should have failed and been taken over in 2008? Perverting government entirely away from strengthening the national interest towards globalism, deindustrialization and decay? Comparing the era when finance was handmaiden to a robust manufacturing base, when things actually worked and problems were manageable, to the slow and now fast collapse of the last 40 years, is to miss the forest for the trees.
I guess if you lived through this era and things basically worked out for you it's easy (and characterless) to ignore the 90% or more of Americans for whom it hasn't. People who can really see that everything is corrupt, that lying (PR) is used as substitute for leadership, and the class that governs us is no longer fit for purpose.
Yes, it is a dangerous time. The class this piece implicitly supports with its bland assumptions and loose comparisons brought this dangerous time upon all of us while guaranteeing we won't be governed by anyone they don't select. It will not end well and they only have themselves to blame.
"We all know who killed Kennedy and have for a long time now...". Well, I don't, though I have my (short) list of suspects, and I've read about everything there is on the subject. What I AM sure of is that the "lone gunman" (Oswald) thesis is bunk. Another point: All Assassination records were to have been opened up a few years ago, yet some are redacted to this day. Really? We are told it is to protect "sources and methods". Well, the "sources" would be in nursing homes, and the "methods" are widely understood. I can't escape the conclusion that there's something the keepers of state secrets just don't want us citizens to know.
We know, but we don't know. We can't positively say specific guys did it, or didn't. But we know they did. Since Oswald didn't do it then it had to be very powerful interests tied into the CIA. Otherwise they would've found the culprits. If it was just the US Mafia they would've been caught. If it was just a foreign govt plot it would've been discovered. Since it wasn't Oswald it had to be elements within the US power elite. That's what I mean when I say we know. And yes, we have some very good ideas who those people were. Just look at who was involved and who flourished afterward. People like George H.W. Bush, Arlen Specter, LBJ, and a whole host of CIA and FBI goons from E. Howard Hunt to G. Gordon Liddy and others.
Yes, that's a good summary of my short list. The Mafia would be most likely to get caught and had the most downside if caught, so they barely make my list. The Russians are pretty good at this stuff and lots of threads lead to their involvement. But that's highly risky and could trigger WW III. And, as you say, they would have been found out, unless some element of our Deep State was on board with removing Kennedy and chose to cover up their involvement. Also, if the American people discovered that the Russians were behind his assassination, they would have demanded revenge.
I think the weak point is that anyone who "flourished" afterwards might have been somehow complicit. That's overreach on an otherwise sound set of observations.
I shouted out, Who killed the Kennedys?
When after all it was you and me
Always hated that line. It wasn't you and me. It was the same corrupt power brokers that brought us the Iranian and Guatemalan coups; the Korean and Vietnam wars, etc., etc.
Ah, so Mick knows...
The FBI investigated the possibility of someone other than Lee Oswald shot Kennedy with the same diligence they investigated the ownership of the White House cocaine found earlier this year. My money is on the CIA - for the assassination not the coke.
Yeah, it's funny how that coke thing just went away quietly. I guess our vaunted intelligence agency wasn't up to the task.
Also we can never ever figure out who leaked the SCOTUS abortion ruling. It’s totally unsolvable. But Trump’s house and attorney’s office can be raided.
At the risk of sounding just like one of the conspiracy theorists we are all lamenting, I pulled this paragraph from Tinline's post:
"Joe Biden, another East Coast Catholic, began his political career in the 1970s by modeling himself on Kennedy. To Gillon, the biographer, Obama and Biden alike “flexed their political and legislative muscle to push through legislation that was far more ambitious than anything JFK could have imagined, yet even they, and their accomplishments, appear diminished by the comparison to a mythical Kennedy.”
The bias in this statement is obvious.
Their accomplishments? What accomplishments and what legislation did Biden and Obama push through? Was it Biden's criminal justice reform, the negative consequences of which are still being felt today? And is it Obamacare?
The biggest accomplishment of Joe Biden was being elected President in spite of a decades-long career of mediocrity. Our country is suffering mightily as a result.
The unmitigated disaster which is Obamacare is still considered a major accomplishment by many, largely because the media and the Dems constantly tell them so. That such sweeping legislation passed purely on partisan lines escapes them.
And Biden wasn't elected he was installed. He has spent 50 years stumbling towards while never actually achieving mediocrity.
Actually, he was appointed by James Clyburn.
Wow. You pretty much nailed it, Kathy. Is it lonely for someone who thinks like you in Boston?
Thanks for asking. Difficult to have any meaningful conversations with friends and many of us have grown apart intentionally. That's why I appreciate the Free Press so much and being able to participate in the comment section. Some brilliant minds and astute observations make this comment section one of the best among the Substacks I am aware of.
I'm in eastern Massachusetts and worked in Boston. For $1 one can get 6 months of the Boston Globe. I did that once and could not believe how nasty reader comments are. I was a political pariah in Boston.
Nasty and misinformed.
His ability to grift via his position.
The JFK 'towering-great-leader-we'll-never-see-his-like-again-Blah-Blah' mythology is perhaps most significant as one of the earliest instances of an emerging world in which people began to pick up their proxy-opinions (on everything beyond their real life experience) entirely from the mass media industrial complex. George Orwell was prescient: "people will believe what the media tell them they believe".
Camelot was a pr con ginned up by Jackie.
Jackie or White and the rest of the propagandists? I wonder if some old fools still keep pictures of JFK right up there along with Jesus.
just make a quick visit to south Boston
Dennis Lehane's recent book on Southie called "Small Mercies" is a great read. Fictional, but set during school desegregation and forced busing in the 1970's. Many a reference to every apartment in the projects having a portrait of JFK hanging on the wall
I lived in East Boston at that time. Why anyone lives in those blue cesspits escapes me.
It was brilliant. Did any of you ever listen to that contemporary 33 record about life in the White House? It was called "The First Family". It was sort of a comedic spoof. Absolutely brilliant - it made everyone fall in love with the Kennedys.
JFK was the first made-for-TV President. Remember the Nixon/Kennedy debate? Those who listened on the radio (as was the custom for every Presidential debate since radio) believed it was Nixon who won, while those who watched it on this new fangled boob tube thought Kennedy has won because his visible charisma and youthful good looks outshined his actual policies.
It's been steadily downhill since.
Yes the MSM juggernaut has been able to so completely wrap its chosen bogeymen in a devil's cloak that even the mention of their name causes Progressive bien pensants to recoil in faux-virtuous horror....Nixon was an early example.
I remember that, and you recounted it perfectly. It really was a turning point. Since then, our Presidents are generally prettier to look at, with less policy chops and integrity as the trade off. As you say, downhill ever since...
That and universal suffrage.
Tinline is correct to acknowledge the danger of conspiracy theories in the modern world. This tendency is likely a byproduct of a dishonest news media, which can not be trusted to present reliable information to the public. Regrettably, he himself is one of the main purveyors of conspiracy theories, and those whom he accuses of being conspiracy theorists are in fact making interpretations of historical truth that are more fact based than the conventional and widely accepted narratives advanced by government and mainstream media. His chief conspiracy theory, based on no data, is that those who see nefarious activities in government are products of right wing extremism is highly polarizing rubbish. In fact those who support the CIA's role in the JFK assassination have presented a far more evidenced based and convincing argument than those who wish to dismiss the evidence out of hand as a conspiracy theory. Now that the term conspiracy theory is an accusation that has been widely brandished willy-nilly by supporters of a more conservative status-quo protecting bias (often masquerading as "liberals") the term has ceased to have any real meaning. Like "anti-vaxxer", the term conspiracy theorist is nothing but a slur intended to malign and discredit those whose opinions differ from one's own or from those paying the piper to write such tripe. They succeed only because there are sufficient numbers of individuals who are sufficiently ignorant and gullible to be swayed by such demagoguery, who refuse to investigate the evidence themselves, which would quickly give the lie to such propaganda artists.
Read The Devil's Chessboard by David Talbot about Allen Dulles and John Foster Dulles, OAS and CIA and names you know. No question Allen had JFK killed, LBJ knew beforehand, done by mob hit at behest and assistance of CIA and FBI and collusion with Secret Service. Two shots from front. Oswald could not hit a thing when hunting in Soviet Union when he was there. Nixon got into office with CIA money in CA. They hated JFK for not invading Cuba, talking with Kruschev and wanting to take down the CIA. Things are worse than I thought.
I do not much like this report. But I find much of the ranting here absurd also. It has always seemed pretty obvious to me that Oswald did it and why. How, for example, that mysterious "They" got the parade route to go by the Book Depository where, had it not, Oswald would have had to continue with his warped frustrated existence waiting his chance yet again and again. Contingency always disappears in the rearview mirror, but none of you here can come close to accounting for it in your notions of the schemes of the secret cabals. All this speculating, by the way, began hours after the event and reflected the same sorts of myopia as I see here and in most of the posts. (The media was blaming Americans and hatred in Dallas almost from the start -- despite the welcoming spirit of the crowds lining the street that day.)
Also, the idea that Kennedy was some kind of moderate about prosecuting the Cold War is especially laughable. He was a reckless Cold War hawk starting with the Bay of Pigs, going on to the sending of "advisers" into the jungles of Vietnam, then the eyeball-to-eyeball mythology about the Cuban missile fiasco, and ending with the botched coup against Diem. Reckless also in his private life with a parade of bimbos the likes of which Trump would only be able to joke about. A mediocre pretty-boy who does not deserve even one of the past 60 years of adulation and mourning. Give the guy a rest already.
While I like your thoughts, the parade route was published as the lines of crowds along the way point out. Anyone could have planned that one and chosen that spot for an assassination. It wasn't someone "waiting his warped frustrated existence waiting his chance." What was always questionable for me was the ability to fire that many shots in so short a time.
This is the kind of reasoning that leaves me perplexed. The route was published the day before. So somehow, in that time, "they" located the book depository, got the rifle up to the sixth floor to set it all up in a place without anyone noticing, and somehow arranged for Lee Harvey to be working there already, for how long? With the idea they could shoot JFK from somewhere nearby, but not too far off from there so that people wouldn't accept it came from that window.
"Reasoning" doesn't work when you start with the conclusions and work your way back.
Oh well, I know this will go on and on and on. He was a third-rate president, a sex maniac hot shot who had nice hair, and he knew how to give a good speech, or at least on that looked good on TV. Oh, and he went to Harvard, which we now know is also worth very little.
Well, back then there was a several day advance notice needed in getting something like that published. So, whoever they were, could have easily had several days to plot. I think there are many holes in the official Warren commission report, but have no idea who actually killed JFK. I even allow for the possibility of the official report being close to the truth. FYI, one of my earliest memories is standing there at the plaza with my family peering up at that window, as we were heading overseas.
"We have transformed Kennedy into a metaphor of American greatness and judged all of his successors by that standard. "
"We??" Not me. Kennedy was a reckless sex addict and Camelot was a myth propagandized by his well financed Democrat allies. Heck even the PT-109 story was mostly fiction, elevating Kennedy's dereliction at the time to a tale of courage and sacrifice. Then there's the dalliances with an East German spy, a mafia don's girlfriend and Marilyn Monroe, whom he might have shared with his brother. Don't forget that he almost led us into WW III with his incompetence, which the media quickly spun into a fairy tale of resolute steadiness. And let's not forget that Kennedy led us into Vietnam, and the claim he would have gotten us out had he lived is a howler. JFK was nothing if not a talented actor. Nothing more. And if he was killed by the CIA? Just of a piece with his intrigues. The old man was a crook and a narcissist. The sons no different. The brother who left a young woman to die horribly and was reliably re-elected by the deluded denizens of MA until he died. Or the endless cousins and children who either murdered or abused women. Now we have another Kennedy seeking the presidency. Does his family name disqualify him? Well. I sure wouldn't cast my vote for one. And, if he weren't a Kennedy, would he even be in the mix of aspirants? Doubtful.
All true. JFK also cut taxes and resisted the advance of tyranny led by the Soviet Union. Best Democrat president of my lifetime, obviously an extremely low bar.
All true, but the last few sentences. Don’t forget that the rest of the Kennedy family disagrees with him. In my book, that is a plus in his column.
Thanks but no sale. Read his platform. Just another Leftie telling lies.
'Don't forget that he almost led us into WW III with his incompetence, which the media quickly spun into a fairy tale of resolute steadiness.' You mean Cuba?
Had Kennedy listened to Lemay and the rest of his trigger happy Joint Chiefs of Staff and bombed those Cuban nuclear missile sites, how do you or I know if those pesky Russians manning said missile launchers wouldn't have launched a few once they saw on their screens American fighter jets or heavy bombers approaching? We don't.
Those SS4's and 5's had a range of 1500 to 2500 miles. That's the entire East coast of the USA. And that's you and me. It would have been nice talking to you, but we wouldn't have been given the chance.
The blockade was boring, but effective, and it gave Khrushchev time to respond to back channel communications.
Yeah nice rehabilitation try, Lee.
The Soviets put the missiles in Cuba because they perceived Kennedy as weak. Or maybe distracted by his East German squeeze. Kennedy had great propagandists working for him. Nothing more.
So basically what you're criticizing Kennedy for are the events which led up to the crisis, not his actions during the crisis? Regardless of how Kennedy found himself there - his stupidity in not cancelling the Bay of Pigs operation the year earlier would be the primary culprit - he defused the situation. No missiles were launched. I'm curious, what would you have done in his shoes? Attack Cuba and cross your fingers?
So what was good about him? The Berlin Wall went up. He escalated the Vietnam War. He brought us to the brink of war. He ran the dopey Bay of Pigs catastrophe. He cavorted with spies and mob molls. Sure he had good speechwriters and publicists. Anything else?
I’m not referring to anything else about him, only your comment about his incompetence in Cuba.
I get it. But putting one's self in the pickle in the first place doesn't confer a lot of glory for extricating one's self from it. Even if relatively well done.
Maybe LeMay's idea would have ended that multi-decade disaster 90 miles from Key West, lol
Have you ever dealt with a bully? What works every time is to take two steps forward. Every time. Always.
Honestly, Bruce, you're a very smart guy and generally well informed. I respect your judicious comments. I would suggest you read "JFK and the Unspeakable" by James Douglass and "The Devil's Chessboard" by David Talbot. The book "Oppenheimer" indirectly corroborates these books, although the movie was inevitably less detailed; let it suffice to say that Oppenheimer's nemesis was a close collaborator of Allen Dulles. For a deeper dive, find a remaindered copy of "The Declassified Eisenhower" by Blanche Wiesen Cook.
Be prepared to set aside your assumptions.
I come from a family with many members who serve, and have served, in the military and intelligence communities--for many generations.
These books shocked and persuaded me--to my great dismay. I am still re-thinking my entire worldview in the aftermath of this research.
Dulles was not a good guy. Was Kennedy killed by the CIA? Who knows. But that doesn't address whether he was a good president. And right from the start - that his party likely stole the election - he was not. And we know that Camelot was an absolute fantasy - a lie concocted by his very able propagandists such as White, Sallinger et al.
Could you summarize what you come away with regarding your research?
Briefly, the military-intelligence state evolved under Eisenhower to confront Communism in ways that would not trigger nuclear war, ie secret action, often in cooperation with organized criminals, to ensure Europeans didn't elect Communist parties and to topple the heads of government in Iran, Guatemala, Congo and elsewhere. There were many assassinations, kidnappings and the use of torture by CIA and its allies. In addition, important segments of the military believed the optimal time for a nuclear war was 1963 while the US still had an overwhelming nuclear advantage, and could obliterate Russia and "only" lose 10 - 20 million Americans.
Kennedy was elected as a Cold Warrior but the murder of Lumumba in Congo (done by Dulles without Presidential authorization) between JFK's election and before his inauguration, and the Bay of Pigs a few months afterwards, shocked JFK and made him realize his military and intelligence agencies were out of control. CIA had set JFK up, knowing the Bay of Pigs invasion would fail without air support from an American air craft carrier and sending in the Marines to invade as well, and assumed JFK was weak and would authorize this extra use of force. JFK rejected escalation and the CIA operation failed. This grievance produced the core of the operational-level operatives who conspired to murder JFK: CIA, Cuban exiles, and American mafia who had lost their Cuban casinos and brothels. Also important American industrialists in Texas and elsewhere hated JFK for allowing the Bay of Pigs invasion to fail.
JFK fired Allen Dulles and a couple of his senior people, but CIA was still totally loyal to Dulles, and he continued to run it from his home in Georgetown. Nota bene Obama has executed a similar strategy by living in Washington DC and being the real boss of the Biden Administration.
The Bay of Pigs was Strike #1 for JFK. Strike #2 was either the Berlin Wall or the Cuban Missile Crisis or both. JFK resolved the Cuban Missile Crisis by creating a secret back channel to Krushchev, who had also realized he was the captive of his military and intelligence advisors, and between the two of them they stepped back from the brink of nuclear war, against the strong advice of their advisors on both sides.
Strike #3 was JFK's American University "Peace Speech" at Commencement in 1963 and he was doomed by the time he signed a National Security Directive in autumn 1963 to withdraw all American military personnel from Vietnam. This NSD was immediately rescinded by Johnson who then escalated the Vietnam War on the recommendation of his Joint Chiefs of Staff and CIA.
I personally found this narrative so compelling because the descriptions of JFK by Dulles and the various members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as other senior military and intelligence figures, exactly echo the assessment of JFK I heard growing up from my own military and intelligence family members. The murder of JFK was a coup d'etat by men who saw themselves as patriots who had to remove a dangerously reckless President and Commander in Chief. Once it happened, the US establishment passively accepted what had happened as a fait accompli and closed ranks to obfuscate and conceal the facts. After all, the business of America is business, and JFK had made it clear to lots of leaders of the American establishment that he was bad for business.
In the aftermath, more than a few key witnesses to the truth were killed to keep the Lee Harvey Oswald hoax from being disproven. In 1968 RFK was killed because he was well on his way to becoming President and exposing the conspirators and what they had done. Sirhan Sirhan has all the signs of being an MKULTRA-trained killer--and, by the way, did not fire the fatal shots, which came from behind RFK with the muzzle close to his head. The LA coroner Noguchi who performed the autopsy lost his job for telling the truth, and again the establishment closed ranks and obfuscated the truth.
I won't go into the many operational details of the murder, and the near-murder of JFK in Chicago only a few weeks before his death in Dallas. You can find all that out from those books and other sources.
BTW I noted with great interest that Bruce Miller, who is a very intelligent and educated reader and frequent commentator, also has an assessment of JFK (in another reader comment to this article) that is exactly the same as the negative opinion of JFK's military and intelligence foes--and my family.
Now I know the truth.
Forgive me. First, thank you for your reply.
No worries, mate!
Not having read any of those books I nevertheless hold that opinion. Kennedy was the reckless and petulant child of a criminal. Once the mafia was double crossed and with the homosexual gambler J Edgar effectively muzzled for his peccadillos the way was clear for an organized criminal cabal both within and outside of government to eliminate the pesky playboy.
I'll be ordering those books.
If you haven't already read it I'll suggest Bay of Pigs The Leader's Story by Haynes Johnson, W W Norton & Company, Inc. as an interesting light read on the topic
Thanks for the recommendation--I'll check it out!
Just ordered The Declassified and The Devil's
Eisenhower was the first to put military advisors into Vietnam listening to Allen Dulles. As an aside, my father was one of the military advisors sent to Vietnam at the time.
Wrote my response to Blue-eyed squint right above yours before I saw yours. I agree with it all.
A great summary
JFK wouldn't be allowed within a mile of today's Democrat party. He was flawed, but basically an anti-communist who believed in the free market and in America. He'd be as horrified as any conservative by radical gender politics, open borders, and debt counted in the tens of trillions.
Is it possible to find a JFK quote that the Left would not fundamentally disagree with?
His most famous quote--"Ask not what your country can do for you"--is the polar opposite of the current ideology and policies of the Democratic party. Today's Democrats think the government should give away endless amounts of "free stuff," while expecting nothing whatsoever from citizens (except their votes for Democrats).
I've heard it said that JFK was the last Democratic POTUS who genuinely loved America.
Back in the day, the famous Kennedy quote was "those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.". How times have changed.
Meh. I tend to dismiss anything that relies on "Q" or "QAnon" as a draw. Because I think that it is a tool to sow division. And boy does this piece do that. I also dislike articles, and comments, that position the writer as some sort of all-knowing, all-seeing centrist. Talk about a tell.
The Q-anon reference is real special.
The mainstream theory of Kennedy's murder, promoted by our media and political elites is that he was killed by the flaws of middle America. We are guilty because we are traditional, garden-variety Americans.
The political manipulators (cue the chorus "conspiracy theorist!") downplayed that the killer was a devoted Communist. After all, if there were to be found culpability in Moscow, the required response would be horrific.
The campaign to demoralize America has only accelerated since 1963.
Most of the “conspiracy” theories you dismiss here have quite a bit of evidence at least warranting investigation (covid origins, JFK assassination, etc). This reads like a dismissal of any criticism of security state organizations. I could have read this in the Post or NYT...”hey, don’t worry about the evidence that these powerful figures are acting in self interest. It’s just that you’re crazy”
Ugh! Bari come on with the editing- just like there was no correction to the biracial piece that totally got an Iowa law wrong- in fact it said the opposite of what the author said now you’re pushing conspiracy theories from “Trump” voters at MAGA rallies? Are you sure those weren’t journalists at CNN? As the left say “Do better!” With your reporting of those on the right!
*Iowa Law wrong
steT
niagA
I regard this article as a waste of time. I don’t care about fringe conspiracy groups and theories, nor do I need more speculation about what JFK would have done in Vietnam, or musings about his enduring political influence. Any given human event is the product of countless variables coalescing at once. It’s impossible to know the extent to which one person’s beliefs and actions derive from what somebody else is perceived to have done decades before. This article is full of surmises, both the writer’s and those he interviewed. I was left thinking that my guesses are as good as theirs.
Who is qanon? I have never ever met one and this author seems to feel that anyone who is not ok with this weaponized justice department is a qanon conspiracy theorist. That is not true. In the same way I would never tell Bari that Jewish students on campus are telling conspiracies when they document how they are being treated unfairly, I would not expect Bari to say that conservatives who feel abused are just repeating a conspiracy theory. It’s not right Bari
I loved your speech Bari - when you said never leave something go unchallenged - and am trying to live those words. So when I see you equating all conservative complaints with a fringe qanon group that no one has ever actually met I think you are better than that. If you cannot see or admit that the conspiracy about the government using the justice dept to go after regular American people then you are either willfully blind or you get your information from
CNN and the New York Times. I urge you to branch out