The Decline of the West, The Kennedy Mystique

The political-economic-social system that emerged in Western countries after World War II was based on a very simple premise: if you worked hard, if you tried hard enough, you could always live better than your parents. That truth held for a few decades. At the beginning of the eighties, it began a slow and gradual decline, finally consummated in the Great Recession of 2008. Western workers earn more or less the same today as they did 40 years ago. The probability that a young person outperforms their parents has been falling little by little in all deciles. In 1940, the children of the lowest percentile (those poorest families) had a 95% probability of obtaining a better economic position than their parents. By 1980 that percentage had dropped to 79%. The same happened with the middle percentile (the middle class): if in 1940 93% of their children could hope to live better than their parents, in 1980 they were only 45%. That is to say, at the height of Generation X, the outlook for most middle-class children (more numerous than the rich or extremely poor cohorts) was stagnant. They could no longer overcome the wealth and status of their parents. Similar figures show the high percentile: the children of wealthy families had a 41% improvement in the earnings of their parents in 1940; a huge percentage that contrasts with 8% in 1980. A steep decline at all levels. As we say, the factors are varied, but can be roughly summarized in two: wages have stagnated since the mid-1970s (instead, workers in 1964 earned $ 20.27 an hour, compared to $ 22.65 in 2018); and the economy has become polarized (less middle class and a larger gap, and more difficult to bridge, between the most economically privileged and the poorest). 

Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of The West, published 1918-1922, laid out the trajectory of the enfeeblement and decay that awaited us, developing a theme that went as far back as the Greek historian Polybius, but that, in the wake of a war that wiped out a generation, seemed less a “theme” than an historically imminent reality. The greatest poet of the modern age, William Butler Yeats, felt it in his bones, working out a visionary schematism in his prose volume A Vision and reflecting on the inevitable in his timeless poem “The Second Coming,” written one year after the end of the Great War. Robert Bork’s must-read Slouching Towards Gomorrah hammers out Yeats’s vision in lurid contemporary detail, pointing toward a “syndrome” of collectivist attitudes dominating the culture, the debilitation of the family structure, and a “left-liberal moral consensus” diluting the text of the U.S. Constitution. In his master volume On the Eve of the Millennium: The Future of Democracy in an Age of Unreason, published in 1995, Irish historian Conor O’Brien was not sanguine about the prospects for Western civilization in the coming years. Our dissolution is abetted by common lassitude, self-indulgence and studied ignorance, by those, O’Brien writes, “who are indifferent to politics, society, religion, virtually to anything.” We watch “history on the screen with apathy and an occasional passing flicker of horror or indignation, as if we do not believe that history can happen here.”

Arnold Toynbee in his twelve-volume A Study of History, among my prize collections, articulated a theory of recurrence -- owing in part to The New Science of the 18th Century Italian political philosopher Giambattista Vico -- in which he saw patterns or cycles of growth and decay common to all civilizations, of which he isolated more than twenty-six exemplars. Though maintaining a guarded optimism that correlation is not infallibly causation and that Western Civilization might survive an otherwise inevitable debacle, he posited that once psychological devastation had gone too far, recovery would be impossible. Perhaps it was from reading Toynbee that O’Brien speculated about the onset of apathy and indifference leading to civilizational collapse. He believed we were already there. Though I disagree emphatically with Jonah Goldberg on many issues, his Suicide of the West remains a valuable book, confirming O’Brien’s thesis. Goldberg writes that the “corruption of the Miracle of Western Civilization can only succeed when we willfully and ungratefully turn our backs on the principles that brought us out of the muck of human history in the first place. The trouble is that “for more than a generation now, the best principles of the West have been under assault. Intellectuals are recasting the virtues of our system as vices.” Goldberg borrows his title from James Burnham’s magisterial 1964 Suicide of the West, in which Burnham writes of a “morphological pattern,” an unmistakable trend or curve. “Over the past two generations Western civilization has been in a period of very rapid decline, recession or ebb within the world power structure.” What we call liberalism is “the ideology of Western suicide,” permitting Western Civilization “to be reconciled to its dissolution.” Although he holds out hope for a transition to a higher order above the parochial divisions of the past, which seems touchingly romantic, his analysis of the liberal virus has rarely been bettered. 

In Michael Walsh’s terms from his new book Last Stands, manly virtue fights to the foreordained end. The issue is this: We cannot deter, but we can defer. What we are really doing, whether we know it or not, is buying time. Western civilization and its constituent nations are too far gone to be retrofitted; our internal enemies have seen to that. As Bork writes, a “soft and hedonistic culture…faces a continuing assault from within.” The prospect is grim. Apathy, indifference, psychological devastation, and self-hatred are the norms of our present moment. America, the guarantor and bellwether of the West’s survival, has been hollowed out by its Olympian classes, the political, informational and fiscal elites -- this was Founding Father and second president John Adams’ deepest fear. In his important 2018 study John Adams and the Fear of American Oligarchy, Luke Mayville parses Adams’ conclusion that “republican governments had always been threatened by elite domination and that America would be no different.” In the course of time, cowards and parasites -- let us call it the Iscariot function -- will prevail over Great Men and Women. Nation-saviors like Churchill and Thatcher will be cast aside, heroes will be betrayed by friends and colleagues. The historical template is Themistocles, the philosophical, Socrates, and the literary, Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. They cannot forestall the vector of decline and will be derided and punished for having tried to do so. As John Adams wrote in an April 22, 1776 letter to James Warren, “But I fear, that in every assembly, Members will obtain an Influence, by noise not sense. By Meanness, not Greatness. By Ignorance not Learning. By contracted hearts, not large souls. I fear too, that it will be impossible to convince and persuade People to establish wise Regulations.” Nonetheless, for those of us who still care and recognize the precious muniment we have been given, let the coup de grâce happen later instead of sooner. The fight continues on a myriad fronts. Source: americanthinker.com

Neil Sheehan was born of Irish parents  in Holyoke Massachusetts and graduated from Harvard in 1958. After his military service he went to work for UPI in Tokyo. He spent two years as UPI’s chief correspondent covering the Vietnam War.  It was at this time––1962-64––that he became collegial and friendly with the Times’ David Halberstam. The commander in Vietnam at that time was General Paul Harkins. Since Sheehan and Halberstam were intimately involved with the actual military operations, they knew things were not going well. As author John Newman wrote in his milestone book JFK and Vietnam, this rosy outlook was an illusion perpetrated by both military intelligence and the CIA. It was carried out by Colonel James Winterbottom with the cognizance of Harkins. (Newman, 1992 edition). In a 2007 interview that Sheehan did, he said that he and Halberstam had a conflict with Harkins over this issue of whether or not Saigon and the army of South Vietnam (the ARVN) was actually making progress against the opposing forces in the south, namely the Viet Cong. He said that their impression was that Saigon was losing the war. Their soldiers were reluctant to fight, the entire military hierarchy was corrupt, and as a result, the Viet Cong forces in the south were getting stronger. It is something that David Halberstam did his best to forget about in his 1972 best-seller The Best and the Brightest, but Sheehan was more open about in his 2007 interview. The smiles in the picture belowe were genuine because Sheehan and Halberstam truly believed in winning the Vietnam War. At any and all costs. 

The simple truth was that Sheehan and Halberstam were classic Cold Warriors who wanted to kick commie butt all the way back to China. They saw what America was doing as some kind of noble cause. They felt that we and they––that is, all good Americans––were standing up for democracy, liberty and freedom. As far as political sophistication went, they might as well have been actors performing in John Wayne’s propaganda movie, The Green Berets. In fact, as Newman shows in his book, Winterbottom would simply create Viet Cong fatalities out of assumptions he made. Harkins understood this and went along with it. The idea was to control the intelligence out of Saigon in order to bamboozle Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.  But throughout that year of 1962, whenever McNamara would report back to President Kennedy after one of his SecDef Meetings––a conference in the Pacific of all American agency and division chiefs in Saigon––he would deliver to the president the same rosy message he had just heard. And that message was false in two senses: the number of Viet Cong casualties was exaggerated, and the number of ARVN casualties was being reduced. This intelligence deception was happening in the spring of 1962. It was Kennedy who, through Galbraith, went to McNamara. And it was not for the purpose of promoting the ideas of the Pentagon on the war. Now, if the alleged 500 interviews Halberstam did were not enough to garner this information, there was another source available to him:  the Pentagon Papers––which Halberstam says he read. Both Sheehan and Halberstam fell in love with Colonel Vann. They were completely unaware of what was happening in Washington, how Kennedy had decided to take Galbraith’s advice and begin to remove all American advisors. They wanted to win, and they both felt it was only through Vann that the war could be won. One of the reasons Kennedy decided to get out is simple:  he did not think Saigon could win the war without the use of American combat troops. Or as he told Arthur Schlesinger: "The war in Vietnam could be won only so long as it was their war. If it were converted into a white man’s war, we would lose as the French had lost a decade earlier.” Kennedy said the same thing to NSC aide Michael Forrestal: America had about a one-in-a-hundred chance of winning. The president said this on the eve of his going to Dallas in 1963. Kennedy turned aside at least nine attempts by his advisors to commit combat troops into Vietnam during 1961. It’s very clear from the interviews that Sheehan did later in his life that, like Halberstam, he had a problem with admitting Kennedy was right, and he, Halberstam and John Paul Vann were wrong about Vietnam.

Why not mention Bobby Kennedy’s antagonism against the war in Vietnam, which was clearly manifest during Lyndon Johnson’s presidency? In fact, as author John Bohrer has written, Robert Kennedy had warned President Johnson against escalation as early as 1964. (The Revolution of Robert Kennedy, p. 70). Kennedy had told Arthur Schlesinger that, by listening to Eisenhower, Johnson would escalate the war in spite of his advice. When Halberstam heard about this, he now began to criticize RFK. How dare Bobby imagine that he was smarter than Johnson and Ike on the war. What did Robert Kennedy think? You could win the war without dropping tons of bombs and using overwhelming force? Again, this exchange exposes who Halberstam and Sheehan really were in 1965. If I had been that wrong, I would have excised it also. As per extending the New Frontier beyond its borders, this is contrary to what Kennedy’s foreign policy had become after his meeting with Gullion. JFK was trying for a neutralist foreign policy, one that broke with Eisenhower’s, and tried to get back to Franklin Roosevelt’s. What Sheehan is doing here is pretty obvious. He is transferring his guilt about who he was, and what he did while under Vann’s spell, onto Kennedy. In fact, Kennedy was opposed to what both Halberstam was writing and what Vann was advocating for about Vietnam. As proven above, JFK did not want America to take control of the war––to the point that President Kennedy tried to get Halberstam rotated out of Vietnam. (David Kaiser, American Tragedy, p. 261) A Bright Shining Lie was an establishment project. The book was edited by the infamous Bob Loomis at Random House. Loomis was the man who approached Gerald Posner to write Case Closed, a horrendous cover-up of President Kennedy’s assassination. Source: kennedysandking.com 

Except for Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy (both of whom died while in office), all presidents beginning with Calvin Coolidge have written autobiographies. The richest president in history is believed to be Donald Trump, who is often considered the first billionaire president. Truman was among the poorest U.S. presidents, with a net worth considerably less than $1 million. Certainly one remarkable aspect of Johnson’s career is that he was born working class, held low-paying government jobs throughout his entire life, yet took the oath of office as the wealthiest president in modern American history, having accumulated a personal fortune of over $100 million in present-day dollars, with the financial payoffs from his corporate benefactors having been laundered through his wife’s company. This odd anomaly is so little remembered these days that a prominent political journalist expressed total disbelief when I mentioned it to him a decade ago. Only James Madison had surpassed Lyndon B Johnson with a networth of $113 million (adjusted for inflation). After Johnson, it follows Bill Clinton (with a peak net worth of $75 million), Franklin D. Roosevelt (peak net worth of $60 million), Barack Obama (peak net worth of $40 million), George W Bush ($39 million), John Quincy Adams ($23 million, adjusted for inflation), Richard Nixon (peak net worth $17 million), Ronald Reagan (peak net worth $14 million), John F. Kennedy (peak net worth $10 million), Dwight D. Eisenhower (peak net worth of $9 million), and Abraham Lincoln ($1 million, adjusted for inflation). Johnson naturally expected to play a major role in the new administration, and he even issued grandiose demands for a huge political portfolio, but instead he found himself immediately sidelined and treated with complete disdain, soon becoming a forlorn figure with no authority or influence. As time went by, the Kennedys made plans to get rid of him, and just a few days before the assassination, they were already discussing whom to place on the reelection ticket in his stead. 

Much of Johnson’s long record of corruption both in Texas and in DC was coming to light following the fall of Bobby Baker, his key political henchman, and with strong Kennedy encouragement, Life Magazine was preparing a huge expose of his sordid and often criminal history, laying the basis for his prosecution and perhaps a lengthy prison sentence. By mid-November 1963, Johnson seemed a desperate political figure at the absolute end of his rope, but a week later he was the president of the United States, and all those swirling scandals were suddenly forgotten. Indeed, the huge block of magazine space reserved for the Johnson expose was instead filled by the JFK assassination story. In one bizarre 1961 incident that strangely foreshadows the Warren Commission’s “lone gunman” finding, a federal government inspector investigating a major Texas corruption scheme involving a close LBJ ally was found dead, shot five times in the chest and abdomen by a rifle, but the death was officially ruled a “suicide” by the local authorities, and that conclusion was reported with a straight face in the pages of the Washington Post. Based on these considerations, it seems extremely difficult to believe that any JFK assassination conspiracy took place entirely without Johnson’s foreknowledge, or that he was not a central figure in the subsequent cover-up. According to Roger Stone, as his mentor Nixon was watching the scene at the Dallas police station where Jack Ruby shot Oswald, Nixon immediately turned as white as a ghost, explaining that he had personally known the gunman under his birth-name of Rubenstein. While working on a House Committee in 1947, Nixon had been advised by a close ally to hire Ruby as an investigator, being told that “he was one of Lyndon Johnson’s boys.” Roger Stone also claims that Nixon once emphasized that although he had long sought the presidency, unlike Johnson “I wasn’t willing to kill for it.” Stone further reports that Vietnam Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge and numerous other prominent political figures in DC were absolutely convinced of Johnson’s direct involvement in the JFK assassination. Source: unz.com

Unlike Winston Smith's fatal conversion to political correctness, American values and common sense will triumph in the end because the authoritarian alternatives to Western democracy are serial phases of social engineering, political repression, economic decline, and ultimate collapse. Liberalism, like mathematics, works every time it is tried. Its governing philosophy sustains a commitment to the nation's fundamental principles: to constitutionalism and the separation of powers, to equality and freedom under law, to the protection of individual rights, and to the preservation of self-government. Liberalism insists that civil rights are not to be considered as privileges of tribal identity politics. It affirms that every citizen shall enjoy the right of free expression without fear of intimidation or censorship. Liberalism means, in brief, that political ideology cannot interfere with truth -- and that alone is victory. ––JFK Jr (George magazine)

A Republican Tribute to John (July 22, 1999) by Ann Coulter: "John F. Kennedy Jr. was no run-of-the-mill Kennedy. I knew John F. Kennedy Jr. and I worked with John F. Kennedy Jr. John Kennedy Jr. actually did have the looks, charm, intelligence, humility, kindness, and class. The first time I met John was at a George magazine luncheon at Le Cirque to honor George magazine's "Twenty Most Intriguing Women in Politics." But the magazine founded and edited by the scion of the country's most famous Democratic family was truly a political magazine, not a Democratic magazine (as Vogue, Cosmopolitan, GQ, Esquire, Time, and Newsweek are). I told John MSNBC had fired me for it - but rushed to assure him, not to worry, they fired me a lot and had always hired me back. I still felt kind of bad about all the firings. The network had hired me because I was a conservative and then would fire me every time they discovered I was a conservative. I was seen as this right-wing performance artist. I have to confess I was tempted to think 'American society is stupid, I am going to screw with it.' But John was a kind man and he asked me what comments I had been fired for. Uber-Democrat, definition-of-cool John Kennedy Jr. thought it was tremendous that MSNBC kept firing me and a few months later George ran a bemused item on my repeated firings. About a year and a half after the luncheon, John hired me as a regular George columnist. Wow! This really was a new kind of Democrat. John wasn't a part of the older generation of Stalinist liberals who try to censor differing viewpoints and engage in the "politics of personal destruction" to harm those who disagree with them. As his magazine's motto says, this was "not just politics as usual." The importance of what John was doing to political discourse in this country cannot be overstated. If you've ever been on the receiving end of the "politics of personal destruction," it's not always fun being called a racist, sexist, homophobe, etc. Through his magazine, and his very being, John had begun to take the bitter acrimony out of political dialogue. While political neophytes out of Hollywood yammer about getting the younger generation involved in politics, John actually did it. John was able to begin altering the political dialogue in a way that no one else ever could. That is why it is so painful to hear the media talk of John in terms of the Kennedy mystique of liberal mythology or to hear him compared to a dysfunctional, airhead princess. Despite the liberal media's praise, John was a great man. Perhaps more important, he was a good man. In one of our last conversations, he made fun of one of the magazine's liberal columnists for being a predictable bore. Despite the massive publicity John had received for flunking the New York bar examination, he was very bright. During my book tour for High Crimes and Misdemeanors, I spoke at a George magazine breakfast about my book. John came to the meeting, and after my presentation he was the first to start asking questions. He had clearly read the book - unlike so many interviewers - and his questions raised some of the exact same points renowned intellectual William F. Buckley would be raising with me on Firing Line a few weeks later. He was making it safe to talk about politics again. For that, this Republican is deeply grateful and mourns his loss. ––"How to Talk to a Liberal" (2004) by Ann Coulter

JFK Jr.'s young life was further emotionally scarred by the 1968 assassination of his uncle Robert, who had become a surrogate father. John Perry Barlow, the Grateful Dead lyricist whose ranch Kennedy worked on as a teenager and who became a good friend, said in an interview in 2016 that JFK Jr. always wanted to be a "good man" rather than a great one, and he was "chosen as the sexiest man because People magazine should have named him the most virtuous man, but I guess it doesn't have the same ring." Kennedy Jr. attracted national attention when he introduced his uncle Ted at the 1988 Democratic National Convention, spurring many followers to speculate about his possible future in politics. On Kennedy's romantic life, JP Barlow describes him as "faithful" and "a serial monogamist." Among his alleged romantic conquests was Madonna, although his executive assistant, RoseMarie Terenzio, dismisses it as "maybe one night… sorry." He had a serious romantic relationship with actress Daryl Hannah, but he didn't settle down until his marriage to Carolyn Bessette. Their relationship suffered under the strain of the constant hounding by the media, which drove Bessette to a depression. Source: vanityfair.com

   

America's Prince: The John F. Kennedy Jr. Story (2003). Director: Eric Laneuville. Writer: Jon Maas based on Christopher Andersen book. Actors: Kristoffer Polaha as JFK Jr, Portia de Rossi as Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, and Jacqueline Bisset as Jackie Kennedy. The TV film was released in 2003 on Starz channel, but due to several legal disputes, it was officially banned.

Extracts from the first "American Prince" draft: 

Carolyn Bessette POV (after meeting John Kennedy Jr): I saw some flickers of anger flashing in his eyes. Not having buckled his seatbelt, he slid closer to zip the space between us. "Alright, seriously, what the hell is wrong with you? I have been nothing but gracious to you all the night and you are not even looking at me. What the fuck did I do wrong?" he practically shouted. His anger only fueled my own. "I just know your type. You're a self-righteous git who thinks the world belongs to him. People like you infuriates me!" I shouted back. John glared back at me. "You don't even know me, so why don't you just calm the fuck down and get down off your high horse for a second," he scoffed at me. "I don't need to know you, and I don't want to! You reek of privilege and false confidence, I can't stand politics!" I nearly shrieked back at him, drunkenly slapping at his chest to push him away from me. He grabbed my wrists to stop me. "Oh, that's how it is then? You hate me?" he asked, shoving my hands back against the window. He searched my eyes for acceptance, and suddenly he kissed me. "I'm exhausted," I said, yawning and stretching "and I need a shower". "Was that an invitation?" he asked with a goofy smile. I was exhausted by the time we got back to my bedroom. John delicately dried me off with a giant fluffy towel and dressed me in the black negligee I pulled from my cupboard. He carried me to bed and set me in gingerly, pulling a soft blanket over me. I don't know what compelled me--feeling alone or wanting more of his companionship--but I said something that surprised myself, and I think surprised John as well. "Will you stay with me?" I mumbled quietly. He sat on the bed next to me. "Is that what you want?" he asked pensively, kissing my forehead. "Yes," I sighed, holding his hand. "Then I'll stay," he whispered while he threw me a beautiful smile. He got up and went to the other side of the bed, climbing in next to me. He pulled me into him and reached across me to switch off the lamp, and I quickly fell asleep, satisfied but slightly dazed. We had talked more and now I was surprised by how much we had in common when it came to musical tastes. Eclectic, jazz, classic rock, alternative and indie pop throughout. 

"Do you have a favorite song?" he asked one day. "God, that's tough..." I said, picking my brain. "I love so many, but I think it has to be one with incredible lyrics, voice and music, and I have to go with something classic--one that will never go out of style and makes me inspired every time I hear it." "I totally agree with that," John nodded, "So, what is it?" "I think Feeling Good, by Nina Simone," I replied. "Damn, Carolyn, a woman after my own heart," John said, looking at me intensely for a long moment. "Your favorite lyrics?" he pressed. I didn't have to think about that, "And this old world, is a new world, and a bold world for me," I sang back at him. "You have some decent pipes," he complimented, and I blushed shaking my head. "Thought you'd go with 'freedom is mine, and I know how I feel'," he sang back, teasing me. "I need to learn to be bold before I can feel free," I sang back. He eyed me with that curious and boyish face I had learned to recognize. I started getting more comfortable under his gaze. "Well, what about you?" I asked, waiting for him to reciprocate. "I'd have to say Dream a Little Dream of Me," he answered quickly under his breath. I smiled: "Please tell me you mean the Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald version? It far outweighs Doris Day's original, in my opinion." "Exactly!" he said, speaking excitedly. "It's the duet with the two of them and of course..." "The horn?" I interrupted. He looked at me, absolutely dumb struck. "Yes. The horn makes it," he conceded slowly. "Favorite lyric?" I asked. "More of a verse, I'd say," he replied before singing to me. "Stars fading, but I linger on, dear, still craving your kiss. I'm longing to linger till dawn, dear, just saying this..." I purred into his mouth, kissing him with a passion. His hands found my face and pulled it closer to his. He admired my eyes, and delicately he caressed my cheeks with his thumbs, sliding down my lips. "Christ, Carolyn, you are absolutely delectable," he remarked before pressing his plump lips against mine. My heart fluttered and I kissed him back. "I needed you so much," he whispered against my lips. "Now I can see the real you," I asserted. And with my words he brightened again. "What changed your mind?" I smiled at him. "You did. You let me get to know you. And you taught me how much you cared, and how different you were than I thought. I was wrong to judge you," I said honestly. "You know all that Kennedy garbage sells..." He raised his eyebrows at me, "You keep things pretty close to the chest, Carolyn." I blushed. "What would you like to know, then?" "Now that's an excellent question," he pondered, leaning forward and raising one eyebrow. He leaned forward a bit more and whispered, "Everything." I laughed aloud and sipped on my wine. "Everything," he repeated, chuckling and leaning back, sipping his own wine. I laughed with him. "But, seriously, I don't know. I was almost functional until you came along. Honestly, you're making me crazy." I was taken aback--he was being so straightforward. "What do you mean?" I sipped more wine. "I mean what I said," he replied seriously, taking a swig. He made eye contact with me and we keep on staring at one another. I could tell he wanted me to say something, but I didn't know what would be right. "I can't get my mind off of you," he said with honesty. He stared at me and brought a hand up to my hair, running his fingers delicately along it. "Carolyn, I think you should know that I really care about you. I don't just think of you as a friend or a lover. In the last few weeks, I've realized that you mean a lot to me," he said, swallowing before continuing. "I don't think I can keep doing this if you haven't developed feelings for me, too; you know, beyond sex," he said carefully, his eyes searching mine. "I need you," I said in return, and he gulped for a moment. "Please, never stop saying that," he begged, kissing me again before reaching his hand down to the hem of my dress. "You don't understand the money doesn't matter to me. Let me help you, Carolyn, please quit your job!" he pleaded, bringing his hands to my face and lifting my lips to his passionately.