11.22.63, Hidden History, JFK Jr and Carolyn

We have come to 1962. Jake Epping (James Franco) is at Love Field when Lee Oswald (played by Daniel Webber) arrives in town from his overseas stay in the USSR. Oswald asks his mother Marguerite why there is no cadre of press awaiting him, hinting at Oswald being an unstable publicity hound, which is pretty much what Warren Commission lawyer Wesley Liebeler decided upon when he could not think of any other reason why Oswald might have shot Kennedy. In its attempts at caricaturing Oswald, the 11.22.63 series goes even beyond the Warren Report. Which is a bit stunning since there has been a quantum leap since 1964 in our knowledge and understanding of Oswald. This takes us to October of 1963. Oswald is applying for his position at the Texas School Book Depository. Which will put him on the Kennedy motorcade route on November 22nd.

Ruth Paine, with whom Marina Oswald was staying in October and November of 1963, arranged that job for Oswald. The script cuts out Ruth Paine’s role in all this. And Ruth Paine is portrayed—ever so briefly—as the kindly Quaker lady from the Warren Report. There was something else just as odd in the script. Even though it is October of 1963, George DeMohrenschildt is still on the scene in Dallas. This is really kind of inexplicable. I know Stephen King wrote a novel, but it is still based upon history. George DeMohrenschildt left Dallas in April of 1963 for Haiti. So the events depicted here with DeMohrenschildt simply could not have happened—they are an impossibility.

Jake and Sadie now end up in Dealey Plaza in the very wee hours of the morning of the 22nd. Then the script adds in a Twilight Zone motif. A man who King calls the "yellow card man” (he has such a card in his hat) now appears in Jake’s car, replacing Sadie. This figure has been seen several times throughout the film. He usually says, “You’re not supposed to be here.” The script now gets even wilder. We see Oswald—with his long package--walking right next to Wesley Frazier as they cross the street and enter the Texas School Book Depository. Oswald then goes right up to the sixth floor!  He is, of course, whistling "Soldier Boy." He then walks to the window, starts setting up the boxes for the so-called “sniper’s nest”. And then, incredibly, he just sits there, waiting for the motorcade to pass. This is as impossible as having George DeMohrenschildt in Dallas in October. I mean do the writers really expect the audience to be so stupid as to think Oswald would sit at a window with a rifle for three and a half hours waiting to kill Kennedy? With witnesses both inside and outside to see him? This is just plain silliness. We now see Jake and Sadie on a high-speed chase to get near Dealey Plaza. When they do get near, guess who they see? Jake sees Frank Dunning, and Sadie sees her ex-husband. Both of whom have been killed by Jake. What this means is anyone’s guess.

Jake now returns to Lisbon, Maine. He goes to Al’s diner, but it's gone. But just standing there, near the portal, now transports him to what King calls a “time tributary,” or in plainer parlance, an alternative universe. A world that looks completely desolate and abandoned. He meets up with Harry Dunning who is being attacked by a pack of thugs. Jake helps run them off. Harry takes him back to his home, which is inside what looks like a deserted factory. There he tells him that he knows that Jake saved his family from his father. Jake asks him about history. Harry tells him that Kennedy was re-elected and then George Wallace won in 1968, since RFK did not run. He then tells Jake that Kennedy set up confinement camps throughout the country. Why and how this happened is not explained.

Stephen King actually called Oswald a dangerous little fame-junkie who happened to be in the right place at the right time. Those comments really make you wonder about the “research” King did. Every objective researcher who has taken a look at the JFK case in an official capacity since the issuance of the Warren Report in 1964 has disagreed with its conclusions. The last one being Jeremy Gunn of the Assassination Records Review Board. Who looked at the declassified documents. In light of that, King’s comments are bizarre. If Oswald was a fame junkie, why did he never take credit for killing Kennedy? In fact, he did the opposite. He called himself a patsy. Well, if you leave out Oswald’s call to former military intelligence officer John Hurt the night before; if one does not tell the viewer that the rifle the Warren Report says killed Kennedy is not the same rifle that Oswald allegedly ordered; if one does not mention 544 Camp Street in New Orleans or Guy Banister, David  Ferrie and Clay Shaw; if one does not mention Oswald with Shaw and Ferrie in the Clinton-Jackson area in the summer of 1963; if one does not show all the problems with Oswald allegedly being in Mexico City, while he is supposed to be at Sylvia Odio’s door in Dallas with two Cubans—well yeah Stephen King, then you can tell us all about randomness and Occam’s Razor logic. Those events I mentioned are not theories, Mr. King. They are facts.

King more or less spilled the beans when he stated what books were most important to him in his research phase. He named Gerald Posner’s Case Closed, Legend by Edward Epstein and Mrs. Paine’s Garage by Thomas Mallon. King reduces Oswald in his story again to the drunken wife-beater, although even Ruth Paine, who sent so much obviously false evidence to the FBI, testified that Oswald neither drank nor beat Marina. Add the gun range thing which was totally gratuitous. Even the FBI admitted they couldn't find any evidence that LHO ever went to a shooting range for practice. A TV mini-series like '11.22.63' doesn't bring us closer to the truth, it acts more like its own depiction of 'the past fighting back'. Maybe Mr. King will use that as his crutch? I wonder how much King changed his draft from his first attempt at it all those many years ago? In other words, just how much work did he do on it once he went back to it and how much did Gary Mack help him?

From what I understand, the actual book deals less with the JFK case than the mini series does. The little bit about the surviving JFK putting people in camps was just an extension of King's antipathy for the Kennedys. Like so many leftists, King has admitted to never liking them. Isn't that strange? A native New Englander, loyal "liberal," and he just never liked the most prominent political family to emerge from his neck of the country. Although I will add that Bridget Carpenter, the main screen writer of the 11.22.63 series said that by the end of the production she felt that Oswald was really a CIA operative. Geez, you mean there was one semi-conscious person working on this pile of rubbish?  Her path is pretty common when you see Oswald had to be connected to the American Intelligence. The next step is dumping all that phony evidence about the rifle, the phony print that LaTona could not find, and most of all, the complete fantasy of CE 399 (single bullet theory). Then what you are left with is a rogue CIA operation using Oswald without his knowledge. Source: www.kennedysandking.com

Bridget Carpenter—the writer/producer who developed the new miniseries version of Stephen King’s acclaimed bestseller—used to accept the Lone Gunman Theory as fact, too. “But after two years of working on Stephen’s story, I don’t believe it anymore,” she says. “There were too many strange things surrounding Oswald for me to believe he did it completely alone.” Carpenter, the executive producer and showrunner for 11.22.63, suspects now that Oswald had to have been connected to the CIA, that maybe he went rogue in Dallas on the morning of Nov. 22, 1963, that a massive cover-up was organized to hide the embarrassing truth. Source: www.star-telegram.com

The mantra that "conspiracy theorists" simply can't accept that a great man could be taken down by a lone nut is almost as prevalent as the "someone would have talked" line; the "that many people couldn't keep a secret" came directly from the infamous 1967 CIA memo "Countering the Critics of the Warren Report." Stephen King's central thesis is that Oswald wanted to "be somebody," in King's updated parlance-a "fame junkie." King avoids the whole Ruby angle, which really would make it look like a conspiracy to frame and then shut up Oswald. In other words, Oswald never claimed credit for killing of Kennedy, and then was murdered two days later by Jack Ruby. Some fame junkie. I tried to ask Dan Moldea this same question years ago; if Sirhan "wanted to be famous," why did he always deny the crime? Moldea never responded, and I suspect King wouldn't respond either. I don't believe for a second that King thinks Oswald acted alone. Neither does Tom Hanks. Despite the fact he is a native New Englander, King admits to never "being a fan" of Kennedy. We see this same curious dislike of the Kennedys on the part of many high profile "liberals." Although Stephen King seems to dismiss the "conspiracy theorists," he seems to believe every one of Judith Campbell Exner's inconsistent allegations against JFK. In addition to having Jack Ruby on screen for maybe a minute or so in 11.22.63, the Oswald story is picked up only upon his return from Russia. Therefore, all the bizarre things that are so suspicious about his time in the military and his defection can be bypassed. Things like the Rosaleen Quinn testimony about Oswald being fluent in Russian while in the Marines, his association with the U2 radar operations, the false defector program, Oswald's staying in two five star hotels in Helsnki, etc. With all that eliminated, and the complete cutting out of New Orleans and Mexico City, then you can excise any and all intel connections to Oswald. Even John F Kennedy Jr told several friends he didn't believe Oswald was the guilty party either. —Hidden History: An Exposé of Modern Crimes, Conspiracies, and Cover-Ups in American Politics (2016) by Donald Jeffries

NY Fix News interviews a few friends who knew John Kennedy Jr and Carolyn (by Sheila Tasco, 2004). -NYFIX: There have been several reports that have been written about the state of John Jr. and Carolyn's marriage towards the ends of their lives, why do you think there are different viewpoints on that aspect?

-Billy Way: I was around them a lot, before and after they got married, and I can tell you it depended on who was around them on what days of the week. Every couple has problems, they were no exception, and sometimes they had bad fights. When they would have a big fight, they would usually do it in the privacy of their home. They usually also made up afterwards. Once I heard an argument about another woman calling John and leaving a message on his phone, and Carolyn was mad. She started accusing him of cheating on her, and yelled at him slurs, and John started yelling right back. They yelled for about twenty minutes before a picture, frame and all, went sailing across the room. I couldn't believe she had broken the picture. When they were done arguing, John was upset sitting on the sofa, and Carolyn came back and dropped to her knees in front of him saying she was sorry for yelling at him like that. They started kissing and making up. 

NYFIX: How did their relationship change after they got married? Did you see anything change in their relationship?

BW: John told us they barely left the hotel room during their honeymoon. But after the honeymoon, they started to have some fights. The last big fight I saw was in May of 1999. It was about some business trip that Carolyn hadn't been aware of, she just didn't want John going off on trips without her. She was literally screaming about him having an affair with some other woman, and how she was glad that she had been seeing Michael Bergin. John said she better shut up, she was just putting a show to make him jealous and he persuaded her to attend pyschological therapy. Meanwhile, John had reconnected with Amber Norman, whom he saw as just a friend. John had dated her briefly in 1993, but she disappeared when Carolyn entered the scene. 

NYFIX: So they were having extramarital affairs or not?

BW: It wasn't like that. The word affair has a very negative meaning. Their relationships weren't like that at all. They loved each other, but they had other people that they saw for different, emotional needs. But John was really a one woman man. He only loved Carolyn, although he met another girlfriends like Amber, Sasha, or Julie Baker during difficult periods during their relationship. John had learned from his mother about keeping things private, and he was doing just that.

NYFIX: What would John have been doing at this point?

BW: John was preparing himself for a new life in politics. He wanted to run for public office as an extension of his community services, and he was getting ready for it. He wanted that people would have been able to see what he could accomplish in politics.

NYFIX: There has been much debate about the truth between John and Carolyn's lives together. Would you ever consider writing a book?

BW: I am not planning any book. I plan to stand up to every author that has made a mess of things, Edward Klein included. His version of the story made Carolyn out to be a harridan, and that's not correct at all. He didn't include the full story. Things weren't as dramatic as he tried to pass off. That was some hack job on their relationship. Carolyn was a very loving person, and I think that should have come out. She was also a very headstrong woman, but in a good way. 

NYFIX: What do you miss most about your friend John Jr?

BW: I miss his friendship a lot, it's like when he died, the streets of New York ceased to have life anymore. Everything stopped suddenly. It's been tough to go on and have a life knowing that his apartment wasn't filled with his presence, he wasn't there anymore, as if the rooms were all dark now. I miss him more than I could ever be able to express.

John Perry Barlow: I first heard of Carolyn when John told me about her one night at Tramps in early 1994. He was still very attached to Daryl Hannah. But there was a woman he'd met who was having a heavy effect on him. He didn't want to pursue it, he declared, because he was still loyal to Daryl. Loyalty was one of his many virtues. But it was hard for him, because he couldn't get his mind off this girl. "Who is she?" I asked. He said, "Ah, she's some employee at Calvin Klein's. She's an ordinary person." Which of course she manifestly was not. She was anything but an ordinary person, but as far as the rest of the world, she was. He wanted to maintain a platonic relationship with Carolyn until he and Daryl had broken up. John was not, as some believed, a dog with the ladies. In fact, there were not so many women in his life that he took seriously. And there were even fewer that he took casually. In this regard John was anything but a Kennedy.

Years after he and Daryl broke up, he was always asking me about how she was doing, hoping that I was being the friend to her that he could no longer be. For some reason only she could possibly fathom, Daryl started talking to the press about Jackson Browne at Jackie's funeral, about how he'd picked her out of the crowd at a Chicago concert and asked her to dance onstage. I was hoping Browne or anybody else could do the same thing at this moment and shut her up. On Memorial Day, John chose to stay at the Presidential house on the Cape instead of the Vineyard, where Jackie had built a house in the early eighties. The Vineyard was much more isolated, but also his mother’s home and he needed a different environment. When I stopped by, John was making a bowl of pasta, his eyes as big as quarters, like a deer caught in the headlights. He was still shaken by the loss of his mother. Daryl was there and you could feel the tension. I think John knew at this point that their relationship was too broken to fix.

I didn't meet Carolyn until the fall of 1994. At once, I found her to be as charismatic as John was. "Charisma," you may know, was once a theological term meaning "grace." She had that quality. She was utterly compelling and attractive. I was also impressed with the fact that she was more than a little eccentric. She was not conventional in any sense. Carolyn seemed a lot like John's mother in her quirkiness and also in her capacity to engage one's total attention. She could be really sexy. Although she definitely was not a vamp. I think she was actually some kind of angel. But like many angels, her empathy was her main enemy. She was too raw to the pain of others. She felt it as deeply herself. And after the wedding, she became the "Howard Hughes of Brides," as she found it so hard going out in public. I think Carolyn not ever giving an interview is what pushed that "ice queen" image. She kept to herself and rejected everyone when they tried to butter her up for an interview.

NYFIX: Speaking of coming clean, while John's buddies like Robert Littell and Richard Blow have found solace in writing about their famous friend, why is it that his former girlfriends have barely talked?

JPB: I think it's a return of loyalty and respect that he showed for them to keep their relationships private. John's relationships with women were always very mature, which I think had something to do with his mother's upbringing. And Carolyn wasn't threatened by longtime friends like Sasha Chermayeff, Jennifer Christian, or Christina Haag whom John once thought was wife material. Indeed, he had called Sasha her 'platonic wife' for a while. John was always a monogamous guy. And I don't think that Carolyn was so jealous because she really had nothing to be jealous about. He was very happy with her, at home. It's kind of goofy to say, but he was like a Norman Rockwell character.

NYFIX: But was she really happy? Not according to her old flame, Michael Bergin, who wrote "The Other Man."

Robert Littell: Carolyn seemed happy when I saw them together in private. I think Bergin should lose some sleep over that book. He wrote it because he was angry at Carolyn for shutting him out of her life. John had to hang up the phone on Bergin, because this guy had become a stalker. Kate Moss said Bergin was a loser, and she was harassed by him too. Carolyn didn't ever love Bergin, but he was so obsessed with her it was scary. Carolyn was a beautiful, empathetic person who was too sensitive for the press maelstrom. But by 1999, she seemed to be getting used to it. John had always been looking for stability. He said when Christina Haag called him in 1984, 'My wife is available now', because she'd broken up with her boyfriend. And so he thought he was going to marry Christina, who was Jackie's favorite. I don't think John ever thought he was going to marry Daryl Hannah, because she could be shallow and immature, but he was always looking for a wife.

John was truly a monogamous guy. And he was a loyal guy. And it wasn't just loyalty amongst guys. It wasn't like he was just a great pal with men and not with women. He'd been brought up by an extraordinary woman, and he respected women probably more than he did guys. He was always looking for his wife, that person whose feelings would be as important for him as his own feelings. And when he was younger he of course had some fun here and there, but nothing remotely similar to his father's track. John was a man who had to handle tremendous grief throughout his life while still maintaining that Kennedy image and legacy. His mother put overwhelming pressure on him to be in politics. John told me he knew deep in his heart Carolyn wouldn't ever betray him, despite her moods and head games.

Carolyn collaborated occasionally with the Robin Hood Foundation. I know John drawed a will where Carolyn would have gotten his money, the loft and all his belongings. With exception of small bequeaths (half million dollars each) to Sasha Chermayeff and RoseMarie Terenzio, and donations to several charities, he left everything to any children they would've had and named Carolyn as his children's guardian. John didn't give Carolyn an allowance, because he didn't want she felt like a kept woman. She had full access to his bank accounts, and she had her own bank account along with credit cards. John was visiting Keith Stein in Toronto in June 1999. During that trip, Keith recalled that John had indicated that he was very upbeat about his marriage and looking forward to fatherhood. Keith Stein said to me, "He talked about having kids as if it were imminent in their future." For all we know Carolyn could've been pregnant when she took that fatal flight. —The Men We Became: My Friendship with John F. Kennedy, Jr. (2004) by Robert T. Littell

Richard Blow, former executive editor of Kennedy's political magazine "George" recounts some stories from his memoir about John Kennedy Jr. in "American Son" (2002). Blow paints a picture of a charming, charismatic man with an occasionally explosive temper who viewed his own celebrity and frequent appearances in the gossip columns with "a sort of bemused fascination as if they were covering a stranger who happened to share his name." Blow thinks Kennedy decided not to run for the New York Senate seat being vacated by Daniel Patrick Moynihan out of deference to his wife. In the spring of 1999, Kennedy considered running for the Senate but then worried Carolyn wouldn't be able to handle more media scrutiny. Blow said the couple occasionally had painful fights followed by periods of intense closeness. "John was ecstatic in her company. He would gaze upon her as if he couldn't completely believe he had found a woman so special." His magazine was at the time owned by publisher Hachette Filipacchi, which was losing money steadily. George magazine was shut down shortly after his death. Blow also makes several references to the frightening possibility of John's Piper Saratoga having been sabotaged prior to the takeoff, since prominent figures in the Kennedy clan had always had powerful enemies. Source: www.amazon.com

Hijacking of Western Positive Liberty

The WASP version of America in the late 19th century-early 20th centure was divided between a Germanic version with a stronger collectivist outlook based on the principle of “positive liberty” — which contrasted to the Anglo version which was based on the principle of “natural liberty”. The Germanic version was heavily influenced by the Romantic concept of authenticity. German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte was indeed more open minded than the current cultural Marxists controlling Germany. What he advocated was a nation based on “positive rights”. He believed that the state should play a strong role in the cultivation of the “higher freedom” of Germans, a concept that is akin to Johann Gottfried Herder’s idea that the nation should educate its citizens to develop their positive liberty. Positive liberty encourages individuals to act in such a way that they are not controlled by their lower appetites, but are instead rational masters of their actions. It should be added that Fichte believed that the state should guarantee the right to work of its members; and that Kant’s vision of a peaceful federation of constitutional republics would only become feasible if the nation-states of Europe were largely self-sufficient national economies disentangled from the competitive and warlike relations common to open capitalistic states. (Herder, Fichte, Hegel, and other German thinkers would find a thorough reflection in the German political economy of nationalism exemplified in Friedrich List’s writings and in policies associated with the rise of Germany to economic supremacy in Europe from the 1850s on).

Multiculturalism = Hijacking of Western Positive Liberty: This ethnic nationalism found expression in many Western nations, including in the Anglo-Saxon world, as embodied in the strict immigration rules of the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand against non-European until the 1960s/70s, notwithstanding the emphasis of these states on the “negative” rather than the “positive” liberty of citizens to choose their own way of life and happiness. But after WWII this ethnic nationalism was decisively discredited in its identification with Nazism. A thoroughly civic conception of Western nations, which had been developing over the interwar years, took over. The main exponents of civic nationalism were Jewish immigrant refugees from central Europe: Hans Kohn, Karl Deutsch, Ernest Gellner, and Eric Hobsbawm. They argued that the modern nation states of Europe were not rooted in primordial ethnic ties but were instead “artificial historical constructs”, “invented traditions”, designed by political elites to create states with a cohesive population, a national infrastructure, one official language and uniform laws. The ethnic nationalism of Europeans, in the words Hobsbawm, was based on “demotic xenophobia and chauvinism” rather than any factual ancestral ties.

While Hobsbawm was a communist who called for international revolution and the abolition of nations, Kohn, Deutsch, and Gellner called for Western nation-states based on negative liberties or individual rights alone, without any reference to ethnicity. The implicit political message of the otherwise academic writings of these Jewish intellectuals was that a Western nation-state could only be true to liberalism insomuch as the identity of its citizens was conceived without any collective reference to their ethnic identity. In fact, this civic conception would eventually come to advocate a lot more than the negative liberty of citizens, with the rise of what is known as “liberal communitarianism”. A major exponent of this new communitarian liberalism was Charles Taylor, a student of Isaiah Berlin, but later a critic of Berlin’s argument that the West should be based on the principle of “negative liberty”. Berlin argued that negative liberty, the right of individuals to decide for themselves, was incompatible with the idea of positive liberty. Taylor countered that humans are generally not in charge of their decisions but are influenced and controlled by a whole host of external influences and powers — unless they are socialized and educated to take charge of their lives, to think critically, and cultivate their “authentic selves”. Taylor, in other words, took over Herder’s concept of authenticity to argue that Westerners were “narcissistic” and “disenchanted” due to the fact that they didn't have a higher purpose. Humans need moral standards, and these standards can’t be formulated by isolated individuals but come from their cultural horizons, and within a state-community. 

From here Taylor went on to argue that multiculturalism was the best way to enhance and nurture the social horizons of individuals, because Western nations are diverse and no one culture should be imposed on a multicultural community. The state must play a role in promoting multiculturalism, celebrating the “authentic” cultures of “oppressed minorities”. Taylor was articulating intellectually a general trend in the Western world led by progressives to create moral communities dedicated to multiculturalism within which no dissent would be allowed, no true negative liberty on the question of the merits of diversity. Multiculturalism was inherently good, it provided whites with a more “enriched” cultural horizon beyond their world of negative liberties. The task of the communitarian liberal state was ensure the acceptance of this good. Today, diversity is not an individual choice but a mandated policy across the West, a totalitarian world view permeating every market, school, government institution, policy, and business. The conception of the authentic self and of “positive liberty” originated by German nationalists would thus be hijacked by an establishment dead set to diversify the West against the “inauthentic” world of whites. Source: www.theoccidentalobserver.net

11% of American adults reported seriously considering suicide in June, about double the percentage who did so last summer, a new CDC report finds. Rates of suicide ideation were highest among 18- to 24-year-olds (25%). The report also found that the prevalence of symptoms of depression and anxiety quadrupled and tripled, respectively, compared to last year. In total, 40% of Americans reported some mental health issue or substance abuse related to the pandemic. Young adults are also buckling under multiple stressors, with 25.5% of 18-to-24-year-olds reporting seriously contemplating suicide last month. Other reports have suggested that adolescents and young adults are the age group suffering most during the pandemic due to social isolation, a lack of independence, and the unknown about a future that once seemed bright. “A number of kids are expressing that these are supposed to be the best years – high school and college – the most free years,” Anne Marie Albano, a professor of medical psychology in psychiatry at Columbia University Irving Medical Centre in New York, told the Wall Street Journal. “The possibility that COVID is going to completely change this period of their life, and they won’t ever get it back, is overwhelming for a lot of them,” she says. Essential workers are also at high risk for suicide ideation, with 21.7% reporting experiencing it in June, the CDC report found. “They were having to carry, and have been carrying, America these last few months,” Johnson said. Source: www.businessinsider.com

Income trajectories, Jim Garrison: On the Trail of the Assassins, JFK: Battling Wall Street

Income trajectories from 1967 to 2016: We examine changes in income and class position over two fifteen-year periods (1967 to 1981 and from 2002 to 2016). According to the Panel Study on Income Dynamics (PSID) the findings are: -The median income growth experienced by prime-age Americans over a fifteen-year period has been cut by almost two thirds, from 27% to 8%. -The proportion experiencing a large income loss has more than tripled, from 4% to 12%. -The upper middle class has expanded significantly, while the “middle” middle class (MMC) has shrunk from 50% to 36%. -Income growth at the top of the distribution has been almost twice as fast as in the middle (48% at the 95th percentile, compared to 26% at the median). -Upward mobility out of poverty has declined, from 43% to 35%. -Downward mobility from the MMC has doubled, from 5% to 11%. -More education has become more closely associated with a higher income; 59% of those with a BA+ are in the upper middle class or higher, up from 37%. The analyses presented here confirm the broadly accepted picture of rising income inequality and slowing income growth for middle-class. Slower income growth for of the rest of the population, combined with a heightened risk of losing economic ground over time, may help explain the current discontent of many in the American middle class. Source: www.brookings.edu

On the Trail of the Assassins sold about forty thousand copies when it was originally released in hard cover. Jim Garrison's book was the primary source material for Oliver Stone’s hit film JFK—is Garrison’s own account of his investigations into the background of Lee Harvey Oswald and the assassination of President Kennedy, and his prosecution of Clay Shaw in the trial that followed. In what was probably an unprecedented campaign in the history of American cinema, the MSM attacked the film JFK seven months in advance of its release. In fact, Ben Bradlee and the The Washington Post sent George Lardner to Dallas to write a story as the film was being shot in Dealey Plaza. Lardner’s article was the first volley in a seven-month MSM campaign that was intended to make sure that the reception of JFK was jaundiced in advance. Many of the same people who attacked Garrison back in the sixties were brought back to do so again, like Hugh Aynesworth and Edward Epstein. The fact that neither of these men was at all credible or objective on the subjects of the Kennedy assassination or Jim Garrison was irrelevant. The goal was to savage the film before it had a fair hearing.

In spite of this assault, JFK did well at the box office, both at home and abroad. It was nominated for eight Oscars, including Best Picture. But to show the reader just how nutty the anti-JFK crusade was, consider the following. On the eve of the Oscars, an anonymous author bought an ad in the trade journal Variety. The ad asked that no voters cast their ballot for the film as Best Picture. Researcher Rich Goad did some detective work and found out that the ad was paid for by the late Warren Commission counsel David Belin. Garrison had always insisted that, for various reasons, he was never able to reveal most of the evidence he had secured from 1967-69. Authors like William Davy, Joan Mellen and myself went through what the ARRB attained and we saw The Garrison files in the Archives hold an abundance of utterly fascinating material on a wide array of subjects dealing with many aspects of the JFK case. Does the MSM reveal any of this to the public? No. In the twentieth century, and up until today, the American media has been controlled by an oligarchical class. Some authors call this class the Eastern Establishment. Some call it the Power Elite. 

As sociologist Donald Gibson explained in his fine book Battling Wall Street, President Kennedy was not a part of that group. He never joined the Council on Foreign Relations; he did not join any secret societies at Harvard; he didn’t like working intelligence during World War II. He got transferred out to the South Pacific and served with a bunch of Joe Six Pack guys on what were close to suicide missions. As this author demonstrated in the second edition of Destiny Betrayed, both in the Senate and in the White House, Kennedy was opposed to much of what this Power Elite was doing abroad, especially in the Third World. After his death, the progress that he did make in the White House was largely reversed. Jim Garrison was probably the first critic of the Warren Commission who understood this matter. And it is probably one of the reasons the MSM decided to smear him beyond recognition. With the release of Garrison’s files by the ARRB, there is no doubt today that Clay Shaw used the pseudonym of Clay Bertrand. The declassified files contain over ten witnesses who stated this was the case. It is further revealed that the FBI knew this as well. 

It is also now shown that Clay Shaw lied about his association with the CIA. That association has turned out to be a long service and a lucrative one. Not only did Shaw lie about it at his own trial, the CIA continually lied about it, and Robert Blakey fell for it. In the HSCA volumes, Shaw is referred to as part of a large businessman’s contact program in the Agency. Not true. Shaw was a well-compensated contract agent from at least the fifties. The CIA tried desperately to cover up these facts, even going as far as altering Shaw’s files. (William Davy, Let Justice Be Done, p. 200) The ARRB later discovered the CIA had gone even further and destroyed Shaw’s 201 file. As the late Yale educated attorney Allard Lowenstein once said regarding the Robert Kennedy assassination: in his experience as a lawyer, people who have nothing to hide don’t hide things. As authors like William Davy and Joan Mellen have shown, the media utterly destroyed Jim Garrison. Before Garrison took on the Kennedy assassination, he had a promising career ahead of him as a Louisiana politician. Many thought he could have been governor or senator from the state. That career was utterly wrecked by the two-year roasting he took in the press from almost every outlet imaginable: CBS, NBC, NY Times, Life Magazine, Saturday Evening Post, to name just a few. Garrison was eventually defeated in his District Attorney re-election bid due to two sets of phony pinball kickback charges, which he defeated at trial. But the publicity weakened his position and strengthened his opponent Harry Connick, who defeated him in a close election in 1973. To most legal observers, Connick turned out to be a very poor DA compared to Jim Garrison. 

After Jim Garrison was retired from the DA’s office, it took him years to recover from the ordeal he went through. At that time, people who visited him in New Orleans said he had a small office that he rented from a larger firm. This is the man who likely would have been residing in the governor’s mansion if not for the JFK case. As the declassified files reveal, before Garrison’s probe was exposed, he was making a lot of progress. Afterwards, it was open season on him. And he was targeted by the big guns of the media. NBC sent in Sheridan, Newsweek sent in Hugh Aynesworth, and the Saturday Evening Post sent down James Phelan. Many writers have shown how these men obstructed Garrison once his inquiry was out in the open.  Although the coroner ruled David Ferrie had died because of a ruptured berry aneurism, he left two typed, unsigned suicide notes. A later coroner, Frank Minyard, pointed out that in photos, one could see bruising on the inside of Ferrie’s mouth and inside the lower lip. Minyard theorized that Ferrie could have been poisoned with some kind of solution that could have caused the aneurism. As Bill Davy and others have demonstrated, Garrison had called Shaw in for questioning as early as December of 1966. Davy analyzed why Shaw’s answers during questioning provoked Garrison’s further interest in the man. As his inquiry began to pick up steam, Garrison discovered that Shaw knew Ferrie, Banister, and Oswald. And he was seen in the Clinton/Jackson area with Ferrie and Oswald. The idea that somehow Shaw was an admirer of President Kennedy, is contradicted by no less than Ferrie himself. Ferrie said that Shaw hated JFK. The CIA eventually declassified documents which show Shaw was well compensated for his services dating back to the fifties. As per the expenses for his defense, Shaw’s defense team was getting tons of help from Washington. Source: kennedysandking.com

Jim DiEugenio: Lyndon B Johnson reversed almost all of Kennedy's major foreign policy programs: Congo, Indonesia, Dominican Republic, and Vietnam. He also completely mishandled Kennedy's civil rights program and his planned war on poverty, which ended up being stillborn. Harry Truman did to FDR what LBJ did to Kennedy. Once FDR died disastrous things happened: the atomic bombings of Japan--killing over 200,000 civilians in three days--and the igniting of the Cold War. And we are living with those two horrendous events today. This is why Republicans like George Will like Harry Truman. He is the indirect father to the neocon movement, which controls foreign policy today. The alternative was FDR and Henry Wallace. Eisenhower, as the authors of that fine book Subversion as Foreign Policy note, was the father of American assassination plots and regime change in the Third World. It was Ike who directly ordered the assassination of Patrice Lumumba. It was Ike who ordered the plans to overthrow Castro. He gave free rein to the Dulles brothers and their ideas about American dominance in the Third World: Guatemala and Iran. 

The idea that Woodrow Wilson was a progressive president is also belied by his creation of the privately held Federal Reserve Board, the stock in that monstrosity was owned by the Rockefellers, Morgans, and Warburgs. This is progressive? Obama promised us Hope and Change. Yet his plan on salvaging the economy differed little from what Paulson originally announced in 2008 (TARP) and started doing in January of 2009. Geithner essentially revised it a bit and expanded it. People like Krugman criticized the program on the grounds that they were really non-recourse loans from which asset managers would benefit greatly--in other words, not only would no one be indicted, they would be rewarded for the disaster they created. In foreign policy, did Obama stop any of the NSA surveillance programs? Did he get us out of Afghanistan? It's pretty bad when Trump does the things that Obama should have done. Defending Obama by saying that he did not have a veto proof senate reminds me of the shameless defense of Clinton that says well, derivatives and the destruction of Glass Steagall had the votes anyway! Well, Clinton could have vetoed both. He did not.

In 1936, after the first New Deal, FDR made his famous speech upon being nominated. He said words to the effect that in his first term he had tamed the wild beasts of corporate greed. In his second term he planned on bringing them to their knees. With the Obama/Biden actions of 2009, Wall Street brought Washington, the White House and the American taxpayers to their knees. The annual deficits rose under Obama as compared to George Bush, and they were pretty bad under Bush. They did not begin to stabilize until about 2013. But even then, they were worse than they were under Bush. The price of all this is America became a bankrupt country. To do anything now one needs to use the Fed. And we will be paying for it for a long time.

When JFK began his partial test ban treaty everything was stacked against him. He worked on it day and night: it passed overwhelmingly. When he began his civil rights bill in 1963 he was not even close to getting it passed--back then you needed 67 votes to dodge a filibuster. So, in June of 1963, he began the biggest lobbying program in modern history. That program paid off when, after his death, RFK, Hubert Humphrey and Tom Kuchel broke the filibuster in the summer of 1964. Senator Richard Russell later admitted that it was JFK's courting of, and bringing into Washington, the midwest Protestant ministers that eventually broke the filibuster. To me, that's leadership. Source: educationforum.ipbhost.com

John F. Kennedy Jr: Political Superstar

In 1991, Oliver Stone's popularized a version of President Kennedy's assassination, JFK featured U.S. government agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the military as conspirators. The HSCA had reinvestigated the murder and issued a new report, but their records were sealed until the year 2029. Stone suggested at the end of JFK that Americans could not trust official public conclusions had they been made in secret. Congress passed legislation—the JFK Act—that released the secret records that prior investigations gathered and created. "Oliver Stone called for the remaining CIA and FBI documents pertaining to the assassination of Kennedy to be released. Clifford Krauss reported in the New York Times that members of the Kennedy family supported his movie. The historian Stephen Ambrose argued that "the crime of the century is too important to be allowed to remain unsolved and too complex to be left in the hands of Hollywood movie makers." The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, or the JFK Records Act, was passed by the United States Congress, and became effective on 26th October, 1992. —"Assassination of John F. Kennedy Encyclopedia" (2012) by John Simkin

“John F. Kennedy Jr. considered himself a crusader in the tradition of his father JFK and uncle Robert Kennedy, for equal justice for minorities and the poor,” journalist Leon Wagner claims. “John was outraged by the idea that the people who had the least ability to defend themselves would be most vulnerable thanks to Joe Biden’s 1994 crime bill, and he called Biden 'a traitor'.” Early on in the coverage of John Kennedy Jr’s “missing” airplane, it was reported that he radioed the control tower at 9:39 p.m., reporting his position as “13 miles from the airport, not more than 10 miles from shore,” indicating that he was planning his landing. Note that the crash wreckage was found 7 miles off the coast, 19 miles from the airport. Remember that the last location they said was reported on radar was only 16 miles from the airport. Thus, according to the official version, while plunging at 6,000 feet per minute (according to the last two radar blips), from an altitude of 1,100 feet, with only 11 seconds to impact at that rate, the airplane, which was traveling northeast, managed to fly 3 miles to the west in only 11 seconds! Shades of the “magic bullet” theory again? Victor Pribanic, a fisherman at Squibnocket Point (identified by the number “1”) reported to the Martha’s Vineyard Times that he had heard a “loud explosion-like sound" from the direction of Nomans Land. This “ear witness” report, ignored by mainstream media, corroborates the 13-mile distance that Kennedy called in to the control tower. A reporter for the Vineyard Gazette newspaper (identified by the number “2”) is reported to have told WCVB-TV in Boston that he saw a "big white flash in the sky" off Philbin Beach, on the southwest coast of Martha’s Vineyard. Other reports indicate that approximately ten witnesses reported an explosion or flash of light “from the south” at about the time of the crash. A guest of the Kennedys (identified by the number “3”), is reported to have witnessed an explosion. Based on the reports of witnesses and Kennedy’s own report to the control tower, there is little doubt that the crash occurred in the vicinity of Nomans Land, some six-and one-half miles from where the wreckage of the plane was officially found. Sherman Skolnick advertises himself as the producer/moderator of the Chicago public access, CableTV Program, Broadsides, and the chairman/founder of the Citizen's Committee to Clean Up the Courts. In an e-mail, he writes of John Kennedy: “He planned to reveal a well-kept secret about August 1, 1999. He was to announce he was running for president.” 

1078 Sasco Hill Road, Fairfield CT: This 4-acre property on Sasco Hill Road in Fairfield known as Bella Vista was admired by John F. Kennedy Jr. and his wife, Carolyn, and they wanted to purchase the spacious, beachfront home that was originally commissioned by Mrs. Hugh Auchincloss, Kennedy's maternal grandmother, and designed in the Newport Georgian style by architect Roger Bullard in 1927. “Kennedy Jr. was taken with the quiet life it might provide him after a life of constant colliding with the world’s media,” Cathy Griffin, a speaker for Movoto Real Estate, confirmed. “When he was in the neighborhood, he and Carolyn would drive around the property, asking about the possibility of it hitting the market.” The price tag on the mansion now is $7.75 million. Carolyn Bessette Kennedy may have been pregnant when she died with her husband. Ann Freeman, Carolyn and Lauren Bessette's mother, received an indemnization of approximately 25 millions dollars by Caroline Kennedy. Ann Freeman, John Jr's mother-in-law seemed to foresee the fateful destiny of their daughters when during the wedding reception of John and Carolyn, she made a vague allusion to "the Kennedy curse."

At age 39, John Jr had made up his mind to launch his political career by seeking an electoral mandate in New York State, and he was about to announce it publicly. He had also expressed to his friends his ambition to ultimately reach for the presidency. Given his personality and his popularity, he had high chances to make it in less than 20 years. He might realistically have become U.S. president in 2008 or 2016. Brought up in the worship of his father, John Jr had taken a keen interest in “conspiracy theories” about his death at least since his late teens. His knowledge deepened in his thirties, made him aware of State and media cover-ups in other affairs, and motivated him to publish, eight months before his death, a cover article by Oliver Stone, director of the groundbreaking film JFK, titled “Our Counterfeit History”. John Junior was probably not yet ready for the presidency— although some insiders, like Pierre Salinger, believed he would have run for president in 2000. But on the other hand, for many reasons, he was a more natural candidate than RFK, with more potential. RFK Jr. had always been suspect of the strange circumstances surrounding the death of his father Robert Kennedy (he came to the conclusion Shirhan Shirhan was not the guilty man and he expressed his doubts about JFK Jr's accidental plane crash as 'very suspicious.')

Laurence Leamer captured the Kennedys philosophy in his book The Kennedy Men: 1901-1963  (2011). Joe Kennedy, he writes “believed that a few powerful men were the rightful leaders of their generation. Joseph P. Kennedy knew that he had achieved so much in America because of the liberty and opportunities. He believed that sons of privilege and wealth had an obligation to serve their country and to return something of the bounty that they had inherited. Joe taught that they must trust each other and venture out into a dangerous world full of betrayals and uncertainty, always returning to the sanctuary of family.” Jackie Kennedy, the guiding spirit in John Jr’s life, definitely saw her son as Camelot’s standard-bearer. In her last letter to him before dying to lymphoma in 1994, she wrote: “You, John, especially have a place in history.” According to presidential historian Doug Wead, Jackie “knew in her heart that, some day, the stars are gonna line up, and he’s gonna be president.” “My mom sort of pressured me to get into politics,” John Jr. told Lloyd Howard in 1997. “She expected me to follow in my father’s footsteps, and of course I will. But I don’t think the time is right just yet." In 1999, at age 39, John was trying to sell his magazine. He had new plans. According to Gary Ginsberg, a close collaborator who was with John the night before he died, “That last night he was very focused on two things: finding a buyer for George and his political future.” “There seemed little doubt in the minds of those who knew him that John was on the brink of a bright political future. He was probably a more natural politician than any of the other Kennedys," historian David Halberstam said, “and that includes his father. John had all the makings of a political superstar.’” Source: www.unz.com

Christopher Fulton's The Inheritance, JFK: An Unfinished Life by Robert Dallek

Christopher Fulton: I received a phone call and heard the distinguished voice of Mr. Warren P. Weitman Jr. “Mr. Fulton, thank you for the book you sent documenting President Kennedy’s Cartier wristwatch. After careful review by several heads of departments, we’ve come to the conclusion that Sotheby’s would love to sell it privately for you, but we will require your legal release before we can contact the Kennedy family. Once we have a confidentiality agreement in place we can proceed. We’ve already prepared the release; all we require is your signature.” “Of course,” I said, “but there must be several stipulations: one, nobody but the immediate family of JFK is to see the information; two, my name is not to be shared with anyone without my prior written permission; and three, the evaluation material I sent you is to be retained by you and returned to me at the close of the transaction, with no copies made.” I thought if the family requested any further information or documents, we could draw up a contract specifying the care that would require. “Consider it done,” Weitman said. “I’ll have the release faxed to you within the hour. Thank you, Mr. Fulton.” I was concerned about how the Kennedys would react. I was in a difficult position, but if the sale proceeded, the watch would find its proper place and I could get on with my life. Once the agreement arrived, I signed it and sent it back for Weitman’s counter signature, along with a personal letter I had written for JFK Jr.

It read: "First, let me congratulate you on your marriage; I wish you nothing but happiness. I want to inform you that my corporation has acquired a personal item that belonged to your father, through his late secretary, Evelyn Lincoln. The auction Sotheby’s held on behalf of your mother was so well done that I want to sell the item in my possession to your family through them. I want no publicity, so we have signed non-disclosure agreements. The item in discussion is the documented Cartier wristwatch your father wore on Dallas November 22. Because of the highly personal nature of this piece, I wanted to contact you personally. I suggest that 15% of the proceeds be given to the JFK library, and another 10% to a cause of your choice. Your concerns and/or suggestions are encouraged and appreciated. If you are not interested in purchasing this item, I would like Sotheby’s to sell it publicly. If you are adamantly opposed to a public sale, please write a letter to Sotheby’s stating your feelings as such, and I will honor your wishes. Thank you, and best to you and your wife." Janet Reno explained: “We didn’t put an injunction on the auction because Robert White, the main consigner, cooperated with us, signed our agreement, and relinquished the items we requested and JFK Jr. told us he would secure Fulton’s evidence for the National Archives. Ted Kennedy was concerned about JFK Jr.’s involvement, so we had a sealed indictment and warrant ready for Fulton when he came into the country; we were going to arrest him at the airport in New York before his transaction with JFK Jr. took place.” I knew extradition was a very expensive and complicated political undertaking, something that would make headlines. I was in a lot of trouble if the U.S. Government wanted me this badly. It must be about the evidence, and my meeting with John Kennedy Jr. “I sold physical and documentary evidence in JFK’s assassination, evidence Bobby Kennedy had collected and withheld from the government in the ’60’s. I gave a private interview to John F. Kennedy Jr. in Florida for an exposé about it. It’s going to run in George magazine.” While I was in Florida with John Jr., he told me Robert White had been under investigation by the FBI for obtaining items of national security that were willed to him by President Kennedy’s personal secretary, Evelyn Lincoln.

I was still trying to come to terms with what the Federal Government had done to my life. Now I lamented the loss of John Jr., for myself and for the country; we’d all had something precious stolen from us. The next days I operated like a robot, performing my meaningless duties within the federal labor camp. I listened to the radio and I understood there hadn’t been a real search and rescue for days after they were reported missing. Then the military took over the investigation, and on the sixth day, the bodies were recovered. The United States Government and military had spearheaded the investigation, and it took six days to find the plane and recover the bodies just off the coast. The reports said John was reckless, that it was pilot error and he was responsible for the crash. I knew it wasn’t true. I heard excerpts of Ted Kennedy’s eulogy for John; the words rang in my ears for days: “John F. Kennedy Jr. had only just begun, there was in him a great promise of things to come.” John Jr. was eliminated before he could expose the lies in his father’s murder and the hardships of Robert Kennedy, Robert Bouck, Angela Novello, and Evelyn Lincoln in their courageous efforts to secure and preserve the truth. There would be no story at all, except the story of another dead Kennedy. Fidel Castro addressed his people on a broadcast that was displayed on every television and radio in Cuba. “I have sad news to tell you tonight; a fine young American, along with his wife and sister-in-law, has died in a plane crash into the ocean. His name is John Kennedy Jr., the promising son of the former President of the United States. John Jr.was my friend, and Cuba’s friend; I will miss him, and I will always wonder about what greatness we have lost but will never realize. I don’t cry, but I've cried today.” These truths were not just Bobby Kennedy’s mantle, or Evelyn Lincoln’s or John Jr.’s, or even Robert White’s or mine; they belonged to the country. They belonged to all of us. —The Inheritance: Poisoned Fruit of JFK's Assassination (2018) by Christopher Fulton

David Heymann has faked interviews in his books. First of all, the fact Heymann has done this is beyond dispute. I myself demonstrated several instances in which this had happened. David Cay Johnston exposed Heymann in Newsweek, 2014, in "Getting Away With Literary Fraud": "Heymann was a fraud, and his biographies of high profile people are filled with sensationalized falsehoods and flat-out lies. John Simkin somehow missed, or deliberately ignored all this. Secondly, the idea that this would somehow eliminate Heymann from being published is preposterous. Everyone in this field--except Simkin--knows that any author who writes a hatchet job on the Kennedys gets welcomed with open arms into the publishing world. And their work is never questioned. Which is how Heymann gets away with it. This of course is because the political/economic milieu today favors the practice. Harris Wofford in his book Of Kennedy and Kings wrote about this phenomenon. Publishing houses asked him to add some dirt to the book or they wouldn't publish it. Conservatives and Republicans did not like JFK, because he was thoughtful. Their favorite weapon against him was their account of his love life, which according to them involved Mafia molls and Marilyn Monroe. They must have worked themselves into fits of envy over Marilyn Monroe, the hottest woman of her time. Unlike most presidents, Kennedy was able to break with the conventional thinking of the time. From his experience with the Bay of Pigs, Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Joint Chiefs’ “Operaton Northwoods,” Kennedy concluded that CIA Director Allen Dulles and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Lemnitzer were both crazed by anti-communism and were a danger to Americans and the world. But the point is, because Kennedy's foreign policy and his civil rights program contrasted with Eisenhower, it was part of the new excitement of the early sixties. Kennedy had promised to get the country moving again with his New Frontier speech at his nominating convention. And this became a part of the trajectory of that fateful decade. One that began with so much expectation and hope. Yet it ended with tens of thousands of body bags returned from Indochina, blood in the streets of Chicago, and LSD supplied by the CIA. The end was captured symbolically by the stoned out acid rock of Woodstock.

Robert Dallek has no sensitivity to any of this. Or President Kennedy's role in it. For many years–actually decades–Vietnam had been saddled with the subtitle of being McNamara's War. In other words, contrary to what Dallek is postulating, many observers saw it as a war that McNamara actually advocated. During the debates about inserting combat troops in 1961, McNamara was one of the many who advised Kennedy to do so. Many of the president's advisers-e.g. Rostow, Taylor, Ambassador Nolting, Ed Lansdale, and Deputy Defense Secretary Alexis Johnson – wanted him to insert combat troops into Vietnam in 1961. It was Kennedy who rejected each proposal. As Goldstein notes, only two men backed Kennedy in arguing against Americanizing the war: George Ball and John Kenneth Galbraith. They were outnumbered by a factor of about 3 to 1. In May of 1963, there was a meeting in Hawaii with McNamara. At this meeting, McNamara reiterated he wanted the plans speeded up. The documents on this meeting, declassified in 1997, were one of the key finds released by the ARRB.

Begrudgingly, Dallek admits "Kennedy began planning the withdrawal of U.S. military advisers in May of 1963." (An Unfinished Life, p. 668) What shows Kennedy was genuine in his new approach was the fact that he put Dick Goodwin and Adolf Berle in charge of the new policy formation. Goodwin was a liberal Harvard lawyer, congressional investigator and speechwriter. Berle had been a member of the FDR Brain Trust, and was assistant secretary for Latin America from 1938-44. Berle was very much for moving economic development forward in the southern hemisphere. Goodwin asked for input from Latin American academics in Washington. In his appointment of Douglas Dillon to Treasury, Kennedy was making the usual blow to Wall Street. Walter Heller, one of the most noted Keynesian scholars of his time, found Kennedy very interested in the economy, and the forces which drove it. Kennedy was determined to expand "the Nation's investment in physical and human resources, and in science and technology." Or, as Donald Gibson notes in his long analysis of Kennedy's economic program, "Kennedy consistently used his office in an attempt to inject growth-oriented planning into government policy." Also, Kennedy had an interest in fostering progressive governments in the Third World. In US Steel's Chairman Roger Blough's eyes, Kennedy's agreement with US Steel reminded him of Roosevelt's New Deal planning. Source: kennedysandking.com

Robert Kennedy for President (A hero's journey), White Fragility, Ratched (A Compelling Villain)

The scope of Robert Kennedy’s story—a hero’s journey, even an Augustinian allegory—possesses a grandeur missing from Washington right now. Kennedy was killed in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, just after winning the California Democratic primary of 1968. That Kennedy’s moral fiber was rooted in his family’s staunch Catholicism is a point made early in Episode 1 (“A New Generation”). After his brother’s assassination—a point after which a hint of sadness never quite leaves R.F.K.’s eyes—he evolves, gradually, into social progressive and crusader. Kennedy saw himself as the only hope for both ending the Vietnam War and keeping someone like LBJ or Nixon out of the White House. While running for president is usually not considered an act of self-sacrifice, for Kennedy it was—though to what extent, no one could have foreseen. The cast of talking heads that Porter assembled further this image of Bobby as a man worth idolizing despite his faults. His shrewdness, according to “Bobby Kennedy For President,” is integral to understand just how large his metamorphosis was into the radical humanitarian he became.

Not only do they tout his political acumen and his ability to connect with people across the country, but they claim that he was never an absent father, that he was the quintessential family man. What’s apparent throughout the film is how many of the problems Kennedy spoke up about during the 1960s continue to divide America today. In 1968, the year of Kennedy’s presidential run and assassination, the country seemed driven by violence. January saw the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, and subsequent protests raging at home. At the end of that month, the journalist Pete Hamill wrote a letter to Kennedy imploring him to run for president, which Hamill reads from in the series. “I don’t think we can afford five summers of blood,” Hamill had written. “If you won, the country might be saved.” In April, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Porter includes archival footage of Kennedy breaking the news to a largely black crowd in Indiana, and quoting Aeschylus. What the country needs most now, he tells them, isn’t more division and hatred, but “love and wisdom and compassion toward one another.” Just a few months later, Kennedy himself was assassinated in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Porter, who has an extraordinary amount of footage to work with, restages the event via photographs of a dying Kennedy lying in the arms of a busboy, Juan Romero. She interviews Romero, as well as Paul Schrade, one of Kennedy’s staff members who was also shot that day. There are certainly parallels to be drawn between current extremist movements in the U.S. and the wave of assassinations of political figures in the ’60s, but Kennedy himself is such a charismatic presence throughout that the series loses momentum after his death. The question of who might have killed him—and why—is obviously a compelling one. The final line in the series is Kennedy quoting Tennyson. “Come my friends,” he intones. “It's not too late to seek a newer world.” Source: www.theatlantic.com

In short, White Fragility is a horrifying call for Whites not simply to be paralyzed by White guilt, but to become active participants in their decline, and willing accomplices in their demographic destruction. Robin DiAngelo’s introduction begins with accusation. America “began with the attempted genocide of Indigenous people. American wealth was built on the labor of enslaved Africans and their descendants.” So far, so familiar. But the book very quickly moves to an outline of the theory of White Fragility. DiAngelo points out: “Of course, some whites explicitly avow racism. We might consider these whites actually more aware of, and honest about, their biases.” In other words, even if we’re moral monsters in DiAngelo’s eyes, we aren’t “fragile.” Again, because of the extremes of the some of the dialectics here, certain truths emerge. DiAngelo remarks early in the book that “race matters,” something that many of our readers would agree with, even if it’s from a slightly different angle than the author intends. She also argues that: "All humans have prejudice; we cannot avoid it. People who claim not to be prejudiced are demonstrating a profound lack of self-awareness. Ironically, they are also demonstrating the power of socialization — we have all been taught in schools, through movies, and from family members, teachers, and clergy that it is important not to be prejudiced. Everyone has prejudice, and everyone discriminates." I couldn’t agree more: Whites have been uniquely affected by mass propaganda designed to brainwash them into viewing as morally evil something that is natural and instinctive to all humans. DiAngelo concludes her book with the blunt assertion that “a positive white identity is an impossible goal. White identity is inherently racist; white people do not exist outside the system of white supremacy.” White identity is therefore to be destroyed wholesale, and White ethnic interests crushed alongside it. DiAngelo proclaims with all the vigor of the subversive or the brainwashed that she will “strive for a less white identity, for my own liberation and sense of justice.” Liberation and justice. These words were uttered a long time ago in France. The beheadings started soon after. Source: www.theoccidentalobserver.net

Why does Hollywood feel such a need to humanize a villain? I feel like since the popularity of Breaking Bad, where we see Walter White go from being a good person to a disgusting kingpin, Hollywood took the wrong lesson away from it. They saw it as “oh, people like humanized villains who do horrible things but are just like us at core. So let’s make every villain that.” I’m okay with showing shades of grey and making a compelling character. But to outright make someone who murders for fun someone you should feel bad for is morally fucked. You shouldn’t sympathize with someone who sees murder as their only solution.

The Joker shouldn’t be seen as a character to look up to. You should never use mental health as a reason why a man starts a movement to kill others who are bothering you. The half baked storyline of mental health in Phillips' Joker pisses me off, because it could have been better but he was more focused with remaking Scorsese movies. For what it's worth, Joker's presentation of its main character is morally dubious. It's exactly the sort of underdog lone wolf vengeance narrative that would appeal to basement-dwelling alt-right sociopaths, whether or not that's what the filmmakers actually had in mind. Although I don't think that problem is necessarily a result of Fleck being humanised in the script; you can just as easily glorify a total asshole without humanising them (look at Nolan/Heath Ledger's Joker - an inhuman monster - for a perfect example). 

In TV, we'll soon have a new show called Ratched created by Ryan Murphy about the villain of One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. Nurse Ratched is going to be more sympathetic since she'll be shown as mentally unwell. No sane, rational, or caring person would withhold lifesaving medication as part of a power play or lock people in boiling tubs. This show is from the same guy who made Hollywood, where Henry Wilson (the Harvey Weinstein of early Hollywood) got a happy ending by making the first big screen gay love story. At no point did anyone look at that and say “maybe this isn’t a good idea?” I’m okay with showing shades of grey, and making a compelling villain you want to feel bad for. But these films glorify the killing, they make it seem like this is the right thing to do, they justify it. They take a bad guy and make him someone to look up to instead of making sure that he/she is seen as the bad guy. I know I’m coming off as “humanizing a villain shouldn’t be done.” But you can humanize a villain and still show why they are completely wrong and you never shouldn't see them as an idol. Source: decider.com