Opinion/Editorial
JFK and the USA
A few days ago, the anniversary of the shooting of John F. Kennedy took place. That was fifty-four years ago. Even today, in this day and age of advanced communications and the application of even more advanced investigative tools, most of the mainstream media print and discuss theories about how the country was not “given a narrative” about who really did the shooting, and therefore the nation wanders in distrust of its government and even the media itself. The ‘narrative,’ is, of course, nothing more or less than a supposedly believable rendition of how Oswald alone killed the president. Wow, can these media people write fiction when it suits them! Can they come up with brilliant sounding claptrap, or what? You see, according to this same mass media, because of a man named Ruby killing Oswald before he could talk to anyone, the court process of justice could never really take hold and so neither Oswald, nor the public, could ever have its day in court in order to come to an accurate and successful closure. Jesus wept!
The word closure today means: “now can we move past this little uncomfortable place I find myself caught in?” I am sure that Harvey Weinstein, Judge Moore, Al Franken, and now Charlie Rose, are all in search of immediate ‘closure’ as quickly as they can get it, after they get out of hugely expensive sex rehab clinics, that is. When Kennedy was assassinated, the nation understood right away that the president had been killed by a group, because the people are not that stupid when shown real data (and the media did not yet have its act together enough to hide a whole lot at that time). Had to be. None of the rest of it made any sense. No single individual, with a very cheap rifle, was going to be able to make the series of shots Oswald supposedly made. But the badly assembled ‘narrative’ is what America is stuck with, and each leader in power over the country wants that ‘narrative’ of Oswald to remain there, while he or she is in power.
There is no personal percentage for a president to reopen anything about that totally flawed part of the nation’s history. And the whacked right wing is no more rational about that event than the whacked left. “Just keep on keeping on, so I can continue to stay hooked up to the trough for as long as I can,” has been the applied philosophy and it is a very powerful one. It has been conjectured that Kennedy got himself whacked by LBJ, the mob and Castro. They all absolutely profited from, and loved, the result. Just think about who gained from his death? The ‘winners’ then went to work and used great power and money to shut everyone up. The public believes a bunch of Saudi Arabian fanatics who couldn’t finish or pass private flight school training, are responsible for the 911 twin tower thing. Really? And what happened right after the downing of those towers? American leadership, in dramatic and massed collective genius, counseled among itself, and then went to war with first Afghanistan and then Iraq, neither country having had anything to do with the towers or their demise. Please! Saudi Arabia got a pass, even though all the supposed terrorists were from Saudi Arabia and the remaining Saudi citizens left behind in the U.S. were flown home when not one other soul in the country (outside of the military) was allowed to fly at all.
The public knows or suspects all of this, and it sits in frustration and anger. The mass media, and the Internet, and cell phone technology did not bring more truth. They simply revealed that there really isn’t much of any truth when it comes to publishing information that can or might control what the public does, and when it does it. The heart of America’s belief in its leadership was torn asunder by what happened after the Kennedy assassination, and then was further eviscerated by having flawed leaders lie Post-911, and send us to war(s) in a Middle East that is mostly clueless about the U.S. culture, or even its geography. The simplistic nature of what is called education in those countries is so staggering, in fact, Americans would not believe it if they were told. They teach only the Koran, and the Moslem belief system.
America is deeply involved in the “Forever War,” and the military industrial complex could not be more thrilled or happy. The only time the American defense budget has been higher (indexed for inflation) was in the middle and late WWII period. Today, the Unites States has a larger military presence upon the planet than all other countries combined. How is it that a single country could be so powerful, and still lose its ability to tell the difference between fact and fiction? How, when the most powerful offices across the land are not required to tell the truth anymore, can a country with nearly unlimited power to fend off any enemy; not find a way to save itself from itself?
~ James Strauss
