John F. Kennedy in 1960 - A time when Democrats could be proud of their candidate

I look back blissfully on the early 1960s. It was a time when we had a president who could hold press conferences instead of responding with one word answers to shouted questions. It was a time when you could be proud of your president, not making excuses for him.

Here is a Ricker mount of 1960 John F. Kennedy campaign buttons. The president was young, and one could be optimistic.

Yes, I know. JFK has issues about which no one knew. He had Addison's disease, and he had serial affairs while he was president. But all of that was unknown to the public at the time. It was "Camelot" after all.

 

Arguably the greatest what if in US history - where would we be today as a society if JFK is not assassinated

Just looking at Presidential races

64 - JFK wins re-election (is LBJ replaced?)
68 -Does the VP run or is it RFK (and let's assume he is not killed). If still popular, Dems could hold the WH
76 - Reagan could be the nominee and probably not Carter on the dem side
and obviously the divergent history would continue to expand

 

He won by about the same margin as Biden, Trump, Obama, Bush etc

Was the 60s blissful.....?
- Vietnam war
- The Draft
- JFK assassinated
- RFK assassinated
- MLK assassinated
- War in Israel
- Massive rioting
- Detroit in flames
- Hippies
- Drugs
- STD
- University kids gunned down by national guard
- Cold war
- Nuclear attack drills for school kids
- Cuban missile crises
- Bay Of Pigs
- Commie under every bed

Sure, JFK was young, energetic, handsome and all that, - a bit of a political rock star, but things weren't that great back then, and the 60s gave birth to huge economic problems later.

 

JFK was dead by November 22, 1963. Most anything after that was not his fault. Yes, he screwed up with the Bay of Pigs because he sat back and thought that the CIA had it all figured out. They didn’t, and JFK learned a lesson.

Would JFK have been as stupid as LBJ with Vietnam? We will never know. Maybe. He was a “cold warrior” who agreed with containment. Would containment have extended to Vietnam for JFK? Maybe.

 

I'm not saying everything was his fault, but he was part of it, since he sent in advisors to Vietnam, and that was the beginning of most issues in the 1960s. Would he have escalated it like LBJ did? We'll never know, but someone shot him for some reason.

 

Was Lee Harvey Oswald a lone wolf who killed Kennedy because he was PO’d at JFK’s Cuba policy? Oswald was probably the only member of “The Fair Play for Cuba Committee.”

Or was he a CIA “patsy” who did the shooting at their bidding? We’ll never know because the Dallas Police Department was too inept to keep their prisoner alive. Jack Ruby did none of us any favors. Some think he was a CIA operative, dying of cancer, who could keep his mouth shut.

 

The country was in a very optimistic mood because the American economy seemed to be rapidly growing, American wages were increasing, and combined with that, technology seemed to be advancing at a fast past.
This was the point in time when the United States was indisputably at the top of the world. Most other countries in the world were poor at this time, or their economies were languishing and sub-par.

 

Do you think there is any truth to the theory I have heard that he was assassinated because he was going to abolish the Federal reserve?

 

Also the country would have never elected a relic like Biden. In 1952, Truman’s vice president, Albin Barkley, floated the idea that he should succeed his boss. “You’re too old,” was the immediate response, and that ended the discussion. Barkley was 74.

That is the first time I have heard that theory. If Oswald was a lone wolf, I think that the Federal Reserve was the last thing on his mind. If it was someone in the government, they would have had to have been a far right winger. I’m not aware of any big government types wanting to do away with the Fed at that time. I have never read of such a movement.

At any rate, Kennedy would have had a fight on his hands with Congress. He could not have closed the Fed on his own. The best he could have done would have been to appoint an ineffective dingbat as chairman.

 

64 - JFK would have run for reelection and probably won. Goldwater would have probably been his opponent. At the time Goldwater was viewed as JFK’s leading foil. LBJ would probably not have been replaced.
68 - VPs were not automatic shoe-ins for nomination at that time. LBJ would have probably run, but his success would have depended on how things were at the end of Kennedy’s term. Vietnam, which did LBJ in politically, is the wildcard.
76 - Reagan had been a Democrat, but I could see him remaining a Democrat by 1976. His views had changed well before then.

Extrapolating history is a fun parlor game, but until we can penetrate alternate universes, it’s gets to be more and more fictional as you extend the educated guessing.

 

Ended the discussion? They told Reagan that he was too old too. It's a pretty weak argument.

As for who killed JFK, - anyone can pick their favorite theory.

 

I am only reporting what was said historically. As for Reagan, that was in 1984, which was 32 years later. In the mean time, Eisenhower was over 70 when he left office, which set a precedent as the oldest president at that time.

As for who killed JFK, the answer is Oswald. The question is, did someone help him? Given the quick assassination of Oswald, we will never know.

 

Reagan was 77 when he left. I agree Biden is too old, and should not run, and I still expect him to drop out

Yes. Oswald. Of course. My question was poorly worded. When I said "who", I was referring to the theories as to why, and who was really behind it.

 

Here is an update on the Kennedy box. There two main additions. One is the large "bug eyed", "Our next president" button. Kennedy was viewed as a handsome man, but that photo was not flattering.

The other is the little golden rocking chair pin. Kennedy was noted for sitting in a rocking chair during his presidency to ease his bad back. That piece was issued after he took office, probably in anticipation of 1964.



Here is the 1960 Nixon box. There are a couple of noteworthy pieces here. The first one is the piece with the White House in the background that reads, "Not for sale, Elect Nixon." That referred to the millions of dollars, John Kennedy's father, Joe, spent on his campaign. The family joke was "Joe would pay for a win, but not a landslide."

The other two pieces read, "Come back Truman, all is forgiven," and "I miss Ike, Hell, I even miss Harry." Few people know it today, but there were a lot of establishment Democrats who didn't like Kennedy. He didn't have great recond on the Senate because he had missed a lot time because of health issues. Back problems and an infection almost killed him in 1953.

Starting in 1957, Kennedy worked his tail off meeting with local Democratic Party leaders to get their support. That hard work involved a lot more than just spending his daddy's money. Johnson and other establishment Democrats figured they would waltz in, call in a few favors and get the 1960 nomination. They were wrong. Kennedy defeated Hubert Humphrey in the primaries. West Virginia was the big one because a most Protestant state voted for a Catholic candidate. Kennedy's religion was an issue in 1960. Some people were thinking back to when Al Smith had been smeared in 1928.



Collectors have told me that this anti-Catholic, anti-Kennedy piece was a joke, but I am not buying that. John XXIII was the Pope when Kennedy was president.

 

Listen to what Chomsky says about Kennedy.

Noam Chomsky on the Legacy of JFK
https://www.facebook.com/GreenRedPodcast/videos/noam-chomsky-on-the-legacy-of-jfk/322330436292600/

Noam Chomsky - The Crimes of U.S. Presidents

 

He was not the only member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee except maybe in new orleans. They were headquartered in Ny and he corresponded with them

He was no cia operative and had no connection to them

He acted alone. Ruby was not known to have cancer until his autopsy was performed. Although it is true he did no one any favors

Oswald acted alone

 

Whether Vietnam would have ended up as it did is a blind guess we DO however know that LBJ did not reverse policy. he followed JFK's written policy when he assumed the presidency. JFK might well have changed that policy later on especially if he had won in 64 but we can never really know

alternate history is fun and any number of outcomes is possible.

One outcome overlooked by many is that had JFK lived his re election was NOT a certainty or even a probability. It was fifty/fifty. The main reason he was in texas when he was killed was to try and men bridged for gthe democrats in Texas. he had to have texas if he hoped to win in 64 and the leading dems of texas hated each other. Their feuding threatened to tear the party apart within the state.

Another fifty /fifty possibility is that the alternate chain of events branching out from his survival would be an all out nuclear holocaust later down the road. Perhaps in the 7os or 80s

 

He would have had the benefit of incumbency, so I think he would have done better than in his first election, which they won by the skin of his teeth. Re Texas, Johnson and natives like Jim Wright, Wright Patman, and a few others could have swung the state for him; Rayburn had died by then. It would have been a close election, but a better winning margin than his first. It was still Johnson pulling strings that got legislation passed, which is why he was chosen to be VP in the first place.

Goldwater wasn't a good candidate, too many mob connections and ideologues always make bad politicians anyway.

 

You do know Chomsky got rich off of CIA contracts, right?

 

What was 'stupid' about his Viet Nam policy? He escalated in 1965, and by 1968, less than 3 years later, the VC had to make a last ditch attempt to remain relevant in the South and lost their Tet Offensive. They were toast after losing Tet.

LBJ sacrificed his personal ambitions and resigned rather than put the country through another wave of street violence from the commie sympathizers, and act of class no President outside of Nixon would have done.

 

I've never heard that before. Please fill me in.

Here's the info on which the people in the anti-war movement were basing their opinions.

The American War: The U.S. in Vietnam
https://www.pinkyshow.org/projectarchives/videos/the-american-war-the-us-in-vietnam

Noam Chomsky on the 50th Anniversary of the End of the Vietnam War



Back then you couldn't hear this in the news. The people who knew this travelled abroad or talked to other people who'd travelled abroad.

 

That is still largely true, though using the Internet another verse can instead come true: 'seek, and ye shall find'.

 

Chomsky was involved in Pentagon contracts for years, and one of his friends:

https://libcom.org/article/john-deutch-chomskys-friend-pentagon-and-cia

Early career, where he made a fortune.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/wh...-of-time-war-research-and-linguistics-at-mit/

As for where the anti-war people got their opinions, they got them from Pravda, directly and indirectly. It was fashionable among pseudo-intellectuals in Europe among the 'New Left' to be all anti-American n stuff. Still is. They are driven by fashion, not intellect or principles. Example:

https://jcpa.org/article/being-leftist-and-anti-semitic-in-germany/

Student Radicalization
During the Six Day War, the New Left definitively transformed its hitherto moderate pro-Arab positions into full support for Arab states and the Palestinians, and its fragile pro-Israeli attitudes dissolved into anti-Semitic slogans thinly disguised as “anti-imperialist” criticism of a “fascist state.”

After 1967, however, not only the radicals but large parts of the German Left turned their backs on Israel. This went hand in hand with protests against the Vietnam War, against the conservative mainstream in Adenauer’s Germany and afterward the “Great Coalition” that was headed from 1966 by Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger, a former member of the Nazi Party.6 The New Left also idealized Communist China and Ho Chi Minh, despite their involvement in mass murder against their own people.7

Well-known intellectuals who were more moderate leftists tried to dissuade the New Left from its extreme positions. Ernst Bloch, Jean Amery, Herbert Marcuse, Iring Fetscher, and Jean-Paul Sartre argued with the radicals and discouraged blind solidarity with the PLO, as opposed to legitimate criticism of Israeli policies. They warned that notions of Israel’s annihilation were intolerable and linked to National Socialist ideology. However, they were not heeded by the radicals.8

The Soviets ran propaganda campaigns to counter LBJ's Israel policies, which played a role in destroying Soviet credibility in the ME and Africa, when the Soviet supplied Arab mobs were defeated by Israel in 1967 and 1973. The anti-war Left were just useful idiots, and when they were no longer in danger of being drafted they went on to disco and Wall Street. Pretty shallow bunch overall, despite all the Hollywood puff pieces on them.

 

Chomsky, for all of his moral dudgeon against American corporations, finds that they make a pretty good investment. When he made investment decisions for his retirement plan at MIT, he chose not to go with a money market fund or even a government bond fund. Instead, he threw the money into blue chips and invested in the TIAA-CREF stock fund. A look at the stock fund portfolio quickly reveals that it invests in all sorts of businesses that Chomsky says he finds abhorrent: oil companies, military contractors, pharmaceuticals, you name it.

When I asked Chomsky about his investment portfolio he reverted to a “what else can I do?” defense: “Should I live in a cabin in Montana?” he asked. It was a clever rhetorical dodge. Chomsky was declaring that there is simply no way to avoid getting involved in the stock market short of complete withdrawal from the capitalist system. He certainly knows better. There are many alternative funds these days that allow you to invest your money in “green” or “socially responsible” enterprises. They just don’t yield the maximum available return.

https://www.hoover.org/research/noam-chomsky-closet-capitalist

Noam Chomsky’s admirers are often surprised to hear that he spent the first decades of his MIT career working for the Pentagon. Many will be even more surprised to hear that he continued to work with a Pentagon contractor even after retiring from MIT.

In 2021, the military-funded research company Oceanit hosted an online lecture by Noam Chomsky. The lecture was introduced by Oceanit’s CEO, Patrick Sullivan, followed by its Director of Artificial Intelligence, Dr. Jeffrey Watumull.

Introducing the eminent linguist, Dr. Watumull explained:

[Chomsky] has worked with with us at Oceanit on AI programs to push precise ideas to absurd but successful conclusions and applications in this process that [Patrick Sullivan] describes as Intellectual Anarchy.

Chomsky repeated this striking phrase in his lecture, telling his audience:

What's needed is Patrick's Intellectual Anarchy, [a] willingness to challenge established doctrine with better ideas.

Intellectual Anarchy is also the title of Sullivan’s 2020 book – a book written to describe the ‘Intellectual Anarchy methodology followed at Oceanit’.


http://scienceandrevolution.org/blog/2023/11/15/drnwmst9pdanxiua0izyiax63chdfr

 

What do you think of the info in the first video in post #21?