[Peace-discuss] Not voting and the Kennedy aura

[n.dahlheim at mchsi.com]

I really have loved this discussion about the costs and benefits of not voting in national American 
elections, especially the Presidential pseudo contests trumped by our tabloid, right-wing media.  

I would like to make an addendum to thinking about the Kennedys.  I don't think for a second that they 
were some great liberals or progressives, though quite unwittingly they oversaw the height of the last 
truly progressive era in American politics.  Indeed, during the 1960s the Kennedys were pinkos 
compared to any liberals today in the national spotlight.  The deaths of JFK and then the even more 
tragic death of his brother RFK (who was much tougher, more independent, and by 1968 a genuine 
progressive) also removed the Kennedy family from much in the way of any hope of dominating 
national politics again.  They were new money, and they were not blue bloods in the fashion that the 
upper class would describe themselves b/c they made their money through bootlegging and stock 
fraud.  However, they symbolized the potential for immigrants and some of America's marginalized 
groups to acquire something of a say in the direction of American life.  Remarkably, and especially with 
JFK, they were also the last truly pragmatic politicians in American life who measured their politics 
against a genuine concern for the common good and a somewhat noble vision of American leadership.  
Future pragmatists, such as Nixon, carried ideological and/or special interest baggage in a way that the 
self-made Kennedys did not.  Chomsky's incites into American history in the latter half of the 20th 
century are generally quite good, but he misinterprets the Kennedy Presidency quite profoundly.  The 
only real resistance to escalation in Vietnam----and the pressures for Vietnam escalation were 
unbelievale---was Kennedy himself (and at times McNamara in his wiser moments along with others in 
Kennedys personal circle).  As Peter Dale Scott's excellent work into the history of the international drug 
trade (he is probably the #1 expert on the organized crime and geopolitical history of Iran-Contra) and 
the "deep politics" of the American system demonstrate; the whole network of power interests behind 
the Vietnam War serendipitously coalesced around promoting the war despite the harm it would do to 
domestic order, international image, and the health of the armed forces.  Kennedy worked tirelessly to 
slow and even reverse this escalation out of a concern for just these types of pragmatic concerns; and 
Chomsky totally misses the boat on this particular matter by just getting the facts wrong.  According to 
the work of military historian and Vietnam expert John H. Newman, who has published the authoritative 
text on JFK's involvement entitled JFK and Vietnam; the Kennedy record displays an adriot executive 
intensely moved by pragmatic concerns for balancing interests and defending a vision of the common 
good that since has not been articulated in any meaningful way (Reagan's sloganeering doesn't 
count!!!).  Kennedy arguably was the last President to surround himself with a number of people who 
weren't totally concerned with advancing Wall Street, Pentagon, CIA, or other financial/corporate 
skullduggery without at least balancing other factors---not for ideological reasons but for practical 
reasons that interests must be balanced and power grabbing restrained to safeguard the functioning of 
government and the world order.   The shots fired on 11/22/1963 in Dallas ended that period of liberal 
pragmatism and a genuinely moderate government----since that time the U.S. government has 
increasingly become corporate and rightist and the only type of opposition based upon the pragmatic 
internationalism and liberalism of the Kennedy years has withered to nothing.  The eternal flame at the 
Kennedy Memorial is in juxtaposition to the extinguished flame of national American liberalism that 
died with him.  Kennedy was probably the last President who would ever have considered surrounding 
himself with great liberal public intellectuals like Walter Lippmann and giving at least some progressive 
ethos to the discourse of American political life.  His brother, however, had become radicalized in the 
years following his brother's death--- but alas he was surely to be murdered for daring to move to the 
Left of his very midly liberal older brother.  At work in both of those murders was the ruthless ruling 
class we have today----the people behind Operation Phoenix (Secord, Shackley, Rumsfeld, et. al), the 
Penatgon Papers/Watergate mess, Iran-Contra, Middle East intrigue, the Bush family, and now 9/11 and 
the cimes associated with it and similar successive events.  

     American liberalism in the political establishment died then----the ruling classes and the predatory 
Wall Street/Pentagon complex ruling our nation couldn't handle pragmatism and a generic concern for 
the common good; do you really expect them to support a full-fledged move to economic and 
democratic socialism at the root of an ethical and inclusive politics?  No, I don't think so.  And Chomsky 
is right that our voting merely ratifies this pervasive skullduggery, we become complicit.  We need the 
right frame, which in the case of JFK even Chomsky failes to provide.  Political assassinations are not 
acts of God or acts of nuts (isn't it interesting that John Hinckley just happened to be the son of George 
HW Bush's longtime oilman buddy and business comrade Michael Hinckley who also happened to live a 
couple of houses down from Bush in an exclusive Houston neighborhood?) or examples of deus ex 
machina.  They are always political acts, usually from witihn the ruling classes themselves----histories 
of the Arab world, China, Rome, and medieval Europe are replete with documentations of this.  In 
America, the murders of the Kennedys clearly fit this pattern---(where was George HW Bush on 
11/22/63 and why did Hoover mention him in a very important FBI memo entitled "JFK Assassination"?).  
Elected people shot dead with narry a serious investigation for decades----sounds to me like this 
represents a serious problem to the legitimacy of elections as valid vehicles for the expression of 
progressive politics or the common good.

If the ruling class will succeed in killing a President with so little protest from the public at large, how 
can we expect any officeholder to do anything but merge his political actions with the most extreme 
and malicious elements of a power hungry government dominated by a rapacious business elite?

So, I devote my energies to thinking about other alternatives----local power in an area where I do have 
some say, where the ripple effects of local democracy can gradually change and debase the power of a 
corrupt oligarchical ruling class....

Ted Kennedys support for Obama, then, becomes something of a subtextual comedy of a once-
ascendant political family that ceased to be important when its two most important political personages 
met fateful deaths at the hands of a ruling class that met with no opposition from a deluded and 
impotent public.

Nick


----------------------  Original Message:  ---------------------
From:    "John W." <jbw292002 at gmail.com>
To:      "Laurie at advancenet.net" <laurie at advancenet.net>, <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
Subject: RE: [Peace-discuss] Not voting 
Date:    Tue, 29 Jan 2008 23:05:40 +0000

> At 12:13 PM 1/29/2008, Laurie at advancenet.net wrote:
> 
> >While on the subject of "not voting", I happened to be noticing all those 
> >headlines about how the Kennedy's have passed the torch to Obama.  It made 
> >me wonder why on earth anyone would want to give someone else a flashlight 
> >that is burnt out and has no batteries.  Is that the new "kiss of 
> >death"?  In this election, it appears to be the equivalent of Bill Clinton 
> >passing the Hillary Clinton the mantle of Monica L.
> 
> 
> We shall see.  While certainly not everyone respects Teddy Kennedy, not 
> everyone respects ANYONE.  I give Teddy credit for at least retaining a 
> fair degree of "liberal integrity" throughout his roughly 40 years in the 
> Senate.  And while Teddy has not proven to be America's savior, or even a 
> close approximation thereof, there's still an aura around John F. and Bobby 
> Kennedy, even after all these years.  It's that aura as much as anything 
> that Teddy and Caroline are trying to pass on.
> 
> John Wason 
> 
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