[Peace-discuss] The Kennedys' fake liberalism, then and now

[C. G. Estabrook]

I didn't realize that my goal in these discussions was to cheer you up, 
John.  I though we were trying to see what's really going on, through 
the obfuscation of the most sophisticated PR system in history, the US 
media.  (Hitler wrote in My Struggle that the reason Germany lost WWI 
was that their propaganda wasn't as good as the Brits'; he promised that 
Germany wouldn't make that mistake again, but the US system far 
surpasses anything 20th century Germans were capable of.)

In fact this country is far more civilized than it was in JFK's time, 
largely owing to the social movements that got underway at that time 
("the sixties") and in fact expanded in the next decade (the '70s being 
by far the most progressive decade since WWII). That's why the "excesses 
of the '60s and '70s" have to be calumniated by politicians on all sides 
-- as Obama did last week. The criticism that grew up then had to be 
countered by one of the great ideological rectification campaigns in US 
history, comparable to and more extensive than the Palmer Raids and 
McCarthyism (both synecdoches -- the repressive movements indicated by 
those names were not owing to one man). Neoliberalism -- worse, the 
"Reagan revolution" -- are the poor names we have for it.

Even though the Bush II admin may be the most dangerous in US history, 
it is nevertheless far more circumscribed in its evil-doing than 
Kennedy's was. The Kennedy-Johnson admin conducted a much more murderous 
war in a area peripheral to US interests, and for years with no 
appreciable domestic dissent. Bush launched a war at the center of US 
foreign policy concerns only after the most massive anti-war 
demonstrations in history, and he'll leave office universally reviled in 
spite of a narrow military success (i.e, the US will continue in 
effective control of ME energy resources).

The casual murder and mayhem that Kennedy ordered throughout Latin 
America became more difficult, even by Reagan's time.  When the Reagan 
administration announced that their foreign policy would be a "War on 
Terror" in 1981, they had in mind invading Central America as Kennedy 
had invaded SE Asia -- but they found they couldn't do it.  Reagan's 
foreign policy was driven underground ("Iran-Contra") by the US anti-war 
movement, most of it church-based.  Reagan killed hundreds of thousands, 
but now the Bush people (mostly Reagan people) can't even do that, 
except on the periphery (Haiti).  A self-aware Latin America and 
domestic criticism would prevent it.

The American ruling class is not stupid. The right-wing counter-attack 
since ca. 1980 was absolutely necessary from their POV, because of the 
success of popular criticism from the '60s on.  But people are not 
fools, either.  In spite of that massive PR system, they have some idea 
of what's going on in the country, however much the chattering classes 
try to speak for them.  That's what keeps our rulers awake at night. The 
only real fantasy is found in the public arena of that PR system, the 
media. ("The rascal multitude are the proper targets of the mass media 
and a public education system geared to obedience and training in needed 
skills, including the skill of repeating patriotic slogans on timely 
occasions.")

That's what those of us with the leisure to read and write, listen and 
talk, should be attacking.  As (of course) Noam Chomsky said, "If you 
assume that there's no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. 
If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, there are 
opportunities to change things, there's a chance for you to contribute 
to making a better world. That's your choice."

And it is.  --CGE

John W. wrote:
> At 01:54 PM 1/30/2008, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> 
>> I'm astonished that anyone can look at the Kennedys with the advantage 
>> of distance and see them as anything other than what they were -- 
>> arriviste apparatchiks of an oppressive American empire.  They made 
>> great efforts to hide what they were of course, but they're clear in 
>> hindsight.
>>
>> The vicious JFK administration "got this country  moving again" by 
>> substantially increasing the crimes of the Eisenhower admin -- which 
>> had an impressive list of its own, including Iran and Guatemala.
>>
>> JFK began with a massive tax cut for the rich and then started a war 
>> -- far more murderous than Iraq -- based on fear and lies.  His admin 
>> launched subversive military operations around the world ("Green 
>> Berets"), installed death squads in Latin America, and was willing to 
>> blow up the world in order to stop the USSR from doing in Cuba, 
>> defensively, what the US was doing offensively around the world.  
>> Luckily Khrushchev's good sense and the bravery of a Russian naval 
>> commander saved the world from Kennedy's madness.  (Vasili 
>> Alexandrovich Arkhipov: see <www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB75/>.)
>>
>> Those crimes are being celebrated again, and Mike Taibbi points out 
>> one contemporary parallel:
>>
>>     http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/12502
>>
>> <excerpt>
>>
>>     There's no denying the clear difference in the
>>     two campaign styles. In Barack Obama versus Hillary Clinton, we've
>>     basically got Kennedy-Nixon redux, and I mean that in the most 
>> negative
>>     possible sense for both of them -- a pair of superficial, posturing
>>     conservatives selling highly similar political packages using 
>> different
>>     emotional strategies. Obama is selling free trade and employer-based
>>     health care and an unclear Iraqi exit strategy using looks, charisma
>>     and optimism, while Hillary is selling much the same using hard, cold
>>     reality, "prose not poetry," managerial competence over "vision."
>>
>> <end excerpt>
>>
>> But it's much worse than that.  --CGE
> 
> 
> And I have every confidence that you, Carl, the sentinel in the 
> watchtower, will burn the midnight oil to keep us all abreast of just 
> PRECISELY how MUCH WORSE it is.
> 
> I struggle to compose a question to which (a) I don't already know the 
> answer, and (b) I WANT to know the answer.  Let's try this one:
> 
> Carl, since Barack Obama is "odious" and (may I quote you, Mort?) 
> revolting, repulsive, repellent, repugnant, disgusting, offensive, 
> objectionable, vile, foul, abhorrent, loathsome, nauseating, sickening, 
> hateful, detestable, execrable, abominable, monstrous, appalling, 
> reprehensible, deplorable, insufferable, intolerable, despicable, 
> contemptible, unspeakable, atrocious, awful, terrible, dreadful, 
> frightful, obnoxious, unsavory, unpalatable, unpleasant, disagreeable, 
> nasty, noisome, distasteful; informal ghastly, horrible, horrid, gross, 
> godawful; beastly;
> 
> and since JFK and his administration were "vicious" and (may I presume 
> to borrow your words again, Mort?) revolting, repulsive, repellent, 
> repugnant, disgusting, offensive, objectionable, vile, foul, abhorrent, 
> loathsome, nauseating, sickening, hateful, detestable, execrable, 
> abominable, monstrous, appalling, reprehensible, deplorable, 
> insufferable, intolerable, despicable, contemptible, unspeakable, 
> atrocious, awful, terrible, dreadful, frightful, obnoxious, unsavory, 
> unpalatable, unpleasant, disagreeable, nasty, noisome, distasteful; 
> informal ghastly, horrible, horrid, gross, godawful; beastly;
> 
> and since apparently EVERY AMERICAN PRESIDENT WHO HAS EVER SERVED 
> THROUGHOUT HISTORY has been grossly deficient in any sort of redeeming 
> qualities whatsoever...presumably because, I don't know, power corrupts 
> and absolute power corrupts absolutely, or something along those lines...
> 
> ...WHY ON EARTH do we even bother to TALK about these things?  Why do 
> YOU bother to inform us, day after day and week after week and month 
> after month and year after year, of all the gruesome details of the 
> myriad ways in which our (supposedly) elected politicians are viciously 
> betraying us? Are you just wanting to depress us?  Is THAT the whole 
> point of this exercise?  I'd really like to understand, should we dare 
> to hope for "the triumph of hope over experience" (which is why you say 
> you vote, even though you tell the rest of us NOT to vote), what exactly 
> it is that we might dare to hope for.
> 
> John Wason
> 
>