Nov 04 2007

Who Killed the Kennedys

I was eleven in ’63…when they killed John Kennedy. That was the end of my innocence, and the end of America’s too. 

I shouted out,
“Who killed the Kennedys?”
When after all
It was you and me

Rolling Stones – Sympathy for the Devil

I was twelve in ’64 when they murdered the Freedom Summer Workers Mississippi.

freedom-riders-murdered

I was sixteen in ’68 when they killed Dr. King and John’s brother Bobby.

murder-an-american-value

I was 17 in ’69 when we gathered at Woodstock seeking peace and solace from an uncaring world.  Our peers were dying like flies in a bogus war in Vietnam, which our government and society treated as the cost of doing business. 

woodstock_a-cry-for-help

We stood up against the forces of darkness in the 60s but were defeated when most people failed to stand up with us.  If we had all stood up then we’d have different and happier stories to tell now.

doomed-to-repeat-history

I was eighteen in ’70 when I read Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the West.  To realize that you’ve been fed a steady diet of systematic lies when all along you believed yourself to be a free citizen of a nation that was a force for good in the world is a heartbreaking epiphany.

our-national-character

“The Indians … have at least one distinct impression regarding the
government. They know that it never keeps its word. Any old chief will tell
you that white men are all liars.”

Frederic Remington, artist and war correspondent

The truth is hard to face.

In my youth it was the truth of racial and social justice, and the truth of Vietnam. 

truth-of-vietnam

The truth is hard to face.

“I got nothing against no Viet Cong. No Vietnamese ever called me a ‘nigger’. “

Muhammad Ali

The truth is heartbreaking.

The truth of Gettysburg, My Lai and Haditha.

gettysburg-my-lai-haditha

The truth of Wounded Knee, Kent State and Selma.

promises-not-kept

The truth of Dallas, Memphis and Birmingham.

truth-of-dallas-memphis-birmingham

The truth of Abu Ghraib, Gitmo and Brentwood.

cold-hard-look

We all let them do it, so we’re a part of it.  Having done it, we let them get away with it, and again we are all a part of it.  If these crimes go unaccounted for, we are all guilty.

The fault is ours, we who watched it happen.  All those who were quiet in the face of fascism.  All those who for whatever reasons failed to stop them.  All of us good Germans.

We all wade in the blood of innocents.

So don’t ask who killed the Kennedys, because after all…it was you and me. 

red-cloud-77

peace-and-love

Afterword:  Am I trying to tear America down with pieces like this?  No, that work has already been done.  I am trying to get America to face itself in the mirror so that it might become what it was meant to be.

29 comments

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    • OPOL on November 4, 2007 at 22:31
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  2. then MLK and RFK were indeed the loss of innocence & the loss of many hopes and dreams.  I often wonder what this country could/would be today, had they all lived and continued to lead.

    IMHO, the silencing of Rev. King’s voice of hope and nonviolent protest of evil, and the violent destruction of the Kennedy dynasty as well as the subsequent rise of the Bush dynasty have led to many of the giant leaps backward that this country has taken in so many areas.

    • Turkana on November 4, 2007 at 23:07
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    that our actions have proven we are, at our worst, no better than any other nation. the promise is that we have ideals towards which everyone around the world aspires. the conflict between the problem and the promise has defined our history.

    • Temmoku on November 4, 2007 at 23:18
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    Have things changed all that much?

  5. I can’t get mad at Al for not running

    • oculus on November 4, 2007 at 23:38
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    was probably the first national disaster fully broadcast on TV.  Very powerful.  Everything just shut down.  Later we learned JFK didn’t walk on water and pursued many deeply flawed policies (Bay of Pigs, Vietnam), but he is still revered by many. 

  8. somewhere along the line, the method for getting rid of those who wouldn’t tow the line for the corprotocracy switched from bullets to airplane crashes. So that now we can talk about “accidents” instead of “assasinations.” 

    RIP Paul and Sheila Wellstone

  9. It seems the CIA had a hand in Killing the Kennedy’s ….how else can you explain Lee Harvey Oswald…joining the military. learning Russian, going to Russia coming back and being on both sides of the Cuban issue and sharing space with other agents in New Orleans. It’s classic CIA activity.

    And then we have the Man From Gloss….he’s involved with the CIA too. Isn’t that interesting?

    Where does it all end?

  10. Russian agent from KGB assassination directorate was on the ground in Mexico City all day in a plane that was being held for takeoff to Havana.  Oswald (fall guy) never made it. He was set up as one of the shooters, but the plot was run out of Cuba with Russian assistance. LBJ knew this and told anybody who would listen. But back in the Cold War, what would you do, start a nuclear war on Cuba and Russia because one man died? That is the decision that was made back then, and enforced. Oswald was probably recruited by the Russians when he was stationed in Japan, and he might have been the radio tech who betrayed Francis Gary Powers U2 flight to the USSR. Also, Kennedy had an entrance wound low on his throat, it was not the tracheotomy. Shooter was in the sewer side drain in front of the motorcade. Ruby killed Oswald on orders.

  11. have been and are and it’s not pretty!  We, Americans, need to take a hard look at what we are, in fact, not in words, heartbreaking as it is.

    • fatdave on November 5, 2007 at 05:05
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    it seems to me that Presidents (and Prime Ministers) good and bad, have long had the facility to play their game using a stacked deck. When they’ve felt they needed to, all they  have to do is make the sign to the dealer. Such pracice is enshrined in our rulebooks, sanctioned by long dead committees. I can see no reason to continue to extend such facilities. Both hands on the table please. At all times. And signmakers and their buddies get their asses kicked out of the casino at the time of perceived offence,their chips are sequestrated and they make their case for re-entry from the parking lot.

    If you know what I mean.

  13. excellent, OPOL!

  14. Defense of corporatist ‘Meriker:

    Q  not long ago liberals loathed the Central Intelligence Agency as the enemy of democratic governments and they installed dictators around the world, and these days you read the papers and people on the left are rallying to the defense of the CIA and indignified, uh, indignant when the CIA is politicized –  how did this come about, that some, suddenly liberals are championing the CIA?

    Y’..I don’t know.  You know, I…

    Q  Isn’t it, do you find it strange or ironic that all of a sudden they’re wild for the CIA?

    You know I think that a lot of the people that did have problems with the CIA, I mean it was, it was a very vocal minority, I think most people didn’t really think about it that much.  It wasn’t really on their radar screens, umm, in the way that now it is because now we’re in this huge war, and it was the CIA that was warning, you know, the the administration against invading because there were no weapons of mass destruction.

    There’s a little secret I don’t think that I’ve ever written about, but in 2001 I was underemployed – unemployed, underemployed, you know, I was in that, you know, you all have been there, right, dotcom people?  Kind of like, between jobs and you do a little contract work, and, and uh, so, um, that’s where I was, in this really horrible netherworld of “will I make rent next month,” and so I applied to the CIA. And I went all the way to the end, I mean, it was to the point where I was going to sign papers to become employed within the services, and it was at that point that the Howard Dean campaign took off, and I had to make a decision whether I was going to kind of, join the Dean campaign – that whole process – or if I was going to become a – a spy. 

    [ laughter ]

    And it was, it was going to be a tough decision afterwards, but then the CIA insisted that if, if I joined that they’d want me to do the first duty assignment in Washington, D.C. and, I, I hate Washington D.C., and I – it was six years in Washington D.C. before they’d post me overseas and I was like, yeah!  That made the decision a lot easier. 

    But what was really amazing about that experience was that every single person I talked to in the CIA – and I must have talked to dozens of people – you know, psychologists and, and, you know, people in the leadership, and you go through this whole, like, six month process, really in depth.  Every single one of them was liberal – every single one of them – and, to the point where I was talking to somebody – we were talking about my website ’cause they knew about my website [clears throat] and she was agreeing with me on everything and, and um [cough] this is before the, the war, right, and she kept saying man,  they’re going to take us to war, and, you know, it’s… the evidence isn’t there, and this is crazy, and I, I was saying, is this just you or what, and she’s like no, we’re all like this here, we’re all, this is a very liberal institution. 

    And in a lot of ways it does attract people who want to make a better, you know who want to make the world a better place, I mean people who are internationalists in general really aren’t people who say ‘I want to go bomb the f&%# out of some other country, right, that’s, that’s not… do you have to bleep that out on the radio? 

    [Laughter.]  ( ) let’s try to say that again [laughter]

    It couldn’t be all that you’re bleeping out, ? 

    And, so it’s, I mean, and when you think of it in a more logical sense I mean that makes a lot of sense.  ‘Course they got their, their dirty ops and this and that, right, but as an institution itself the CIA is actually really interested in a stable world, that’s, that’s what their interested in, and stable worlds aren’t created by, by, destabilizing regimes and by, by starting wars, uh, they’re done so by other methods, assassinating labor leaders and – naw, I’m kidding – [laughter] eh, but that was really surprising to me.

    So, so, coming from that, and of course I think a lot of conservatives would kind of take that as, you know, evidence that the CIA was out to undermine Bush or something ’cause they are a bunch of liberals, and they are, they were a bunch of liberals but, but ultimately that, that was, that was an eye-opening experience for me, and, and, because ultimately I, I don’t think it’s a very partisan thing to want a, a calm, stable world, and, ah, even if you’re protecting the American interests, I mean, you know that can get ugly at times, but, but generally speaking, I think, I think as an organization their heart’s in the right place, and, as little as before I’ve had a chance, you know this was before my time, I’d, I’d never had a problem with the CIA, and uh, it was just why I’d have no problem working for them, but, um, but I don’t know. 

    I mean, I, also,  keep also in mind I came to this country in 1980, um, so, I don’t, y’know, a lot of this more historical hostility towards the CIA by, by the left is, is before my time, so, I may be missing nuances or, or something that, but, but uh, from a modern perspective, you know, obviously things are a little different.

    Still feeling so betrayed I could spit.

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