Something to Think About on Thanksgiving
More relevant than it's been in a long time, the story of JFK and his courageous turn toward peace.
How long shall they kill our prophets
While we stand aside and look?- Bob Marley
I recently deleted my WordPress blog because it was costing me too much to keep it up and no one ever read it. One post I was particularly fond of was about James Douglass and his book JFK and the Unspeakable. I linked to a video where Douglass told the story, and talked about Thanksgiving, and how it sometimes falls on the anniversary of JFK’s assassination. On this 59th anniversary, I feel the story is more relevant than ever, so I’m recommending it again.
I just finished RFK’s American Values, and it was a reminder to me about how far we’ve drifted from the politics of the Kennedys. By today’s definitions of the terms, I don’t think we can really define them as “left”, “right” or “center”.
Their foreign policy was nothing even remotely resembling that of anyone in Congress, left or right. And they most certainly wouldn’t have allowed the medical tyranny we have experienced over the last three years. They were not communists, they were not imperialists. They did not believe in war, and they worked to help the poor of the entire world.
Obviously the current confrontations with Russia play into this, and not since the Cuban Missile Crisis have we been so close to nuclear annihilation. I don’t think anyone can deny that JFK would be doing diplomacy with Putin were he president today, given the fact that he did it with Khrushchev at the height of the Cold War.
But the other thing that I think makes this always relevant, is that we can learn from their sacrifices. If JFK and RFK couldn’t fix our broken system in the ‘60s, what man or woman do you think can single-handedly fix things now? Is it fair to prop up a leader who promises to repair our broken world, when we should have learned almost 60 years ago what happens to such leaders? Not only should we have learned it, but we should have taught it to our children.
War is over if you want it.
- John Lennon
Leaders are controlled by metadata these days, as Yuval Harari matter-of-factly explained at Davos. Should that not work, do you think the powerful would hesitate to kill anyone who threatened their bottom line? The CIA had heart attack guns in the ‘70s. It wouldn’t even need to be a spectacle. And only the “usual suspects” would question it.
We should all be grateful to JFK for what he sacrificed for us, and we should use his story to inspire us all to gather the courage to be the leaders we wish we had. In solidarity we can put our collective foot down and have the world we want, in peace.
A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.
- John F. Kennedy