OF KENNEDY, THANKSGIVING, AND TRASH CULTURE

    Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day, where Americans dutifully gather with family members and pretend to like each other while stuffing their faces with marijuana-infused foods to accompany the invariably-improperly cooked turkey. After the homo-themed Macy's Day Parade and the NFL extravaganzas (I think they're up to three now), the real Big Event of Black Friday violence and mayhem breaks out. We've really progressed a long way from the days of our Pilgrim Forefathers.

   One thing that we can be thankful for was that a ceasefire was called in the Palestinian Civil War and both sides agreed to release prisoners (yes, Israel does have them too). We'll probably have more to say about this in an upcoming post, though it is quite telling that the otherwise-intransigent Zionists suddenly buckled after an emergency meeting of the BRICS where this statement was released:

   Amazing what a superpower without a massive Corporate lobbying presence impeding it can achieve. With Wall Street on a tight holiday schedule and Defense stocks and Oil futures potentially impacted, the news has thrown the Neocons and their Churchian coat-tail riders into a blue funk. However, today's news of a small plane crash in a Texas parking-lot and a car explosion on the Rainbow Bridge in New York have the Controlled Opposition at Fox News and elsewhere quoting all their 'Security Experts' that we might be under a terrorist attack! Why Hamas would attack non-military targets after they'd achieved their objective is not explained: but I'm certain some imaginative narratives will be forthcoming.

   Another story which has been passed over in silence is that today marks the 60th Anniversary of the Kennedy Assassination. Most Americans today probably don't know or care who John Kennedy was---it was an era of Dead White Males---and everything that happened before the 21st Century may as well as happened before Noah's Flood as far as most are concerned. 

     Yesterday, I found a great Youtube channel with loads of Kennedy Archival videos. It was amazing watching how American political and media figures in 1963 reacted to a National Emergency against the hysterics 60 years later over things like a flu outbreak or an errant weather-balloon. 

    Harry Truman said "It was a terrible tragedy...but we have to meet these challenges. It's has happened to us before, and we have to meet them." It should be mentioned that Truman's way of handling the Media ought to be a model for anyone who deals with them. 

    Richard Nixon said when asked about the murder of both Kennedy and Oswald: "It doesn't frighten me, but it concerns me. These things sometimes happen in America and I would suggest that all Americans tomorrow, on a day which President Johnson has very properly designated a National Day of Mourning, that we pledge ourselves to fight this tendency towards hatred and violence which we saw evidenced these last two days. It is a tendency which exists; and it is incumbent upon all of us in our daily lives to fight any evidences of hatred and violence when they occur."

   Lyndon Johnson stated, "All who loved Liberty will mourn his death. As he did not shrink from his responsibilities but welcomed them, so he would not have us shrink from our responsibilities to carry out his work beyond this hour of national tragedy. As he said himself, 'The energy, the faith, the emotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it; and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.' 

   John B. Connally from his hospital bed gave an inspiring interview. Among what he said of the attack was that it had shocked us into facing "the cancerous growth that is being permitted to expand and enlarge itself on our society...it is an extremism on both sides that basically is the genesis of our self-destruction as a people, if we are to be destroyed. I am not the least bit fearful of any foreign enemy as long as we have within ourselves not hate, but human understanding; not passion and prejudice, but reason and tolerance; and not ignorance, but knowledge and the willingness to use that knowledge."

  Dwight Eisenhower said: "The American Nation is a people of great common sense, and they will not be stampeded or bewildered...Americans are loyal and it's just this kind of occasional sort of psychopathic action that occurs...the American people will stand solid and not be stampeded."

   It was interesting to note that there were no calls for government crackdowns; no 'with us or against rhetoric'; no hoarding of toilet-paper and bottled water; no partisan angling. The call from all quarters was for unity and self-reflection. Today we see exactly the opposite, stampeding is exactly what the Media and Political Classes do; and it seems that Governor Connally's prophecy may have come to pass. The contrast between then and now is likely why the Corporate Media has brushed off this anniversary and why the Academic Mafia discourages historical investigation in general. People who look into the past start making comparisons and our superficial culture of hedonism, paranoia, and narcissism just doesn't measure up very well---even against relatively recent events.