Posted on 11/21/2011 8:38:16 AM PST by Seizethecarp
Immediately after the assassination and ever since, the right has tried to deflect any connection between its fevered Kennedy hatred and Oswald’s addled psyche with the fact that the assassin had briefly defected to the Soviet Union.
America’s violent culture wars had started before JFK was shot. They were all on display in Oswald’s Dallas. At least in 1963, polling showed that only 5 percent of the country—a fringe—subscribed to the radical anti-government views championed by the John Birch Society and other militants of the right. These days, that fringe, whether in the form of birthers or the tea party or the hosts of Fox & Friends, gives marching orders to a major political party.
…read Manchester or 11/22/63 or any other account of that time, and the vitriol that was aimed at Kennedy in life seems as immediate as today. It’s as startling as that “You lie!” piercing the solemnity of a presidential address like a gunshot—or the actual gunshots fired at the White House last week by another wretched waif. In the end, that political backdrop is what our 44th and 35th presidents may have most in common. The tragedy of the Kennedy cult is that even as it fades, the hothouse brand of American malice that stalked its hero stalks our country still.
(Excerpt) Read more at nymag.com ...
How does the author reconcile Oswald’s attempt on MG Edwin Walker?!?!?
Looks like they might be setting up a “See, what did I tell you moment”. I wouldn’t put it past them.
D*mn, all this time I thought that slimy communists were “left wing”.
Silly me.
I’m sooooo glad I’ve got the NYT intellectuals to set me straight.
/s
I call that an abuse of the power of suggestion.
Frank’s just got his panties in a wad because it looks like his messiah is toast.
Colonel Mustard, with a lead pipe
I was watching a documentary on the Kennedy assassination last night. It was a series of “as it happened” news clips from the time of the assassination to the presidents funeral. I was struck by how the television continually made reference to Oswald as a “Marxist”, an “avowed communist”, a “communist sympathizer”, as well as his connections to his Fair Play for Cuba Committee and his time in the Soviet Union. I was struck by it because that part of Oswald seems to be cleansed from the narrative when discussed these days.
This magazine should go out of business.
Not just Oswald, but most of the whackjob assassins of the past century or so have been leftists, communists, progressives, anarchists, etc. Definitely not right wing conservatives.
JFK? I think of RFK and the first moslem terrorist attack and his murder. While JFK’s assinsation was a sick crime the killing of his brother should have been a much bigger warning. One that told us NEVER do business in the middle east. Sirhan Sirhan’s was a much bigger warning than Oswald’s.
The real rub for Rich is that it’s Foxnews leading the country! Communist zealots, like Rich, will continue their mind numbing rhetoric until something bad happens!
I guess Frank “Total Moron” Rich missed the fact that it was a Progressive/Marxist that shot Kennedy
Most conservatives are really anti-waste, not anti-government. We're against the senseless destruction of wealth taken from those that created it. Fat government just happens to be the biggest destroyer of that wealth.
Oswald handing out “Fair Play For Cuba” flyers...yeah, dead giveaway. He was a Goldwater boy!
I was going to type something about the removal of the top half of his head, but I thought that might be insensitive.
Are they insane? He was a wild eyed communist.
"We are faced with the most evil enemy mankind has known in his long climb from the swamp to the stars. There can be no security anywhere in the free world if there is no fiscal and economic stability within the United States. Those who ask us to trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state are architects of a policy of accommodation."
Ronald Reagan October 27, 1964
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