The Lee Harvey Oswald Democrats

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Lee Harvey Oswald, arrested after an August 1963 pro-Castro protest

“The alienated radical suffers from feelings of helplessness and insignificance and, unable to find satisfaction in ordinary life, seeks to vindicate himself — to prove that he is a person of historical importance — by grandiose gestures on behalf of fringe ideologies, savagely lashing out against ‘the system’ he rejects in a sort of sour-grapes rationalization: Feeling rejected by society, he rejects society in revenge.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, “Squeaky Fromme, Sara Jane Moore, Lee Harvey Oswald and the Radical Impulse,” Aug. 27

What happened to the Democrat Party? When and how did the psychological impulses of radical alienation seize control of a large segment of our society, infusing them with the anti-religious, anti-family, anti-capitalist, anti-American spirit that dominates the souls of Democrats today? George F. Will describes the pivotal turn:

The transformation of a murder by a marginal man into a killing by a sick culture began instantly — before Kennedy was buried. The afternoon of the assassination, Chief Justice Earl Warren ascribed Kennedy’s “martyrdom” to “the hatred and bitterness that has been injected into the life of our nation by bigots.” The next day, James Reston, the New York Times luminary, wrote in a front-page story that Kennedy was a victim of a “streak of violence in the American character,” noting especially “the violence of the extremists on the right.” . . .
A Soviet spokesman, too, assigned “moral responsibility” for Kennedy’s death to “Barry Goldwater and other extremists on the right.”
Three days after the assassination, a Times editorial, “Spiral of Hate,” identified Kennedy’s killer as a “spirit”: The Times deplored “the shame all America must bear for the spirit of madness and hate that struck down” Kennedy. The editorialists were, presumably, immune to this spirit. The new liberalism-as-paternalism would be about correcting other people’s defects.
Hitherto a doctrine of American celebration and optimism, liberalism would now become a scowling indictment: Kennedy was killed by America’s social climate, whose sickness required “punitive liberalism.” . . .

Read the whole thing. Hat-tip: My smart-ass friend Ali Akbar on Twitter.

 

 

118 comments

  1. Wow. Once in a while, a mainstream columnist pens a good column.

    I’m just surprised it hasn’t happened before. But then, after 50 years, maybe they can end their worship of the Kennedys.

  3. If you look about on YouTube, you’ll find the first two to three hours of unedited broadcasts from CBS and NBC. Both constantly keep referring to an attack on Adlie Stephenson a few weeks prior, and label the Dallas area as right wing. You’ll also see the beginnings of the many conspiracy theories through the mentions of the Grassy Knoll and other reporting that will remind you of how wrong the nets get breaking news of shootings these days. Nice to see Frank McGee again, though…

  4. Murdered by Mafia bagman Jack Ruby before trial and forever silenced. The CIA hit Kennedy with the help of Giancanna, Marcello, Roselli, and Trafficante all of whom worked together on Mongoose. Oswald was a patsy.

  5. It’s always stuck in their craws (sideways) that Oswald was a sorry little failed commie. If there is one thing that studying Oswald teaches you, it’s that he was a sad, inadequate little man, who simply could not buckle down to a real life or a small competency.

  7. It’s always nuts in the first 24 hours, though. I usually figure that not one word in ten is even vaguely applicable to the actual situation, and it’s not gotten any better in all the years since.

  8. 100%. Do your research. The Warren Commission is pure fiction. Have you never heard of Operation Mongoose? Same players got rid of Kennedy over Cuba and probably Vietnam too. Oswald was never tried in a court of law or convicted of anything either.

  9. And there are dozen’s of witness’s that heard shots coming from places other than the book depository. No way Oswald did that all by himself if at all.

  13. If you want to engage in conspiracy fantasies, you may want to toddle over to InfoWars, or some full blown Truther site. Aside from the snark and sexual innuendos, this site prefers adult conversations.

  14. The only fantasy, Jeff, is the Warren Commission. I know, only “adults” like you don’t believe such things except when it’s conspiracy fantasies about the current POTUS generated by the loons at WND. Douche. And Operation Mongoose is fantasy? Johnny Roselli is fantasy?

    Lew Rockwell is a truther site?

    http://archive.lewrockwell.com/miller/miller40.1.html

    “Fifteen years later Dr. Perry told me in a surgeon-to-surgeon private conversation that the bullet wound in Kennedy’s neck was, without question, a wound of entrance, irrespective of what he had told the Warren Commission. This seasoned attending trauma surgeon had seen a lot of gunshot wounds at Parkland Hospital and knew what he was talking about. Dr. Perry also told this “off the record” truth to another physician, Dr. Robert Artwohl, in 1986, who writes, “One of the biggest regrets in his life was having to make the incision for the emergency tracheotomy through the bullet wound, because he was certain that it was an entrance wound. He remembered making a very good mental note of the wound since he was cutting through it.”

  15. Have you actually read the Warren Report? Everyone I know who says that hasn’t read it, just relies upon the distortions of conspiracy theorists.

  17. The HSCA disputes the Warren Commission report and claims there was a second shooter and you have people that testified to the Warren Commission that later recanted their testimony:

    ”

    At the first press conference after Kennedy died, a newsman asked Malcolm Perry, “Where was the entrance wound?” Dr. Perry informed the American public and the world that, “There was an entrance wound in the neck…It [the bullet] appeared to be coming at him…,” which on repeated questioning he twice more affirmed and the world’s press duly reported. This did not sit well with the Warren Commission’s view of the matter. Testifying before the Commission several months later, however, Dr. Perry supported its contention that the bullet shot into Kennedy’s back had exited his neck, not entered it. Accepting the proposed one-bullet, two-victim hypothesis as true, Dr. Perry agreed that the bullet wound he observed in the neck “certainly would be consistent with an exit wound.”

    Fifteen years later Dr. Perry told me in a surgeon-to-surgeon private conversation that the bullet wound in Kennedy’s neck was, without question, a wound of entrance, irrespective of what he had told the Warren Commission. This seasoned attending trauma surgeon had seen a lot of gunshot wounds at Parkland Hospital and knew what he was talking about. Dr. Perry also told this “off the record” truth to another physician, Dr. Robert Artwohl, in 1986, who writes, “One of the biggest regrets in his life was having to make the incision for the emergency tracheotomy through the bullet wound, because he was certain that it was an entrance wound. He remembered making a very good mental note of the wound since he was cutting through it.” (Reference in “Malcolm Perry, MD Falls into the Kennedy Vortex” by Gary Aguilar, MD,here).

    Given “marching orders from Washington” with instructions to “tell Dr. Perry to change his testimony,” Secret Service Agent Elmer Moore went to Dallas and “badgered” Dr. Perry into “making a flat statement that there was no entry wound in the neck.” Agent Moore confided this in 1970 to Jim Gochenaur, a friend in Seattle who was a graduate student at the University of Washington (!). Moore told him, “I regret what I had to do with Dr. Perry.” So threatened, this otherwise bold surgeon backed down and obligingly changed his testimony to suit the politically ordered truth that Oswald did it.

    Gerald Ford who was on the commission even complained that the CIA did not hand over all documents pertaining to Kennedy and destroyed others.

  18. Yup. I’ve “conversed” with these sorts. DemSoc isn’t going to listen, and isn’t worth talking with.

    It’s a sad state of affairs when people have more interest in old rumors than current events.

  20. JFK was the first person groomed to be President, and as a result, had a stable of hagiographers at his beck and call and on Joe’s payroll. They were successful in creating a deity and were waiting to write the words necessary to get him mentioned with the other greats. Oswald took that from Joe. It couldn’t be simply a failed commie fellow traveler; it had to be us. We were not worthy of him. The rest is history, as they say.

  21. There are a lot of failed commies out there. Which the (far fewer) successful commies don’t want to advertise. Hence their efforts to push back against Oswald being a Red.

  22. Forgive me, but your opening sounds more like you and your commenters. People grasping at the strategy of a Tea Party organization with a 20% approval rating or a Republican Party with a 28% approval rating. You guys sound like reactionaries, grasping at strategies which cannot work (the defnd Obamacare movements, as an example.

    I know from reading this site that y’all will toss invective my way, but, man, given how Stacy’s politics have always been and how those ideas (shy of 2010) have resulted in crushing defeats in three of the last four elections and loyalty to a party which has been able to elect a President with a majority once in the last 25 years.

    Good luck with the partisan hatred and all, but I’d suggest that the radicals pining against society ignoring them are you guys.

  25. People grasping at the strategy of a Tea Party organization with a 20%
    approval rating or a Republican Party with a 28% approval rating.

    1) Ratings only tell you what you ask them to. Unless you ask why did you answer that way, a rating is useless.

    2) Despite out-and-out daily lies, innuendo, and repeated characterizations of both positions and fact, a 20-30% approval rating, keeping in mind 1) is outstanding.

    3) If you tell the truth and properly characterize what’s being argued against by the “tea party” people overwhelmingly agree with them.

    4) “Crushing defeats” in elections? See 2) and 3).

    5) If they were crushed, why are you attacking them? They’re powerless, correct?

  26. -It is interesting to note that the MSM were immediately ready to blame the ‘extremist right wing [shudder!]. In the weeks preceding JFK’s trip, they had been incessantly warning of the dangerous Right in Texas.
    -Frank McGee was a good reporter. He got a raw deal after the Reagan Shooting.

  27. Partisan hatred? Something like this?

    Or maybe this?

    All of which is in line with Stacy’s post, even though the periods are decades apart. Liberals do enjoy being punitive.

    PS: If you see this as “invective”, you are a very Special Snowflake indeed.

  29. Lew Rockwell is whack-job and an Ideologue [I know, I know – I repeat myself].

    Oh!…by the way: The Illuminati called and they want you to know they’re watching you.

  30. ?

    He died in 1974.

    Are you confusing him with Frank Reynolds? (Whom I do not recall being criticized in 1981).

  31. What is disconcerting when you look at the Gallup site is that he had for 2.7 years consistently high voter approval ratings. Other than Gen. Eisenhower, no American president since 1947 has managed that. You have Presidents who experience a secular decline beginning to end (Johnson, Carter, Bush I, and Bush II), presidents who have durable periods of ebb and flow in public approval (Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Clinton), and you have the current incumbent, whose completed pattern is unclear.

    The noise machine can be very effective when amplified by newspapers like Philip Graham’s and networks like Walter Cronkite’s.

  32. The HSCA disputes the Warren Commission report and claims there was a
    second shooter and you have people that testified to the Warren
    Commission that later recanted their testimony:

    The claims were discredited by the National Academy of Sciences more than 30 years ago.

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