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Dan Stevenson

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About Dan Stevenson

  • Birthday 07/26/1964

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  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Northern California
  • Interests
    Social Justice
    Critical thinking
    Unsolved mysteries
    political history

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  1. The change in my opinion of Trump is undetectable next to the change in my opinion of the Capital police, the Replican house caucus and the American people. Sure I can't blame all Americans for this, but, when you factor in the nature of the events and the reasons for them, the degree is support inside and outside congress is extremely disturbing. I may not ever recover from it. The shear numbers of people with those beliefs, while small as a percentage, is in the millions. It is enough to cause long term and significant problems for our Republic. I'm sure it affects every profession and region. It makes it hard for me to trust anybody when so many are hateful and violent and don't respect our government institutions. I think the economic pressures brought on by global climate change, pandemics, overpopulation and pollution are corrupting people into accepting extreme positions and questionable beliefs. If we don't create a massive and strict regulatory system to limit social media, things will spin out of control pretty quickly. Good luck doing that with all of the 1st amendment issues that involves. Anyway, I was never a Trump supporter. Very early on, I had hopes that he might be a populist president, but long before the Mueller investigation, I realized that he is a sociopathic narcissist with some extremely dangerous authoritarian personality traits that somehow hypnotize otherwise reasonable people into supporting him. He is the most dangerous world figure since Hitler. And the only reason he isn't more dangerous is that he constantly advertises what he is doing. Hitler was a little more stealthy than that. We haven't seen the last of him and, by the time it's all over, who knows how much worse he will become. He is well loved. He is probably better loved by the right than MLK was ever loved by black America. Trump is replicating himself like an out of control virus in communities across America. The next guy will be a lot scarier, more careful and better armed. The constitution, government institutions and Democracy are in the crosshairs.
  2. I guess I agree but we need to be careful about something here: Too often we are distracting from what is primarily a law enforcement issue by going into questions of mental illness, politicizing it or resorting to spiritual practice to get above it all. I have been watching a lot of FBI files and other LE related shows, all documentaries. So, while the FBI itself can be corrupt, it portrays itself as operating on certain principles. And those principles are sound principles when actually practiced. There are very specific principles to use to determine if someone can claim mental illness as a defense. And, while I agree that they are nuts in a political sense, I fear it distracts from a more pressing and sinister problem. You see the FBI is really good at investigating crime and determining motive as well as profiling the criminal. If we are to investigate these people, either before or after Jan. 6, we will see a very prosecutable case for intent to commit a violent felony. Essentially these folks are perfectly aware of what they are doing and are able to make reasonable choices regarding their conduct. They are consciously choosing to target their enemies with intent to do bodily harm. And that includes murdering Democratically elected officials and their staff. Why the FBI is not actually treating these cases this way is beyond me. And that makes this situation even more sinister and dangerous. And I fear that we may be slipping into a lawless state. In summery, my point is that violent crime needs to be recognized as violent crime and needs to be dealt with as violent crime. And, since violent people endanger all of us, we need to not lose focus of that by labelling them anything else, even if it makes us feel better.
  3. Tom: I am familiar with that quote and that post. It is a perfect example of how a dedicated man can become or feel helpless from trying to face up to the depressing facts surrounding political scandals. And he may have been right to feel helpless. I don't know. FWI, I am still going through some of the older posts so I don't create too many redundancys. Ron and Don, I share your perspectives. The tole it takes to work towards truth and justice, whatever that means, is considerable. It makes me wonder how any truth movement will ever become a mass movement. That is something to research as well. It also makes me totally respect all of you and it inspires me to write my own book. For now, I am thrilled to find this community and I am learning a lot just from researching this "JFK Assassination Debate" topic on this board. I am working forward from 2004 and have only just begun 2005. So I have read many great posts by all here and I have wanted to respond at times but felt it better to wait and not bump old threads. FWI, technically I don't qualify as a teacher or researcher. For now I'm really just a dedicated student. But I do pay close attention and I do have my own theories. To me the biggest keys that I have yet to see adequately answered are... 1) The trajectory of the kill shot--Grassy knoll or farther in front towards the overpass? 2) The behavior of Jackie Kennedy during the ordeal and to some degree after? Not suggestion anything sinister here, just curious. 3) Oswald, of course 4) JD Tippitt's murder and the Dallas Police in general. 5) Why did Ruby seem to be everywhere and know everyone, even though he was "low level"? The guy got around. 6) To a lesser degree, how did a guy (read crook) like Hoover manage to stick around for almost half a century as the top law enforcement official? Kennedy should have fired him before he did all the rest. That would have changed everything. Anyway, I have already read quite a few posts on these topics, but have yet to be fully satisfied. But I am still back in 2005. So I'm sure something will pop up.
  4. Larry: Interesting you bring up the term "helpless" part of my thesis for my Psychology BA included studying a concept called "learned helplessness". It is related to attribution theory. Briefly, attribution theory has to do generally with how people attribute cause an effect. Is it outside their control (external locus i.e.. luck) or inside their control (internal-i.e. effort). Learned helplessness is what happens when folks become external after learning that effort makes no difference. These concepts are very relevant to political movements and the relationship of the individual to the larger power structure. These psychological effects are very real. IMO--Many folks in this world are suffering from learned helplessness, which is like untreated grief or PTSD, without realizing it. It may explain the political apathy currently affecting modern American society.
  5. Larry: I posted this because I think the author has a point. But I'm not sure how you express strong dissent against things that are of concern without sounding like this. Or is it a type of PTSD leaking out through political discussion after being shell shocked by things like political assassination, 9/11 etc. When I was a child, I was very positive and happy. And as long as I stayed naive, I remained that way. Is this type of editorial, an attempt to protect against the negative reality and the subsequent psychological damage as much as it is to suggest a better way of expressing oneself? Maybe I should read your book. I did buy it, but I gave it away as a gift. He finally started reading it and was all fired up about how messed up the FBI was. We are on a book trade system. I'll read it when I get it back from him.
  6. Ha ha When I first posted this, I did not realize that the essay was literally written right after the JFK hit. Was someone feeling a little defensive? Were the elite's at Oxford trying to shame people away from talks of conspiracy? Did it work? How much water cooler talk was similar to this in response to those that dared suggest LHO did not act alone?
  7. I'm sorry. I forgot to include a general summary of the essay: The article was a quick follow up to a lecture given at Oxford in NOVEMEBER OF 1963! The article does a good job of covering the many areas where conspiracy research has achieved some valance. It basically atributes those that are questioning the official account or are suspicious about secret societies as angry. He also point out that his critique is by no means partisan. His over arching point is that there is a paranoid style to such folks. And they are only one step above those that fear someone is out to get them personally. If you'd like me to copy and paste the entire text, I can do that. Here are his first 2 paragraphs: ALTHOUGH American political life has rarely been touched by the most acute varieties of class conflict, it has served again and again as an arena for uncommonly angry minds. Today this fact is most evident on the extreme right wing, which has shown, particularly in the Goldwater move­ment. how much political leverage can he got out of the ani­mosities and passions of a small minority. Behind such move­ ments there is a style of mind, not always right-wing in its affiliations, that has a long and varied history. I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the qualities of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind. In using the expression "paranoid style," I am not speaking in a clinical sense, but borrowing a clinical term for other purposes. I have neither the competence nor the desire to classify any figures of the past or present as certifiable lunarics. In fact, the idea of the paranoid style would have little contemporary relevance or historical value if it were applied only to people with pro­foundly disturbed minds. It is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that makes the phe­nomenon significant. When I speak of the paranoid style, I use the term much as a historian of art might speak of the baroque or the mannerist style. It is, above all, a way of seeing the world and of express­ing oneself. Webster defines paranoia, the clinical entity. as a chronic mental disorder characterized by systematized delu­ sions of persecution and of one's own greatness. In the para­noid style, as I conceive it, the feeling of persecution is central, and it is indeed systematized in grandiose theories of conspiracy. But there is a vital difference between the para­noid spokesman in politics and the clinical paranoiac: although they both tend to be overheated, oversuspicious, overaggres­sive, grandiose, and apocalyptic in expression, the clinical paranoid sees the hostile and conspiratorial world in which he feels himself to be living as directed specifically against him; whereas the spokesman of the paranoid style finds it directed against a nation, a culture, a way of life whose fate affects not himself alone but millions of others. Insofar as he does not usually see himself singled out as the individual victim of a personal conspiracy, he is somewhat more rational and much more disinterested. His sense that his political passions are un­selfish and patriotic, in fact, goes far to intensify his feeling of righteousness and his moral indignation.
  8. Hello, This is my first attempt at a new topic thread. I joined this forum to find a new community after spending a few years on a college football (American) forum. I feel this community to be so much more intellectually satisfying than the old one. I have been diigently reading old threads to try to get caught up and to avoid redundancy. And, as I am still back in early 2005, I was not planning on posting anything new for quite a while. However, something came up due to my unfortunate decision to share some of what I've been learning here on my old college football board. Even though in general sports tends to bore me these days I find it easier to interact there until I get my bearings here. That was a bit of a mistake. In response to sharing some of my thoughts about the global players behind world events, I received a link to an essay titled "The Paranoid Sytle in American Politics and other Essays" Here is the link: http://studyplace.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/files/courses/reserve/Hofstadter-1996-Paranoid-Style-American-Politics-1-to-40.pdf While I only gave a quick scan of the essay, I saw enough to conclude that the piece is one of the best and most articulate examples of the manner in which legitimate decent and investigative inquiry is summarily and dismissively marginalized as representing some kind of character flaw or mental aboration. I have several ways that I handle this kind of thing. But I am wondering if anybody is familiar with this particular piece of writing. What do you think about it? How have you or would you respond, if at all? My response is that the article is irrelevant because it fails to distinguish between legitimate concerns stemming from well documented sources (ie. The Project For a New American Century) of a new world order and consolidation of global power and a specific attitude or attributional style of a particular personality type. While normally I like to stay strictly on topic regarding the JFK assassination, the essay does use the JFK assassination as an example and so it is directed at all of us. Thanks, Dan I
  9. I am checking to see if my signiture is working.
  10. I grew up in Berkeley, California in the 60s and 70s. I was raised in a progressive household that was very active in the anti-war and civil rights movements. My parents waited almost a full generation to have kids and then my brother was conceived shortly after JFK announced his candidacy. I was conceived just shortly before his death. There were no more kids. A family, whose inception almost perfectly brackets the Kennedy presidency. I have a BA in Psychology from UC Santa Cruz 1987 and have studied current events and politics as well. I have a fascination for unsolved mysteries and a gift for solving them. To say I'm obsessed with the 3 assassinations of the 60s would be an understatement. It is my life purpose, especially now as I am very deep into researching a potential book. I do not think it is irrelevant to study these things. It sharpens the mind and increases the capacity for critical thinking and discernment. It is the search for truth in all things that motivates my life and I am thrilled to have found my community. I do not have any research or scholarly achievements in the area of the assassination but I have some knowledge and I am in the process of reading the entire JFK assassination thread history from 2004-present. I may not make it through but I would like to be well informed before posting. I have some unique theories regarding the JFK events. I am currently looking at 3 areas that I think need further investigation: The continued post war political tension between the north and the south that drives a covert civil war in America today; The participation of the Dallas police that day; The possible involvement in occult ritual, Alien/ET and mind/control elements in the death of JFK. I would love some of the better researchers on this board to look into the history of the south and the civil war and how those politics are connected to the event of modernity. This film was recently published on youtube. It is a documentary that I think many will find interesting. It sums up my view of the broader and more specific issues involved in JFK's assassination. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1Qt6a-vaNM
  11. Mark: In answer to your question why LBJ would wait so long, it is a good question. I often wonder how JFK stayed alive for a full 3 years of his presidency. I believe that the assassination was the cumination of a perfect storm for the plotters. With RFK and JFK collectively pissing off many different parties that have since been implicated, it was only a matter of time. But it was also a matter of location. Remember that killing a president is relatively easy. Getting away with it, especially if there are many folks involved, is a great deal more difficult. Attempts were made to kill him before Dallas, but they failed. Dallas became the second perfect storm, especially for LBJ, who was from Texas. So, in answer to you question, LBJ, had to wait until Kennedy came to Texas. Some think that Kennedy would not have come at all had he not been influenced by Goldwater's trip to Texas just a month prior. I believe that LBJ was so eager to off JFK, that his team actually messed up the plan by shooting too early and missing from behind. That forced the backup team, which I believe was nothing more than the Dallas PD themselves to fire the lethal shots from in front. I believe there were other teams there as well and I think some were contract killers that later tried to take credit in order to get paid. But the better plan would have been to kill JFK in a less populated area after he left the plaza. That plan never got carried out. But the teams were there to do it. Because the plan didn't go as planned, we have a very messy set of concequences that were covered up by the other parties involved (FBI, CIA, Dallas Police and SS).
  12. I don't like forced choice polls and I would have liked to choose "all of the above" but number 5 does the best job of that because it uses the term "right wing", which kind of sums up all the parties involved. Clearly had Kennedy remained as conservative as he was when elected, he would not have been killed. Combine that with all the other extreme anti-left measures used during the cold war and it makes sense. Remember, that you can't be left without being "communist" in this country. That was very much true in the McCarthy era that led up to Kennedy's years as president. And it provides the backdrop for the coup that continues today.
  13. I was raised in Berkeley in the 60s and 70s, and have always had a fascination for unsolved real mysteries. I love the challenge of debating issues of a controversial nature.
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