Will Ruha writes on the death of JFK

[Douglas Caddy]

Will Ruha wrote on Facebook on April 9, 2018 the following:

 

The sudden, stark, violent assassination of President John F. Kennedy marked the seminal event in the lives of American youth, transforming our rather blithe and carefree world of mirth and fun to a new, terribly tragic awareness and enveloping melancholy, accompanied by a lasting nostalgia for the innocence lost.

A few years after the Allen Dulles-orchestrated CIA “Big Event” in Dallas, I discovered this very apt poem by Tennyson, that has since become a personal favorite:

Break, break, break,
On thy cold grey stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.

O well for the fisherman's boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead,
Will never come back to me.

Social observer Ralph Rosenblum once wrote an article about Penn Jones Jr., in which he astutely surmised the underlying motivation of Penn and most all of us in the Assassination Research community: grief. He said our search for the truth was, in no small part, a purposeful expression of our profoundly lasting grief. To this I would add that it is also a measure of our attempted expiation of guilt at having so heedlessly underappreciated our egalitarian democratic young leader until it was too late.

We lived, then, largely ingenuous lives, guileless in their joyful romps and bravely encouraged dreams. Under Kennedy’s masterful leadership we had the temerity to believe that we might actually forego thermonuclear extinction and live out - “along lines of excellence” - lives of expanding scope and fulfilled promise. It seemed, in those few brief years, to indeed be, as poet Robert Frost prophesied, “a Golden Age of Poetry and Power,” the apogee of a new emerging era of American exceptionalism rooted in cultivation of each citizen’s “full use of one’s powers” toward new bold, selfless and cooperative acts of courageous experiment to maintain (a however tenuous) peace and improve the lot of mankind on this planet. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, bright, handsome, witty, and wise, was our modern Pericles, our offer to humanity of an iconic world statesman of exceptional vision, cogent argument and articulate voice. He who had barely eked out a popular vote victory, had, by his brilliance, charm, and charismatic rule, become accepted by more than 70% of the populace. Alas, too accepted. We assumed we had time to express our appreciation at the polls in 1964, and over the course of an ensuing, even brighter next four years, only to be brought up short by the bursting volley of shots in Dallas.

And so, our protracted process of grief, of expiation, of melancholy and nostalgia. Grief is the prelude to wisdom. We, now, in our old age, are wiser. And in that wisdom is our lament over not only his loss, but that of much of the society he led. As Albert Camus wrote in lamenting the death of his friend Leynaud, “With him here I saw more clearly, and his death, far from making me better, as the books of consolation say, made my revolt more blind. The finest thing I can say in his favor is that he would not have followed me in that revolt.”

Camus understood the nature of assassination as a political tool (so too, Allen Dulles, who thus chose to portray Oswald as a “Lone Nut” assassin): “But no good is done to men by killing their friends, as I know only too well by now.” The difference is, Camus, like Kennedy himself, rejected the notion of any socio-political-economic entity having value over that of the individual human being. This the Algerian Resistance leader expressed thusly: “And who can ever justify that dreadful death? What are duty, virtue, honors compared to what was irreplaceable in Leynaud? Yes, what are they but the paltry alibis of those who remain alive? We were cheated of a man three years ago, and since then we have had a heavy heart, that is all I can say. For us who loved him and for all those who, without knowing him. Deserved to love him, this is a dead loss.” Thus, to turn a phrase:

And so the ship of state goes on
to its haven under the Hill,
But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still.

[Joe Bauer]

JFK was something better. We didn't know how much better until he had the chance to lead us.

There was, up until JFK's murder, a naivete about many things in our USA world.

I have always proposed that this naivete was mostly about corruption in our system of government on almost every level - city, county, state and federal. 

It was this massive matrix of corruption, in it's combined power, that killed JFK IMO.

This corruption was so hugely pervasive and entrenched yet accepted and unaddressed in a perverse and deliberately controlled silence and downplaying. 

The national media ( our expected clarion of surreptitious threats to our freedoms and rights ) never really confronted, investigated and reported this reality in any truly adequate and meaningful way.

RFK tried to confront organized crime in this country. He seriously tried to bring it's nefarious and massive influence to the full conscious awareness of the American people. He wrote a book with the same purpose -"The Enemy Within."

RFK and his work on the McClellan and Kefauver committee hearings were given national coverage, but again the sleeping pill of apathy kept being pushed and taken.

As negatively influencing on our society as organized crime was, it was just a part of an even larger Goliath of corruption.

We had corruption in the mix of the wealthy class ( the corporate structure ) with our military and secret agency government which, by the time of JFK had gained so much power JFK was concerned enough to try to reign it in.

This corrupt mix was defined in Eisenhower's Military Industrial Complex warning speech in 1961.

Then you had the corruption of fanatical right wing political groups. Financed by the wealthiest men on Earth...Texas oil. You had extreme racial hatred groups.

You had corrupt politicians in the pockets of these wealthy. LBJ being the epitome of this. Nixon later. Hoover was in a class of civil rights violating corruption all by himself. Wiretapping and black mailing anyone he felt threatened by.

You had hugely corrupt major city police forces. Most of whom also harbored extreme racial bias views and values and hatred of JFK  for his perceived tolerance in this area.

You had corrupt agency people who gave more respect and loyalty to mobsters than their own president.

There was probably loyalty corruption in JFK's own Secret Service by those who disliked and had no respect for JFK for whatever reasons...his racial tolerance, philandering?

What the JFK assassination and immediate whacking of the chosen patsy Lee Harvey Oswald did was to shock average Americans and force them to consider and contemplate the true reality of what was really going on all around them, especially with this massive corruption of power in the highest levels of our government, just as Eisenhower had stated and warned us about in his farewell address speech.  

The truth and reality of all this corruption was finally being exposed by many impassioned JFK citizen researchers working on their own independent of and beyond the timid scope of our national media - a media corrupt in their refusal to adequately investigate this subject and the JFK and Oswald's assassinations as well.  

These independent researcher investigative discoveries of this corruption were more convincing than the official debunking and downplaying line and have the stood the test of time in this regards.

Will Ruha's essay (as well as Ralph Rosenblum's above posted article)  on grief being a prime motivating feeling and weight for people like Penn Jones and other researchers like him in the JFK event was eloquently stated and thoughtful.

But I would add that the loss of "ignorance is bliss" naivete regards the "massive corruption of power" in this country the JFK researchers uncovered in their years of serious and solid digging is what hit them in the gut, heart and mind as hard as anything.  They soon enough were made aware of the real world of power and control in this country and the corruption involved...and that reality was and still is a very heavy thing to have to think about, accept and deal with.

It all equated into a "loss of trust" in almost all our governmental institutions and which was only enhanced with Viet Nam, Watergate, the vote count stopped presidential election of 2,000. 911,  etc. 

This loss of trust has since 11, 22, 1963 become the norm for the last 55 years in the minds of at least half of all Americans who care about such things. That is the accepted sad truth and an extremely damaging one for our society for a very long duration.

Last thought: Corruption was one of America's top 3 greatest legacies in the twentieth century.

Thank you for tolerating such an ineloquent rant.

Edited April 12, 2018 by Joe Bauer

[Michaleen Kilroy]

1 hour ago, Joe Bauer said:

 Corruption was one of America's top 3 greatest legacies in the twentieth century.

 

Two great posts, guys. 

But Joe, you gotta tell us, what wee the other two?

[Joe Bauer]

Mike, what were the other two?

Our huge technological leap. Mind boggling in it's speeding strides. In just one hundred years we advanced more in this area than the previous one thousand years.

Our role in the world after World War II and our evolving ever since into a permanent and massive high alert military state with a military more powerful and costly than any other in history.

??? Your thoughts?

 

Edited April 12, 2018 by Joe Bauer