President John Fitzgerald Kennedy is lionized, partly because he was assassinated, but largely because of myths about Camelot and because he was handsome, suave, debonair, and a gifted speaker.
President Donald Trump is vilified, partly because he is anti-establishment, but largely because he comes across as a boorish, vindictive buffoon.
Image counts in politics, or actually, in all human endeavors. We imperfect humans make superficial judgments about our leaders, sports figures, Hollywood stars, and neighbors based on image and not substance. This is due to how we are hardwired to make quick judgments and to the fact that we don’t have the time or opportunity to get to know everyone intimately.
A lot of mischief can be done in politics and elsewhere by this fact of human nature, as well as by another fact of human nature—namely, that the masses don’t have the time to study history, because they are too busy making a living, raising a family, making Mark Zuckerberg rich by wasting their lives on Facebook, or watching the Kardashians, whoever they are.
What does history show about JFK? Well, it shows something that has gone unmentioned in the media in its fevers about Trump’s firing of FBI Director Comey and alleged obstruction of justice. Let me yell it:
JFK’s brother Robert F. Kennedy was his attorney general, for God’s sake!
It’s hard to imagine a worse conflict of interest. Does anyone think that justice could be blind when a sibling headed the Department of Justice?
This goes way beyond Attorney General Loretta Lynch meeting with Bill Clinton on the tarmac at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport while an investigation was supposedly being conducted of his partner in sleaze, Hillary. Heck, Jack and Bob came out of the same womb, grew up together with the same silver spoons in their mouths, frequented Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard together, played touch football together, and together had another brother, the womanizer and playboy Ted, who, later as senator, would join Senator Chris Dodd in joint bangings of women and would leave a young woman to drown.
Some Camelot.
Imagine the uproar if a Trump sibling were attorney general today. The staffers at the New York Times and CNN would be struck with debilitating fevers in addition to their current historical amnesia and brazen and blatant biases.
JFK and RFK are remembered for averting a nuclear war in the Cuban missile crisis. But it is forgotten that their unconstitutional Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, which was a de facto act of war, led to Fidel Castro becoming a national hero in Cuba, to Cuba becoming fixed in the Soviet Union’s orbit, and eventually to the missile crisis.
A commission was formed after the failed invasion to investigate how it had come about and what went wrong. A leading member of the commission was Attorney General Robert Kennedy. This would be akin to Trump’s daughter or son-in-law being on a commission to examine his alleged ties to Russia.
Congress did not authorize a special prosecutor to see if any laws were broken before, during and after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Nor, for that matter, was a prosecutor authorized to uncover what JFK and RFK knew about the coup against South Vietnam leader Ngo Dinh Diem and his subsequent assassination. But a special prosecutor has been authorized to look into Trump’s alleged relationship with Russia and his firing of FBI Director Comey.
Do you smell a double standard?
Speaking of FBI directors, it has been conveniently forgotten in today’s political theater that there was bad blood between FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and JFK and RFK. The Kennedys hated Hoover for good reason, especially his abuse of power. They should have fired him. If they had done so, they would have done a great service to the country, because Hoover wouldn’t have gone on to engage in even more nefarious actions, such as his racially motivated digging up of dirt on Martin Luther King. But they couldn’t fire him, because he had dirt on the Kennedys, including JFK’s sexual liaisons with women in the White House.
Democrats are in such a lather about Trump that some of the loonier ones in the media and Hollywood speak openly about the country being better off if he were to be assassinated. They don’t realize, however, that Trump’s major failings and personal weaknesses probably would be overlooked by future generations if their fantasy came true.
Hey, it’s happened before.
