In memory of the “peace President,” John F. Kennedy who was assassinated 61 years ago today, my longtime friend Dave Ratcliffe prepared this summary for publication on his website:
1963 – November 22nd – 2024
On another Friday, 61 years ago, A President For Peace was very publicly executed in the noon day sun. While his generals wanted to win the Cold War, he sought to end it. The escalating list of conflicts between President Kennedy and his national security state before he was assassinated includes:
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- 1961-1961: negotiated peace with the Communists for a neutralist government in Laos;
- April 1961: Bay of Pigs and JFK’s response: “I want to splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.”
- 1961-63: Kennedy-Hammarskjöld-UN vision, which kept the Congo together and independent;
- April 1962: conflict with big steel industrialists;
- October 1962: negotiated resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis by pledges of no US invasion of Cuba and withdrawal of US missiles from Turkey made to Nikita Khrushchev;
- 1961-63: diplomatic opening to Third World leadership of President Sukarno;
- May 6, 1963: Presidential order NSAM #239 to pursue both a nuclear test ban and a policy of general and complete disarmament;
- June 10, 1963: American University Address;
- Summer 1963: Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty;
- Fall 1963: beginning of back-channel dialogue with Fidel Castro;
- Fall 1963: JFK’s decision to sell wheat to the Russians;
- October 11, 1963: Presidential order NSAM #263 to withdraw all U.S. personnel from Vietnam by 1965;
- November 1963: Khrushchev decides to accept JFK’s invitation for a joint U.S.-Soviet expedition to the moon.
Every US administration since then has pursued the agenda of war and domination which has brought the world ever closer to its inevitable conclusion. There is only one way to stop it, which is for each of us to recognize our own complicity in it and refuse to continue our support.
To that I add my own observations and opinions about the state of the world and the recent US Presidential election.
The American Republic—Can it be Restored?
It seems that the majority of Americans today are unwilling to acknowledge that the American Republic, like Roman Republic before it, has over a long period of time, been transformed in numerous stages into a far-flung empire controlled by a (in this case, transnational,) oligarchy.
These two worldviews are the primary basis for the bitter divisions that exist today within American society, divisions which are being exacerbated by the oligarchs’ deliberate moves to sow doubt, confusion, and conflict by means of false-flag operations, propaganda, and limitations on free speech, and by mandating behaviors which in the name of emergencies, like climate change, pandemics, and threats from foreign “enemies,” are designed to further weaken any opposition to their agenda of domination.
Is there any hope at all of reclaiming the American Republic in the face of such immense corruption and concentration of power? Perhaps, but it must be done from the bottom up by the American people ourselves, not from the top of the political hierarchy, but achieving it requires that people respect and listen to one another despite our political, cultural, religious, ethnic, and other differences, and that we unite in common cause to advance those things we can agree are of fundamental importance, like peace, fellowship, community, freedom, fairness, and the common good—in short, love.
The Trump victory can be explained by two things, the first is the general sense that something needs to be changed, that the continual expansion of centralized power and control must be interrupted and reversed, and secondly by the fact that opposition to it has expanded from a lone would-be champion to a broader-based movement that has attracted some unlikely players whom Trump has embraced and promised to share power with. People like Elon Musk, and former Democrats like RFK, Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard who are committed to addressing some major popular concerns like the government’s instigation and support of armed conflict around the world, open borders, the growing power of huge corporations, monetary inflation, the decreasing share of the economic product that goes to labor, the shrinking middle-class, and the wrecking of the economy by continually increasing budget and trade deficits. Given, as usual, only two viable choices by the American political duopoly, the only surprise about the outcome is the rather lopsided extent of the victory.
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Beyond Money 