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I finished reading about 10 books on the Kennedy assassination to understand the significance of Trump& #39;s release of over 50,000 documents related to the case. One book I read came out just now and as written by a left-wing prof who read through the docs. Here& #39;s what I found:
The left has indeed done an almost 180-degree turn since the days of Mark Lane& #39;s RUSH TO JUDGMENT or the Garrison trial of Clay Shaw in the 1960s. The old left was skeptical of intelligence orgs like the FBI and CIA.
There had been decades of left-wing writers who& #39;d made the case that the killing of JFK was a coup by government intelligence and the military-industrial complex. These researchers rejected the Warren Commission because they viewed "experts" with skepticism.
Trump& #39;s documents were amazing in that they confirmed many of the arguments that had long been rejected as "conspiracy" theories. But the left was strangely silent on this. Oliver Stone, director of 1991& #39;s JFK, recently said he& #39;d never make his classic movies in today& #39;s culture.
Let& #39;s revisit Stone& #39;s 1991 film, even with its many flaws. It pointed out that gay male culture was the offspring of Hoover and Cohn: right-wing, authoritarian, hateful of Kennedy& #39;s liberalism, strangely judgmental, and anticommunist. Castro jailed them, calling them bourgeois.
Stone& #39;s 1991 film presented the ties among corporations, the military, intelligence, and organized crime as a threat to the republic, and a danger to American sovereignty. He showed how panels, commissions, experts, etc. can and do lie.
Stone& #39;s 1991 film was clear that Lyndon B. Johnson had a lot of unsavory traits and looked guilty of something, though nothing provable, based on the evidence we have.
Stone drew generously from Garrison, who depended on a lot of other writers who were writing a trove of Kennedy books in the 60s and 70s. These writers did not see the Democratic Party as an engine for their ideals. It was, to them, corrupt, and guilty in part for JFK dying.
After reading through a dozen of these, I think I see why the left has not made more out of the Trump document release. Today& #39;s left is not the left that critiqued the Warren Commission. Today& #39;s left is the pseudo-Democratic group that wanted Kennedy dead. It& #39;s Johnson& #39;s left.
The same forces that aligned against Kennedy have now aligned against Trump: Democratic operatives, FBI, CIA, networks of sexualized authoritarians, corporations, media, and a bunch of phony revolutionary movements.
They& #39;re using the same tactics. They& #39;re calling people Russian agents again. They& #39;re bringing in generals to discredit anyone who questions them. They& #39;re more open about hating Trump than these groups were about Kennedy, but that fits our time compared to then.
They wanted a coup against Trump and knew they couldn& #39;t assassinate him physically. So they& #39;re more sophisticated, but it& #39;s the same. They can& #39;t revisit the Kennedy files bc it would expose that today they are doing everything the left claimed it hated for decades.
All the left-wingers who are excited about the Trump release are literally very old. They& #39;re people disconnected from cancel culture and the anti-Trump coup. I feel sad for them. They waited decades to be vindicated and now nobody& #39;s even paying attention.
Stone is right that he could never produce JFK today. The left denies that the gay community was right-wing in Hoover& #39;s mold, authoritarian, conspiratorial, allied to dictators and spies. They could never let people& #39;s memory of that time return.
The left can& #39;t critique Johnson or by extension the Vietnam War anymore, they& #39;ve built a whole narrative about how they "switched sides" with GOP & lost their racist base due to Johnson& #39;s wonderful presidency. So much of what was written about the 1963 killing is untouchable
And the left is basically intoxicated with their power over the "expert" professions, so they can& #39;t revisit the Warren Commission and all the coverups of the assassination by doctors, generals, editors, professors, professionals, etc. It risks prompting questions about Fauci.
