28-06-2012, 08:42 PM
Jim DiEugenio Wrote:Charles I can see that you know very little about this matter also.
So please read Lisa's excellent essay and then read mine since I will touch on matters she leaves out.
What you are quoting does not come from any "diary".
It comes from that CIA asset Timothy Leary. And it is complete crap that I will go over minutely in my essay. Leary did not utter one word of this stuff until decades after Mary Meyer died. ANd he did it to sell books. Just like he made up an alleged affair with, get this, Marilyn Monroe. Now if you believe that Leary slept with Monroe then you might buy Ultimate Sacrifice also.
But the idea that JFK was changing in 1963 is absurd. It was one of the faults with the Douglass book. And it is something I will correct in my book this fall. Kennedy could not be changing since, once in the Senate, he was never a Cold Warrior to start with. Kennedy got his education not from toking with Mary Meyer in 1963. But from his discussions in Edmund Gullion's office in Saigon in 1951. And this is what started him on his opposition road with Allen Dulles which exploded after the Bay of Pigs in 1961. And its what caused him to immediately break with the Dulles brothers foreign policy once he was inaugurated. And this was exemplified in Laos, Vietnam, Indonesia, COngo and even Iran at THAT TIME! This idea that Kennedy was "turning" after the Missile Crisis is, in large part, a myth. But bullshit artist Tim Leary did not know that. So he sold it in his book. But it only holds if you don't study Kennedy's career. IF you do it exposes Leary as the liar he was. And the idea that JFK needed someone like Mary Meyer to show him the way in foreign policy is so ridiculous as to be risible.
But this is the snake oil that Janney is selling. Straight out of John Simkin.
Please CD, you are better than that.
Jim,
Your vision is impaired.
So too are your abilities to read for subtext and reason logically;.
My reference to the "couldn't control him" quote was sarcastically expressed negative criticism of Janney's work -- or at least most of it. Your inability to grasp this is, in a word, Fetzer-esque.
Let's talk about change -- of sort that JFK may have experienced during his presidency. But first let's try to add basic logic to your reading skill set.
Even if JFK did not evolve intellectually or spiritually during his presidency -- which is to say, even if he was an enlightened humanist before January, 1964 and experienced unprecedented stasis in the areas thereafter -- this tells us nothing about his willingness to act in ways contrary to said enlightenment.
In other words, he may have been willing to compromise his values -- for reasons relating to electoral politics and/or geopolitical strategies, for instance -- to the degree that he was rightly or wrongly perceived to be "controllable" during a meaningful portion of his presidency. It's the "any more" construction that is most important here.
Now, my understanding of the human mind and the human spirit leads me to conclude that your argument regarding JFK's unchanging attitudes in certain critical areas over the final three-plus years of his life is utter balderdash. I am as familiar with his youthful embraces of enlightened/liberal political and social standards as I am with his later Cold Warrior posturings.
JFK's heroism is best understood as his positive response to the changes roiling internally. The stasis for which you argue has no basis in centuries of observation -- scientific and spiritual -- of the human condition.