The Presidency After the JFK Assassination: Or why Sanders Supporters (myself included) were Destine

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

d to reenact Groundhogs Day which (I hope) is redundant.

Hello. I want to start a thread on what we mean by "the presidency" and how a lack of mediated public sphere discussion on what presidents can and cannot do (especially after the 1963 Coup) facilitates the use of "left" Democratic Primary candidates who are nothing more than role players for Corporate Rightist who will eventually chosen by Corporate America as the most pragmatic Republican available.


I will start with the observation that Sanders challenge to Clinton was remarkably weak on foreign policy. IMO this is not so much a reflection of Sanders poor judgement as it was a reflection of The National Security State by 2016. In other words, had Sanders dared to break the bipartisan mums the word consensus on Syria et. al., had he chosen to really linger on Libya... it would have been beyond the NSS 2016 pale and .. he would no longer have been airwave-viable in the completely corporate America of 2016.


What has this to do with the Kennedy Assassination? Everything, because it is precisely the growing power of the National Security State, often hidden by the deceptive New York Review of Books ish marketing of "The Imperial Presidency," that prevents younger voters and those saved from history by the french abortion pill of history better known as "magazines" from understanding just how much of today's campaigns are, in fact, role playing for a Democratic Party that has become Republicans without protest.


It is our failure to connect the JFK Assassination to the longer term evolution of the Democrats (or failure rather to make this connection more widely understood) that enables these hamster wheel primaries with so many trillions of dollars in wasted energy. This must be more democratically shown.

While I supported Sanders for reasons of making SOME reality more widely available i.e. MSM airtime that would be gained, I knew there was never a question of Sanders being able to win. A Pax Americana In Planned Decay does not suddenly change directions after 48 years of One Direction. That more people cannot see this one direction is because of the impact of the assassinations have not been widely explained in terms of their effects on the Democrats and today's complete hegemony of the National Security State.

[Tracy Riddle]

Yes, it's all theater, and I think many Americans have figured that out (which is why voter turnout is often low). Sanders could not even begin to question the "War on Terror," let alone 9/11 itself. He would have put himself beyond the pale, in outer darkness with the "conspiracy nuts." As long as the terms of the debate are set so narrowly - as they were in the buildup to the War in Iraq (invade now, invade later? Big force, small force?) - we will never get anywhere. The Democrats are only debating the details of the global empire - where exactly to station the troops, which "humanitarian disaster" to focus on next, etc.

[Don Jeffries]

Our "bipartisan" foreign policy effectively means no debate: https://donaldjeffries.wordpress.com/201...-no-peace/

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

One reason I am going so montonously "meta" here is because I think there are a lot of Sanders supporters, most of the younger ones, who are going WTF right now.


The National Security State, and its long term evolution is the answer to this WTF, because it depicts campaigns as increasingly slender apertures of what is permissible, as time passes. What I mean here is that ... maybe in 1976 a Dem might have gotten away with saying xyz about foreign policy , by 1984 only y and now nothing at all.


The elephant in the debate room is the evolution of the National Security State. By eliminating this evolution, people can only see the campaigns one- dimensionally and are led to believe that a candidate like Sanders has a chance he does not because.... its 53 years after a CIA Coup and not.. say 25 years after a CIA Coup.

On a side note it will be noted that this is precisely what Noam Chomsky does. Sure he says some true stuff re CIA but this is done at the incredibly high cost of depriving the reader of a sense of the EVOLUTION of the National Security State i.e. in year 15 elected officials could still do x, y z but by year 45 no longer. Similarly the worthwhile but very misleading book Double Government CAN ONLY make its important claim on condition that it describes the National Security State as somehow a "Trumanite Network" as if the NSS was born fully developed in 1947 with no course of pushing and shoving, no EVOLUTION which might be too dangerous because readers would get to see when exactly, the National Security State overtook the three branches once and for all.

The slow, intenetted demise of the Sanders campaign represents an opportunity to reach new, younger readers with the answer to their biggest questions right now. For those answers lie in the history of the National Security State's evolution.

[Jim DiEugenio]

I agree that Sanders' attack on Clinton and her foreign policy was not anywhere near what it should have been.

IMO, HC was a very poor Secretary of State. I mean, just the case of Libya would have been enough for me not to vote for her. But when you add in the rest of her Mid East foreign policy, its even worse.

I have come to see the Clintons, not through the prism of the phony scandals that the hard right have tried to pin on them--unsuccessfully I should add. But through the work of writers like Thomas Frank and Robert Reich.

The Clintons are essentially GOP Lite agents, except inside the Democratic Party. In other words, their net result has been to make the Democratic Party like Eisenhower, since there is no Eisenhower wing of the GOP anymore. Except they may be worse than that. Look at NAFTA, and what Clinton's man on that, McClarty, did later. He ended up being the Democratic version of Kissinger in Washington as a big lobbyist.

Howard Dean had it right about what the Clintons did to the Democratic Party. They sanctified the DLC.

In my view, that is the kind of campaign Sanders should have run: a battle for the soul of the party.

But pundits like Krugman did not want it to be that. I think they banked on HC being the safer candidate. The better bet to beat Trump. The irony being that Trump has pretty much imploded. Which anyone could have predicted would happen. As far ahead as HC is over him, add about five points and that is the lead Sanders would have right now.

[Tracy Riddle]

The Mena, Arkansas connection to the Iran-Contra network reveals how far back the Clintons go with the national security/covert ops people.

[Lauren Johnson]

Building off the Mena, AK scenario as well as the use of the Arkansas State bonds by the CIA for money laundering, Clinton had effectively turned his state over to the Secret Team.

This made him an obvious choice for the presidency as Terry Reed documents.

[Jim DiEugenio]

Isn't there a movie in production about Barry Seal?

That documentary isn't bad, but it concentrates too much I think on Mena.

The CIA drug running during the Contra War was much bigger than that--coming in through California and Florida also.

But I understand what you mean about Clinton's indoctrination.

[Albert Doyle]

The Medellin Cocaine Cartel's main American manager was Gambino crime family member Jon Roberts (aka John Riccobono). In his book American Desperado he writes an interesting section where he describes CIA agents coming to him and offering a deal to look the other way if he helps use his cartel smuggling air assets to smuggle weapons to Central America. Roberts had no choice and went along with it. In this account he describes meeting Barry Seal and more importantly describes how Barry was set up for assassination by the government because he knew too much.


Mr Roberts was the main Medellin Cartel American manager responsible for up to 15 billion dollars of cocaine importation at the height of the crack epidemic. After he was caught by the feds in the early 1990's he ended up doing less than 3 years in jail and died a free man with a trophy wife in a plush Florida beach side home in 2011. Ironically Roberts lost his 150 million in profits when the US invaded Panama and confiscated illegal funds in its banks. Roberts wrote Bush knew about it and that money was part of the incentive for the invasion.

[Peter Lemkin]

It is disheartening to me that so few can see how the National Security/Financial State has consolidated its power and grip on all the levers of power and media. 11/22/63 far from being their only operation was IMHO a key moment (as was 911 along with the other big assassinations). Even many 'JFK Researchers' are stuck in the debates on number of shooters, who was where in Dealey Plaza, et al., and not on how that day was a coup d'etat by the NSS against the American People as well as the Constitutional framework of government. It was the castration of the Presidency. Not that we had a fully democratic Nation and lost it....it was always run by the elites and favored them...but rather than moving in a slow positive direction, it started to move in a quick negative direction - which has brought us to today's post 911 U.S. Policestate. Yes, Nathaniel, one could use the Sander's campaign and its summary demise to teach the lessons of Post-WWII history. There is a vast 'untapped' discontent in the USA - but because they don't generally have any idea of the real source of their discontents - nor the history to support that - they can't form an ongoing opposition and force for change. OWS fizzled out after strongarming by the police and covert forces; and now it seems so has the BS movement....but this battle goes back to the Haymarket Affair and long before that. Zinn is a good source on the long history of dissent and destruction of dissenters/reformers and the rise and growth of the consolidation of central and secret power - always there from the days of the 'founding fathers', but now a huge cancer that is poised to kill the host [the Nation/World/Ecosphere]. To those who can see it, it is very clear...but to those who are following the magicians wand, it is just a series of confusing flourishes - and the tricks involved remain hidden.