I don’t understand Americans’ love affair with JFK. He was left-wing and vulgar. He and his terrible wife made vulgarity the norm not only in politics but in society. He died tragically but isn’t it time to move on? No victim status should last that long.
I do recognize, however, that since I wasn’t born here, it’s normal that I don’t understand the attraction of the Kennedy mystique. I do, however, understand the nation-state and the only existing alternative.
The recent release of the JFK files revealed absolutely nothing new, as was to be expected. But the perennially excitable online personalities immediately concluded that “the CIA killed JFK” which nothing in the released papers indicates.
The CIA is only possible and necessary in the world of nation-states. It’s not needed when there are no nations and we have, instead, an undifferentiated space of flows where liquid capital moves at lightning speed. “Defund the police / FBI / CIA / the national military” is a neoliberal dream. We are parroting neoliberal slogans — be they left or right-wing — because we’ve been infected with neoliberal mentality.
The nation-state is the only model of statehood that legitimizes itself through the consensus of the governed. It was born with the words “we, the people”, and that was a revolutionary idea in the 18th century. The post-national neoliberal state doesn’t seek the consent of the governed. It acts on behalf of the oligarchy. We can see it in big things and small. At my university, the neoliberal leadership decided to destroy physics without caring in the least that neither students nor faculty want to get rid of physics. We used to have academic self-governance, and it’s now gone. Decisions are made by a small group of people who act on principles that are alien and incomprehensible to the plebs they rule.
The nation-state gives a lot. A high standard of living for the majority. A large middle class. Rights. Welfare in the broadest sense. Good things that we all enjoy. But it asks for something equally big in return. We need to be “we, the people.” Not a raging maw of individual need but a group that perceives itself as such. The Chair of Physics acted as a perfect neoliberal subject when he said “close other departments before mine.” As a result, he didn’t save physics. He made sure that we all get picked away one after another. The hyper-competitive “me, me, me” mentality feels good but has terrible results for almost everybody except a small bunch of the very malleable and exceptionally lucky.
The CIA, the police, and the nation-state (which is the mother of them both) are wildly imperfect. When I speak in defense of the nation-state, people begin to list its catastrophes and imperfections at me as if I were unaware of them. I am very aware, though. The problem is, that the neoliberal post-national state has all of the same catastrophic imperfections without any of the good stuff. The only thing it offers is that it flatters our inner hubristic ego maniac. And we are sacrificing the standard of living, the safety in the streets, the good roads, the vast middle class, the chance to study physics at a cheap state school, and our good life as “we, the people” to the narcotic pleasure of this ego stoking. We are turning away from the nation-state, robbing it of any need to exist.
My conservatism is entirely dedicated to the idea that we need to stop our death march towards the shiny new thing of neoliberal post-nation state and consider everything we are discarding in the process. Neoliberalism makes even family a class-based privilege that increasingly fewer people can have. It destroys the possibility of being at peace with our bodies, our past, and our culture. It puts us against each other in a battle for constantly dwindling resources without giving us a chance to wonder why they are constantly dwindling.
We need to stop wailing and wanting. We need to stand still for a bit and get a hold of ourselves. We are destroying something very imperfect for something much, much worse. There is no narrative that actually defends neoliberalism. Nobody has come up with an idea for why it’s good because there is no such narrative. This is something that simply can’t be defended. It seduces us by never even trying to argue its case. And we’ve accepted that like the weakest, most manipulable of pawns.
Clarissa's Blog 
LBJ, the CIA, the FBI, and the mafia all implicated.
LikeLike
Why, why does this need to be the very first comment to my very carefully thought-out and argued post?
Well, I guess it’s good to have an illustration of the emotion-driven mentality that I talk about, so thanks.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Don’t comprehend your response. The Kennedy assassination surrounded with conspiracy theories involving the principals I mentioned. President Trump the 1st President since the assassination working to reveal concealed government information on the Kennedy assassination.
LikeLike
Interest has actually dropped off considerably from what it used to be. Well into the 1990s “JFK conspiracy theorist” was a common stock figure, and appeared regularly in fiction (movies and TV as well as books).
You don’t see or hear of them much anymore. Sort of like Elvis impersonators, another stock character that is not as common as it used to be. I suppose it’s mostly just the baby boomers getting older and not dominating pop culture like they used to.
(Commenter formerly known as AcademicLurker)
LikeLiked by 1 person
I agree, it’s not genuine interest in the issue of the JFK assassination. It’s an opportunity to signal the rejection of the institutions of the nation-state.
LikeLike
I’ve lived in the U.S. all my life, and even I do not understand the obsession with JFK. I especially don’t get how Jack, Bobby, and Ted all became sex symbols, because I never found any of them even remotely attractive, and the more I found out about them, the less I liked them. A bunch of scumbags, as far as I can tell.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I agree. Ugly, weird people who have been turned into sex symbols for no reason.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“I don’t understand Americans’ love affair with JFK”
General public perception (not necessarily my personal evaluation):
He was a young office holder who was very different from Eisenhower, Truman or Roosevelt. He had a vigor and life force not seen in the office in living memory including kids and a stylish, attractive wife. He fumbled a bit (as is to be expected with a younger office holder) but stared down the USSR during the Cuban Missile Crisis and then he was assassinated… so the public never got to know if he would have had a second administration and how that would have gone.
It’s an unfinished story and those are always the most tantalizing.
LikeLiked by 2 people
The reason Americans are so obsessed with him and his family is that there was draws for several different but large sections of society.
For those who really like monarchy, and there is a substantial number of Americans who are obsessed with England’s Royal Family, they were seen as the American Royalty. (No idea why, just that they were.)
For those who distrusted the government, the military, the CIA, the Feds, etc. His Assassination was the feather that broke the camel’s back, the smoking gun, the … well you get the picture. It was proof positive that something was wrong with the country.
To a lot of people at the time and today, there has always been a sense of (Keeping up with the Jones’s,) and the Kennedy’s were seen as the people to be. Yes they weren’t exactly good people, but since when has that ever mattered. Look at today where rappers are seen as role models, whats her name, the …. singer …. who looks and acts like she was abused as a child. Miley something or other. Think of how many actors and actresses are viewed not as they really are, but as the characters they portray in movies and TV shows. Its very easy to fall into the draw and charisma.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Absolutely, there is a straight line from the vulgar Jackie and today’s twerking, WAP starlets.
LikeLike
“the vulgar Jackie”
I was too young to remember but IINM she wasn’t vulgar while she was First Lady. I remember my mother being impressed with her behavior immediately after the assassination and at the funeral.
She did have a vulgar stage that really kicked into high gear when she married Onassis that lasted about 10 years during which she was a mainstay of tabloids and lower end women’s magazines and no aspect of her life was considered too trivial or vapid to turn into a lurid headline.
Then she calmed down when she began working in publishing and AFAICT led a mostly dignified life until her death.
LikeLike
Some other factors that contributed to the JFK cult:
From the vantage point of the end of the 60s – the Vietnam war, protests, riots, the counterculture that was already turning sour after a brief moment of triumphalism & etc. – the early 60s really did look like a very optimistic moment in America, and JFK’s presidency became associated with that.
Also, because he was conveniently dead, people were free to imagine that our involvement in Vietnam wouldn’t have escalated the way it did had he lived. There’s no particular basis for that belief, but my impression is that it was popular with liberal baby boomers for quite a while.
(Commenter formerly known as AcademicLurker)
LikeLiked by 1 person
This is connected to what I’m saying because the wholesale rejection by the citizens of conscription was the beginning of the end of the nation-state. So yes, you are absolutely right, this is all connected and we are at the tail end of the journey that started in the 1970s.
LikeLike
Actually, you had to be there, as in old enough to grasp what was happening. The Cold War actually existed, Canada might have rejected positioning nuclear missiles, but kids were inanely advised that we might supposedly survive a nuclear war by climbing under our school desk ;-D
On a far more serious note, Cuban exiles invaded the island, but failed. Hundreds on both sides died and many more were wounded, The CIA funded and planned the debacle, JFK had approved the plan, but refused to provide American air cover, and subsequently fired three of the CIA heads.
But as a result, Khruschev decided to protect Cuba by installing nuclear missiles. Amf so JFK blockaded Cuba with a naval blockade. It got close, very, very close, Vasili Arkhipov, a Soviet submarine officer reputedly stopped a nuclear torpedo strike against the U.S. ships. The soviet ships backed away after quiet promises to leave Cuba alone and pull back some of the missiles threatening Russia.
Then JFK was assassinated. I was grade 10, in theory in the supposed the brainy class, the kids taking three maths, three sciences, and three languages plus history. The chool principal publicly announced that JFK had been shot and everything stopped, shortly later it was announced that he was dead. My teacher sat down and put his hands in his head, a couple of girls wailed, then they all bawled. The boys just sat there shocked, stoic, we all knew it might well mean war.
.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sorry about all the errors, I am used to being able to edit.
LikeLike
I might try to work up a response on the contemporary nation-state, since that is the big topic, but since everyone else is talking about JFK…
I’m not American, and was not alive in the Kennedy era. But I think it may be said that the assassination of Kennedy was the 9/11 of its era, especially in relation to conspiracy theory and mistrust of the state. The assassination of JFK was followed by the beginning of the Vietnam war, the assassinations of MLK and RFK, and the culture war surrounding the hippie movement. It was the birth in popular consciousness, of the idea that there is an unelected deep state which holds a veto over American democracy, up to the point of assassination of elected leaders. I suppose Kennedy is also romanticized by Democrats (or “boomer” Democrats) in particular, as the dashing young leader cut down in his prime.
So it was an absolutely central event in American culture and politics of the second half of the 20th century. But everything fades and 9/11 (and the ensuing war with Iraq) really took its place, as the looming signifier of the belief that headline politics is just a sideshow and the world is really governed by dark hidden forces.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Your argument about preserving the nation state is convincing. What do you think is an effective to achieve that goal? To make it local, do you think anyone could have persuaded the chair of your physics to say the things you wish he had said? And if so, who, and how?
LikeLike
Clarissa, what is your take on “strong-men” like Putin, Orban, Erdogan, etc. Are they pro-nation state? They certainly don’t seem neoliberal.
LikeLike
I know nothing at all about Erdogan and very little about Orban, so I won’t venture an opinion. Putin, though, is as neoliberal as it gets. Doesn’t believe in borders, doesn’t believe in international agreements, wants to control a huge undifferentiated space “from Lisbon to Vladivostok.” A completely oligarchic economy where everything is monetized. Women pose on social media with chirpy, happy reports on what they bought with the money they got for husbands and sons who died in the war.
Putin murdered every Russian nationalist years ago. And officially forbade the word “Russian” from appearing in official documents. He’s importing millions of migrants and engaging in population replacement of ethnic Russians. If that’s not neoliberal, I don’t know what is.
LikeLike
Actually, should have mentioned that I do have doubts about the Warren Report. At first because of the ease with which Jack Ruby, a two bit thug (suddenly apparently carried away in a patriotic fervor) simply walked into what should have been the strongest security area possible, calmly point blank shot Oswald to death. That kind of stinks, but afterall, the president had been killed, chaos can be expected.
But then a “magic” or “immaculate” bullet appears, spent but completely unmarred is found on JFK’s stretcher at the hospital. Later Security Agent Landis claims he found it at the vehicle, pocketed it, and later placed it on the stretcher. Well, the bullet could be armoured or jacketed, most military bullets are, but the story really stinks, By pocketing that bullet, Landis was breaking the line of evidence, something no trained cop would ever do. But again, things were chaotic. So according to the Warren Report: “Governor Connally was struck by a bullet which entered on the right side of his back and traveled downward through the right side of his chest, exiting below his right nipple. This bullet then passed through his right wrist and entered his left thigh where it caused a superficial wound.” A bullet found on the Governor’s stretcher at Parkland Memorial Hospital was determined by ballistics tests to be from the rifle found in the Texas School Book Depository…”
But then the Zapruder film show up, and then appears enlarged and in slow motion. The first hit on JFK does appear to be from behind and below, as was that of the Governor’s sitting behind JFK. But the second hit on JFK seems to have been from the front. Afterall Jackie was hysterically scrambling around the back of the hood of the car trying to collect the pieces of het husband’s head. Moreover, the doctors at Parkland Memorial Hospital, those still trying to save JFK, believed that he was shot in the forehead. One cannot simply ignore the physical laws of this universe, nor should we accept anything less than human law, after all these years, I still want to know which dirty rotten bastard(s) did this.
LikeLike