“Murder Most Foul” and the haunting of America
thereader.mitpress.mit.edu
thereader.mitpress.mit.edu
I really hate cynicism. It's considered hip nowadays to think everything is degraded, monstrous, corrupt garbage. It's like people have forgotten that there's more to humans than the murderous. Must we blind ourselves to the good in order to recognize the bad? How about the respect for human dignity, the love of family and country, the sacrifice, the self-restraint, the growth and change, the reform that we've seen through human history, and American history in particular? Was the Civil Rights Act powered by "guilt, corruption, and greed"? Was the establishment of drug safety standards? Was the abolition of slavery?
People are so blithe in proclaiming everything horrible. I just worry it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The people I have interacted with across my lifetime from around the world have been quite oblivious to the good deeds of the US and largely only aware of anything negative the US has been responsible for. Cynicism sell better. That's what people who have been news-educated online have seen the past 25 years. In the early days of the Web most people I would chat with internationally were heavily ignorant of the US, other than select major details. Today, every flaw and mistake is magnified and broadcast globally, daily. The US kept most of Belgium alive after WW1 with the CRB [2], and fed ten million Russians daily [3] - who were nationally not our friends - during their famine of 1921-1923. Most people are entirely oblivious to that type of history, even in the US (a failure of our education system). Today it's PEPFAR, keeping millions of people alive in Africa. Or Gates & Buffett donating 2/3 of their wealth to helping poor people outside of the US (and the US treats them as heroes for it). When Russia sent that plane of supplies to the US last week, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov noted they hoped the US would reciprocate the favor back the other direction if things become increasingly dire in Russia. And that is exactly what the US will do, if it is able to ramp up the production of medical gear in the coming months.
[1] https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/gordonsinclairthea...
[2] https://www.nps.gov/articles/emergence-of-the-great-humanita...
"I would like you to do us a favor though."
An example of how "patient" I felt New Yorker's were was on Brooklyn Bridge. Even though I was a tourist myself I was annoyed at how just unaware/selfish some of the tourists were in the search for a selfy, standing in clearly marked bicycle lane. I was amazed at the restraint of the cyclists. The most they did was ring their bells. One guy did sort of say in an exasperated tone, just get out of the way. Where I am from people definitely not as polite. Look no society is perfect but America's problems are put under a microscope by the free press and because you are the biggest economy.
The racial riots from the early ‘90s should/could have been a new sign to re-open the fight but nothing of the sorts happened, by now most of the black population is resigned with the horrendous status-quo while most of the white population doesn’t find the current status-quo at all horrendous, at most they protest against some punctual anti-black population actions which they only see as individual abuses (the Ferguson case, the helpless Florida kid case etc).
Segregation still exists, it just largely uses other mechanisms today other than red lining and direct racial discrimination in businesses and government. I recognize claims similar to “we”re doing better now than we were in the 50s” as one technique of many to focus on social, not material or systemic, gains, though I suspect in many cases this does not come from an intent to do so.
We probably have a bad news bias for evolutionary reasons. It might make us less happy but more likely to live long enough to reproduce.
... or blind ourselves to the bad in order to feel good?
-Bob Dylan
The music Dylan was making in the 60s is just as relevant today as ever before. “Murder Most Foul” hit me in the gut. Truly an epic.
Do you have any favorites that were released this way? I've fallen off the bobwagon in recent decades.
https://twitter.com/corpseinorbit/status/1243409386262810625
One theory is that the lyric "howl Wolfman, howl" may be a reference to George H. W. Bush, whose CIA codename was Timberwolf and who claimed for years not to remember where he was the day JFK was assassinated.
His whole name is mentioned in the fourth verse, and he did start his broadcasts by howling.
"Scientific acoustical evidence establishes a high probability that at least two gunmen fired at the President."
and
"The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The committee was unable to identify the other gunmen or the extent of the conspiracy."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_Select_Com...
But then the conspiracy theory meme just kinda mopped everything up, and that was that.
Right there in front of everyone's eyes
Greatest magic trick ever under the sun
Perfectly executed, skillfully done
But what can anybody do about it?
The people most likely to have done this have probably left FAR larger trails of other malfeasance and we choose not go after them anyway.
Look at the gigantic trail of stuff surrounding Trump.
Why have we not purged the ENTIRE New York FBI field office as being compromised?
At this point, the JFK assassination is a nice distraction to make sure the people who might dig up inconvenient modern, relevant malfeasance are left digging somewhere else.
My best guess is southern conservatives who, among other things, hated him for backing down over Bay of Pigs. So they manipulated Oswald into doing it, as a false flag.
And yeah, maybe that's too obvious. Maybe that's the false flag for something far more subtle.
There's a reference to this in Scorcese's recent movie "The Irishman": "if they can get a president, they can get a president of a union."
- insanely ambitious, and obsessed with becoming President
- devastated at ending up VP, which basically ruled him out from the top job (barring JFK's death)
- insanely secretive (for example, he tracked down and destroyed almost all copies of his college yearbook, which merely showed him as being somewhat disliked/seen as dishonest)
Bearing all of which in mind, I'm partial to this particular conspiracy theory. Though I fully expect that if it's true we'll never know. Johnson was probably unmatched when it comes to pulling off something this audacious and eliminating all evidence.
The simplest of course is that Oswald did it, but there is at least some evidence for a second shooter from witnesses as well as perhaps acoustics.
The next simplest then is to propose two. What if Oswald had one accomplice who is still unknown because Ruby shot Oswald before he could rat them out.
Why did Ruby shoot Oswald anyway? To stop him from ratting someone else out? Dunno, but these are questions I'd immediately have asked.
What you do in the face of Ockham's razor is gradually dial up the complexity until you encompass all the evidence. You don't leap from simple lone nut to vast conspiracy, but that is what most do.
If there was more than one person involved, the fact that this has remained so mysterious with so many competing theories for so long argues strongly for a very small number of people. The more people are involved the more likely someone would get caught or confess. Death bed confessions are pretty common.