Order Unrestored
Because Of An Unrealistic Myth
Patriotism Is The Last Refuge Of A Scoundrel ~ Samuel Johnson, 1775
It was during the early afternoon of a cold, clear November day, as I sat at a desk in my sixth-grade classroom. We were silently writing essays when out of the loudspeaker system, normally reserved for school announcements, a newscaster’s voice filled the room.
Miss Lazareth was the strictest, most severe teacher in our elementary school, whose gaze alone could freeze errant behavior. Even as an eleven-year-old, I recognized that she was a benevolent despot and that her stern exterior was surgically applied to keep us in line to maximize our learning.
The blaring voice was the initial shock and we quickly focused our attention on the news. John F. Kennedy had been shot as he rode through Dallas in a motorcade. Our beloved young president whom we admired for starting the Peace Corps, initiating physical fitness programs across the country, and playing touch football on the White House lawn — was the target of an assassin. After hearing this shocking report, Miss Lazareth, without a word, sat down at her desk and quietly shed tears in front of us.
I felt a strange pain that I’d never experienced, and when my dear friends Kathy and Joan also started crying, I instinctively knew the world would never be the same. An assassination was something that happened a long time ago to Lincoln. How could my President be shot?
These memories are still quite clear, although after learning that the President was dead, the days afterward remained in a fog of confusion. My family sat around the TV as the bizarre events unfolded. We watched as the assassin was lynched by a man who claimed he felt he was doing justice for Mrs. Kennedy. Much later we learned he was a mob-connected owner of a strip club who was motivated by a moment of passionate patriotism.
The following year, solemn men with gray hair attempted to assure us that Lee Harvey Oswald was the guy who killed the President, but they insisted too strongly that he acted alone.
I never really believed the lie that order was being restored. We were supposed to be a great nation capable of coming back from any crisis or tragedy. In considering the subsequent decades, there has been no restoration of any sense of order, and more questions have been raised about the events of November 22, 1963.
The shock of that day returned when I recently read about Donald Trump’s response to a question from Judge Andrew Napolitano about why he reversed himself and refused to release all details and documents about the government’s knowledge of the JFK assassination. Trump said,
If they showed you what they showed me, you wouldn't have released it either.
To which the Judge so rightly replied, though received no clear answer,
Who's they? What did they show you?
This chilling exchange reveals that the events of November 1963 have such power and significance that decades later they were once again deemed too dangerous for the American people to process. And this is not just Donald Trump’s opinion. President Biden has also reversed his position and refused to comply with the 1992 legislation demanding the orderly release of all documents regarding the assassination previously deemed top secret.
What can we extrapolate from this strange dichotomy? Two Presidents, who on most other matters vehemently disagree, are both keeping the same secret. What other fears do they share in common?
The most obvious conclusion is that the information would affect them personally. An implied threat that presidents were expendable or a revelation that would impact their power or finances — are both incentives to change one’s mind about releasing information.
This does not make them complicit nor does the information need to be conclusive. However, both Biden and Trump are beneficiaries of the military-industrial complex that thrived after World War II and was threatened by the Kennedy presidency. Both men, while quite rich, continue to claim they are advocates for the poor and suffering. Both said their leadership would change the direction of the country, while neither stopped the decades-long trend of ignoring fiscal policies that have not helped the desperate and allowed the destruction of the middle class.
The ever-increasing individual and government debt is a convoluted explanation of how the rich get richer. Meanwhile, the American dream has become a nightmare.
Since 1963, the tragedies of U.S. government complicity in environmental and pharmaceutical catastrophes are matched by the outrageously expensive and harmful acceleration of hostile war-mongering. The trickle-down effect of the country’s allegiance to corporatism is apparent.
One only has to look at the condition of Americans to confirm the debilitating increase in acute and chronic physical and emotional suffering; this is the true barometer of the health of a nation.
Those who benefit from an unbalanced system want nothing to change. With this obvious degradation in mind, what could be the big secret about John F. Kennedy’s assassination that would disrupt national security? As the vast majority of people lack any security, the true risk is to a small minority that thrives on a nation intentionally divided and distracted from reality.
The facade of the United States upholding a higher civil and moral order has crumbled, while the defense of this delusion is getting louder — as if that will cover the actions of the guilty men.
All attempts to reveal the facts about President Kennedy’s assassination continue to be met with derision and scorn while the myth of what happened is presented as fact. Since the day of his death, fingers were pointed at a lone nut — a man who declared he was just a patsy given an almost laughable motive in light of his complex background as a former marine and an intelligence asset run by the CIA. And when a hint of conspiracy was allowed to be considered after a decade, organized crime was the highlighted culprit. Unfortunately for those who attempted to draw focus to the mob and their motives, it turned out that these suspects were very close to U.S. Intelligence services; some contracted to assassinate foreign leaders.
It is this dark trail that can be glimpsed in the thousands of redacted pages from the National Archives that have been released. Although it is not necessarily government records that reveal evidence of evil deeds.
For those who care to know, there is a verifiable network that includes powerful leaders and intelligence operatives whose names appear in the meager records of clandestine political operations throughout the second half of the 20th century. They have an ongoing top-secret means of communication — and undoubtedly participated in conspiracies of the highest order.
Even if no other shred of evidence is found or revealed, historians have enough circumstantial material to understand why no one in power would allow further confirmation that the public execution of JFK was a coup. Unassailable proof that the most powerful forces in Washington were involved in the assassination condemns the city as an axis of evil like no other the planet has experienced.
The larger the crime, the greater the conspiracy, the more protestations of innocence. The most revelational aspect of this strange state of American intrigue is the increasingly hostile tone of those who attack those who dare to doubt conventional wisdom. Those who depend on illogical name-calling to defend the myth, continue to support the Warren Commission findings, whose efforts were engineered by Allen Dulles, the CIA director whom President Kennedy had fired. In naming him to the Commission, it didn’t matter that he hated his former boss.
In Washington, no one blinks when the fox is a key investigator into henhouse deaths.
Subsequently, most of those who would become President are not about to reveal any major truth to the American people. In a realm where government agencies are captive to corporate interests, politicians are beholden to their donors and all sense of ethical behavior is eclipsed — it is no wonder that the darkest manipulations are deemed dangerous to the public.
Yet the people are wiser than their leaders, with over 60% of Americans sensing they are being told lies. It began the very day President Kennedy was shot, and I have no doubt that is why my dear teacher, Miss Lazareth openly wept.
The story is far from over. Most everyone is tired of the divisiveness in Washington and the ongoing fabrications and broken promises. Though his life was cut short by those who were threatened by his vision for the country, John F. Kennedy awakened part of our spirit that will not be subdued.
JFK’s words are prescient, and readily applied to the events surrounding his death:
The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie - deliberate, contrived, and dishonest - but the myth - persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.
Thank you for introducing me to the work of Peter Dale Scott, whom I'd never heard of until now.
Years ago, as part of a master's program in theatre, I wrote a proposal to create an interactive theatre experience that was part history and part shaman-led community healing, to address what I saw as unresolved trauma buried deep in the American psyche over JFK's assassination. No surprise -- my idea was roundly rejected. I still think we will not move forward as a nation without some guided, intentional, public ceremonies of truth-telling and deep healing.
Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.
Oscar Wilde