General Discussion

...that his son was no liberal, something about which I actually agree.

JFK was an unrepentant cold warrior who campaigned during the 1960 campaign on a nonexistent "missile gap."

The greatest Democrat of the 20th century, in my opinion, Eleanor Roosevelt, referred to him as "that boy" and if one travels to Valkill, her home, the guides may tell one, as they did to me about him sitting at her table begging her not to oppose him and pleaded for her endorsement. She very reluctantly gave it to him.

She died while organizing opposition to his weak efforts on civil rights. (She died before he did.)

This is a guy who was just down the block from the spot where Martin Luther King was giving the "I have a dream," speech on television muttering about his worries that it could cost him reelection. Presidents Truman, Carter, and Clinton might well have been on the dias. given speeches of their own. Lyndon Johnson didn't need to give a speech. He pushed the Civil Rights bill through Congress. He didn't talk (or hide sulking in the Oval Office.) He acted.

He almost stumbled into a nuclear war, an event I hold for the arms race and the demonization in my rather benighted generation of wanton consumers of nuclear energy, particularly of the reason the planet is burning.

The Ford executive he put into the role of Secretary of Defense, McNamara, who used deferments in World War 2 to stay out of tge army, finally signing up as a stateside officer with no knowledge of war, was an albatross around LBJ's neck who stumbled into Vietnam. (LBJ should have fired that bastard.)

It's a fucking lie that Kennedy would have avoided Vietnam (there are musings on the subject on tape.) It was part of his "bear any burden" "missile gap" cold warrior bullshit. The murder of Diem just before his own assassination was a moral disgrace grounded in imperialism.