>>> Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu> 01/14/00 12:07PM >>>
At 05:32 PM 1/13/00 -0500, Charles Brown wrote, inter alia:
>>Your analysis is thrown off by how much things have changed today in part
because of the lifestyle radical reforms that were precisely started by
Kennedy's looseness. <<
Does that mean that the previous presidensts and political figures were paragons of moral virtue?
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CB: Does a bear shit in the woods ? But to make a guess, from the reports that are coming out now, I would not be surprised if Kennedy set a new record for a president in terms of numbers and open flaunting of sexual liasons in the White House and elsewhere. Not only was there Marilyn Monroe, who was significant as a major public figure and love goddess, but there seems to have been a Communist agent, a Mafia associate, and the television show I saw said it was a generalized , ongoing process. I'm trying to think how to say it without using slang. Many, many, many more than all the other previous presidents combined. This was a quantum leap.
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As to your comments re. conspiracy v. lone gunmen - I said both views are plausible and both can muster some empirical support (I certainly buy your argument to consider the rightwing perceptions at the time of assassination). What I am arguing is that there is no evidence that would decisively *falsify* (in Popperian sense) one of these competing theories.
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CB: Most or many decisions on political issues must be made with evidence that is less than beyond a reasonable doubt, to use the legal evidentiary concept. The Popperian standard is no more epistemologically valid than the legal standard and the modified use of the legal standards of evidence. Sometimes we have to go with the preponderance of the evidence.
However , if I was on a jury and the question came up some how , I would vote for conviction of government forces of the assassination of JFK beyond a reasonable doubt. That standard is as good as Popper's for the real world.
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While the right as you argue, might have benefited from the assassination, it does not necessarily mean they organized it. It is quite conceivalbe that it was a fortuitious windfall benefit, or even that they took th attitude "we will not loose much sleep if someone shoots that guy. What I am arguinf is that tehre are many possibilities, and unless you come with irrefutable evidence linking specific people to specific action - we are in the realm of conjectures.
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CB: Au contraire, I am saying that the rightwing was paranoid. They were not really that threatened by Kennedy, and so it is the obverse of what you say. They did organize it, but they didn't really benefit from it that much.
We are not in the realm of conjecture. We are in the realm of the normal amount of less than perfect evidence with which most decisions must be made. Your standard of "irrefutable evidence" is in that unreal world of academic fantasy that you so often criticize on these lists. Lets get real, where decisions must be made with less than perfect evidence.
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I would pretty much argue the same in case of MLK - the righ had even less to gain from his assassination. He was pretty moderate, willing to cooperate with the authorities, and most importantly his death could propel some more radical and less compromising black leaders to prominence. So from the ruling class's point of view, MLK might have been a nuissance, but they alsoe learned how to handle him. They had liitleto gain from his death.
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CB: This is an ultra-leftist analysis of MLK. He was very much a threat to the bourgeoisie exactly because his whole movement was tending toward uniting Black and White workers. He was uniting the working class contra the main split in it, racism. He was killed exactly when he was going to support garbage workers in a strike, when he had just started the poor peoples'campaign, in a word when his agenda was starting to become specifically and explicitly a WORKING CLASS ECONOMIC STRUGGLE agenda. Malcolm X was killed when he started to turn from narrow nationalism to internationalism and say nice things about socialism. The ruling class understood this better than you do here. They knew that King and X were becoming true threats to the capitalist system
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The fact that rabid racists and fascists in the law eforcement despised him is quite another thing. But evn the law enforcement passively (by letting it known that they would not do much if someone killed MLK) or actively (by organizing the plot to kill him) contributed to MLK assassination, does not mean that they acted in the interest of the ruling class, let alon eon their instructions. Do not forget that the ruling class is far from being united, there are many factions with conflicting intersts.
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CB: You have it completely backward or upside down in the case of King
CB