> Then I'd say the motive was that Kennedy was getting too soft on
> Communism, the possible specifics of which have been mentioned about
> 50 times in the various revisitations of this thread. The one that
> was for sure is he signed a test ban ( I believe test ban) treaty with
> the Soviets. Just because he was still a member of the ruling class
> doesn't mean that that wasn't a hittable offense to , hey, the most
> reactionary, most militarist, etc. wing of the bourgeoisie. He had
> committed class treason. They committed a dash of fascism. Historical
> materialists try to understand divisions, and conflicts within the
> ruling classes, and this is a spectacular historical example of that.
So, assuming you're right (a *very* big assumption), a bunch of really far-right mentally ill folks thought JFK was "too soft on communism," and whacked him. So what? as Doug asked.
Assassinations and assassination attempts are always committed by folks not quite right in their minds, and such folks will always be with us. Sometimes they succeed (like whoever took out Kennedy), sometimes they fail (like Hinkley). But this is hardly the fundamental key to understanding history. The effects assassinations have on history are primarily those that would have resulted from the natural deaths of the victims, e.g., Lincoln's assassination. Or they have some effect in inflaming disputes that were already in process, like Gandhi's and Martin Luther King's (and maybe the one that supposedly touched off WW I).
By the way, are there any conspiracy theories about who got RFK? Or does everyone meekly fall in with the theory that Sirhan Sirhan did it?
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A gentleman haranguing on the perfection of our law, and that it was equally open to the poor and the rich, was answered by another, 'So is the London Tavern.' -- "Tom Paine's Jests..." (1794); also attr. to John Horne Tooke (1736-1812) by Hazlitt