310 lines
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310 lines
19 KiB
Plaintext
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Article: 527 of sgi.talk.ratical
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From: dave@ratmandu.esd.sgi.com (dave "who can do? ratmandu!" ratcliffe)
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Subject: Peter Gabel on, "The Spiritual Truth of `JFK'"
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Keywords: one of the most inspired explorations i have ever come across.
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Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.
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Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1992 15:03:44 GMT
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Lines: 309
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this article examines the assassination within the wider context of the
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mass psychological perspective of the time period. peter gabel touches
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upon something here that is rarely if ever explored in such a perceptive
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and far-reaching way. one of the most provocative analyses i have seen.
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. . . It was this feeling--"the rise of a new generation of
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Americans"--that more than any ideology threatened the system of
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cultural and erotic control that dominated the fifties and that
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still dominated the governmental elites of the early sixties--the
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FBI, the CIA, even elements of Kennedy's own cabinet and staff.
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Kennedy's evocative power spoke to people's longing for some
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transcendent community and in so doing, it allowed people to make
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themselves vulnerable enough to experience both hope and, indirectly,
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the legacy of pain and isolation that had been essentially sealed
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from public awareness since the end of the New Deal. . . .
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I say this is the great achievement of the movie because no
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matter who killed Kennedy, it was the conflict between the
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opening-up of desire that he represented and the alienated need of
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the forces around him to shut this desire down that caused his
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death. . . . There is no way for the forces of good to win the
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struggle between desire and alienation unless people can break
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through the gauzy images of everything being fine except the lone
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nuts, a legitimating ideology that is actually supported by our
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denial of the pain of our isolation and our collective deference to
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the system of Authority that we use to keep our legitimating myths
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in place. Oliver Stone's "JFK" brings us face-to-face with social
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reality by penetrating the compensatory image-world of mass
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culture, politics, and journalism.
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the following appears in the March/April issue of "Tikkun" magazine,
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a Bimonthly Jewish Critic of Politics, Culture, & Society.
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________________________________________________________________
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The Spiritual Truth of "JFK"
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(c) 1992 by Peter Gabel
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Peter Gabel is president of New College of California
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and associate editor of Tikkun.
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this article is reprinted here with permission of the author
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Oliver Stone's "JFK" is a great movie, but not because it
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"proves" that John F. Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy. Stone
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himself has acknowledged that the movie is a myth--a countermyth to
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the myth produced by the Warren Commission--but a myth that
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contains what Stone calls a spiritual truth. To understand that
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spiritual truth, we must look deeply into the psychological and
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social meaning of the assassination--its meaning for American
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society at the time that it occurred, and for understanding
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contemporary American politics and culture.
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The spiritual problem that the movie speaks to is an underlying
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truth about life in American society--the truth that we all live in
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a social world characterized by feelings of alienation, isolation,
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and a chronic inability to connect with one another in a life-
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giving and powerful way. In our political and economic
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institutions, this alienation is lived out as a feeling of being
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"underneath" and at an infinite distance from an alien external
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world that seems to determine our lives from the outside. True
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democracy would require that we be actively engaged in ongoing
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processes of social interaction that strengthen our bonds of
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connectedness to one another, while at the same time allowing us to
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realize our need for a sense of social meaning and ethical purpose
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through the active remaking of the no-longer "external" world
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around us. But we do not yet live in such a world, and the
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isolation and distance from reality that envelops us is a cause of
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immense psychological and emotional pain, a social starvation that
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is in fact analogous to physical hunger and other forms of physical
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suffering.
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One of the main psychosocial mechanisms by which this pain, this
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collective starvation, is denied is through the creation of an
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imaginary sense of community. Today this imaginary world is
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generated through a seemingly endless ritualized deference to the
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Flag, the Nation, the Family--pseudocommunal icons of public
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discourse projecting mere images of social connection that actually
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deny our real experience of isolation and distance, of living in
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sealed cubicles, passing each other blankly on the streets, while
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managing to relieve our alienation to some extent by making us feel
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a part of something. Political and cultural elites--presidents and
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ad agencies--typically generate these images of pseudocommunity,
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but we also play a part in creating them because, from the vantage
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point of our isolated positions--if we have not found some
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alternative community of meaning--we need them to provide what
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sense of social connection they can. We have discussed this
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phenomenon in "Tikkun" many times before, emphasizing recently, for
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example, the way David Duke is able to recognize and confirm the
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pain of white working-class people and thereby help them overcome,
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in an imaginary way, their sense of isolation in a public world
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that leaves them feeling invisible.
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In the 1950s, the alienated environment that I have been describing
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took the form of an authoritarian, rigidly anticommunist mentality
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that coexisted with the fantasized image of a "perfect" America--a
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puffed-up and patriotic America that had won World War II and was
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now producing a kitchen-culture of time-saving appliances,
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allegedly happy families, and technically proficient organizations
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and "organization men" who dressed the same and looked the same as
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they marched in step toward the "great big beautiful tomorrow"
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hailed in General Electric's advertising jingle of that period. It
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was a decade of artificial and rigid patriotic unity, sustained in
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large part by an equally rigid and pathological anticommunism; for
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communism was the "Other" whose evil we needed to exterminate or at
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least contain to preserve our illusory sense of connection,
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meaning, and social purpose. As the sixties were later to make
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clear, the cultural climate of the fifties was actually a massive
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denial of the desire for true connection and meaning. But at the
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time the cultural image-world of the fifties was sternly held in
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place by a punitive and threatening system of authoritarian male
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hierarchies, symbolized most graphically by the McCarthy hearings,
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the House Un-American Activities Committee, and the person of J.
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Edgar Hoover.
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In this context, the election of John F. Kennedy and his three
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years in office represented what I would call an opening-up of
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desire. I say this irrespective of his official policies, which
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are repeatedly criticized by the Left for their initial hawkish
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character, and irrespective also of the posthumous creation of the
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Camelot myth, which does exaggerate the magic of that period. The
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opening-up that I am referring to is a feeling that Kennedy was
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able to evoke--a feeling of humor, romance, idealism, and youthful
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energy, and a sense of hope that touched virtually every American
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alive during that time. It was this feeling--"the rise of a new
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generation of Americans"--that more than any ideology threatened
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the system of cultural and erotic control that dominated the
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fifties and that still dominated the governmental elites of the
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early sixties--the FBI, the CIA, even elements of Kennedy's own
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cabinet and staff. Kennedy's evocative power spoke to people's
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longing for some transcendent community and in so doing, it allowed
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people to make themselves vulnerable enough to experience both hope
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and, indirectly, the legacy of pain and isolation that had been
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essentially sealed from public awareness since the end of the New
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Deal.
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Everyone alive at the time of the assassination knows exactly
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where they were when Kennedy was shot because, as it is often said,
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his assassination "traumatized the nation." But the real trauma,
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if we move beyond the abstraction of "the nation," was the sudden,
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violent loss for millions of people of the part of themselves that
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had been opened up, or had begun to open up during Kennedy's
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presidency. As a sixteen-year-old in boarding school with no
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interest in politics, I wrote a long note in my diary asking God to
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help us through the days ahead, even though I didn't believe in God
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at the time. And I imagine that you, if you were alive then, no
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matter how cynical you may have sometimes felt since then about
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politics or presidents or the "real" Kennedy himself, have a
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similar memory preciously stored in the region of your being where
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your longings for a better world still reside.
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In this issue, Peter Dale Scott gives an account of the
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objective consequences of the assassination, of the ways that the
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nation's anticommunist elites apparently reversed Kennedy's
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beginning efforts to withdraw from Vietnam and perhaps through his
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relationship with Khrushchev to thaw out the addiction to blind
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anti-communist rage--an addiction that, as he saw during the Cuban
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missile crisis, could well have led to a nuclear war. But for
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these same elites, the mass-psychological consequences of the
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assassination posed quite a different problem from that of
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reversing government policy--namely, the need to find a way to
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reconstitute the image of benign social connection that could
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reform the imaginary unity of the country on which the legitimacy
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of government policy depends. In order to contain the desire
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released by the Kennedy presidency and the sense of loss and sudden
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disintegration caused by the assassination, government officials
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had to create a process that would rapidly "prove"--to the
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satisfaction of people's emotions--that the assassination and loss
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were the result of socially innocent causes.
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Here we come to the mass-psychological importance of Lee Harvey
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Oswald and the lone gunman theory of the assassination. As Stone's
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movie reminds us in a congeries of rapid-fire, post-assassination
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images, Oswald was instantly convicted in the media and in mass
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consciousness even before he was shot by Jack Ruby two days after
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the assassination. After an elaborate ritualized process producing
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twenty-six volumes of testimony, the Warren Commission sanctified
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Oswald's instant conviction in spite of the extreme implausibility
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of the magic bullet theory, the apparently contrary evidence of the
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Zapruder film, and other factual information such as the near
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impossibility of Oswald's firing even three bullets (assuming the
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magic bullet theory to be true) with such accuracy so quickly with
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a manually cocked rifle. You don't have to be a conspiracy
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theorist, nor do you have to believe any of the evidence marshaled
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together by conspiracy theorists, to find it odd that Oswald's
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guilt was immediately taken for granted within two days of the
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killing, with no witnesses and no legal proceeding of any kind--and
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that his guilt was later confidently affirmed by a high-level
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Commission whose members had to defy their own common sense in
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order to do so. The whole process might even seem extraordinary
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considering that we are talking about the assassination of an
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American president.
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But it is not so surprising if you accept the mass-psychological
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perspective I am outlining here--the perspective that Kennedy and
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the Kennedy years had elicited a lyricism and a desire for
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transcendent social connection that contradicted the long-
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institutionalized forces of emotional repression that preceded
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them. The great advantage of the lone gunman theory is that it
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gives a *nonsocial* account of the assassination. It takes the
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experience of trauma and loss and momentary social disintegration,
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isolates the evil source of the experience in one antisocial
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individual, and leaves the image of society as a whole--the
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"imaginary community" that I referred to earlier--untarnished and
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still "good." From the point of view of those in power, in other
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words, the lone gunman theory reinstitutes the legitimacy of
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existing social and political authority as a whole because it
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silently conveys the idea that our elected officials and the organs
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of government, among them the CIA and the FBI, share our innocence
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and continue to express our democratic will. But from a larger
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psychosocial point of view, the effect was to begin to close up the
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link between desire and politics that Kennedy had partially
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elicited, and at the same time to impose a new repression of our
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painful feelings of isolation and disconnection beneath the facade
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of our reconstituted but imaginary political unity.
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Having said this, I do not want to be understood to be suggesting
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that there was a conspiracy to set up Oswald in order to achieve
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this mass-psychological goal. There may well have been a
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conspiracy to set up Oswald, but no complex theory is required to
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explain it. And it would be absurd, in my view, to think that the
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entire media consciously intended to manipulate the American people
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in the headlong rush to convict Oswald in the press. The point is
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rather that this headlong rush was something we all--or most of
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us--participated in because we ourselves, unconsciously, are deeply
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attached to the status quo, to our legitimating myths of community,
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and to denying our own alienation and pain. The interest we share
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with the mainstream media and with government and corporate elites
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is to maintain, through a kind of unconscious collusion, the
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alienated structures of power and social identity that protect us
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from having to risk emerging from our sealed cubicles and allowing
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our fragile longing for true community to become a public force.
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The great achievement of Oliver Stone's movie is that it uses
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this traumatic, formative event of the Kennedy assassination--an
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event full of politically important cultural memory and feeling--to
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assault the mythological version of American society and to make us
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experience the forces of repression that shape social reality. The
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movie may or may not be accurate in its account of what Lyndon
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Johnson might have known or of the phones in Washington shutting
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down just before the assassination or of the New Zealand newspaper
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that mysteriously published Oswald's photographs before he was
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arrested. But the movie does give a kinetic and powerful depiction
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of the real historical forces present at the time of the
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assassination, forces that were in part released by the challenge
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to the fanatical anticommunism of the fifties that Kennedy to some
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extent brought about. Through his crosscutting images of the
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anti-Castro fringe, the civil-rights movement, high and low New
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Orleans club life, and elites in corporate and government offices
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who thought they ran the country, Stone uses all his cinematic and
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political energy to cut through the civics-class version of history
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and to bring the viewer into sudden contact with the realities of
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power and alienation that were present at that time and are present
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in a different form now.
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I say this is the great achievement of the movie because no
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matter who killed Kennedy, it was the conflict between the
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opening-up of desire that he represented and the alienated need of
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the forces around him to shut this desire down that caused his
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death. This struggle was an important part of the meaning of the
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1960s, and it provides the link, which Stone draws openly, between
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John Kennedy's death and the deaths of Martin Luther King, Jr. and
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Bobby Kennedy. There is no way for the forces of good to win the
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struggle between desire and alienation unless people can break
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through the gauzy images of everything being fine except the lone
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nuts, a legitimating ideology that is actually supported by our
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denial of the pain of our isolation and our collective deference to
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the system of Authority that we use to keep our legitimating myths
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in place. Oliver Stone's "JFK" brings us face-to-face with social
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reality by penetrating the compensatory image-world of mass
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culture, politics, and journalism. And for that reason it is an
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important effort by someone whose consciousness was shaped by the
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sixties to transform and shake free the consciousness of the
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nineties.
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This is one of four articles on "JFK," The Assassination, The
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Movie, and The Coverup, in the March/April issue of Tikkun.
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(te.kun[umlout over the `u']) To mend, repair and transform the world.
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"Tikkun" magazine is a progressive jewish critique of politics, culture,
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and society. It started five years ago and since then has become the
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largest circulation Jewish Magazine in the United States. In a nutshell,
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the perspective of the magazine attempts to go beyond traditional leftist
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critiques of the society, to focus on the psychological, emotional, and
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cultural dimensions of people's social reality; to try and interpret
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those phenomena and help to make them understandable to ourselves and our
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readers.
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$31/one year (six issues) Tikkun
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$51/two years (12 issues) P.O. Box 332
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1-800/877-5231 Mt. Morris, IL 61054-7735
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--
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daveus rattus
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yer friendly neighborhood ratman
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KOYAANISQATSI
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ko.yan.nis.qatsi (from the Hopi Language) n. 1. crazy life. 2. life
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in turmoil. 3. life out of balance. 4. life disintegrating.
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5. a state of life that calls for another way of living.
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