American Exception patreon

Episode 10: JFK and Vietnam w/John Newman and James Galbraith

🕑 Added 2022-01-01 15:56:28 +0000 UTC

Comments

Jim McSporran

The catch-up continues for me. So much to learn.

Aaron Good

Thanks! Not understanding textbook economics might be for the best, as it's pretty much a make-believe cosmology created by and for the super rich....

John Kennedy

Near the end is the best plain English explanation I have heard about economics of the Cold War and the lead-in to Nixon ditching gold standard. Thanks! I don't understand even basic economics so I'm glad when it can be described without too much jargon or technical knowledge assumed. Greetings from New Zealand. Home of the 'fifth eye' lol.

Aaron Good

There were articles written about this not too long ago...

Zachary White

The Bill Moyers LBJ anecdote was wild, Galbraith mentioned it's in the LBJ memoir? "I wonder if the bombs are flying."

Aaron Good

Shlesinger is weird...very cowardly in terms of getting at the truth of Dallas. He wanted to remain part of the Establishment... even on the fringes. He stayed friends with Richard Helms and wrote weird friendly letters to Allen Dulles. But he wrote in books that RFK never believed the Warren Report and that JFK was pulling out of Vietnam. And he wrote a positive review of Newman's JFK and Vietnam when it came out.

TzzZach

Can’t wait for part 2. Adding Professor Galbraith and Professor Newman’s books to my 2022 list. I’ve read the some mainstream JFK books (Arthur Schlesinger, profiles in courage, etc), so I tend to be pessimistic, so newly coming to the ‘conspiracy’ literature does redeem him on the Cold War and cast a lot of doubt on Schlesinger and others who gave the sense of him as ‘just another Harvard boy with a good heart who just didn’t get how to politic’ and stayed quiet on what they knew about him and Bobby’s deaths. In my experience it’s the same with MLK, those more moderate allies that survived to tell his story understated his opposition to the Vietnam war and had their narratives adopted by the mainstream, while being quiet on the assassination

Aaron Good

You should like the second part as well, which is coming soon. There's also a lot of stuff coming up about Indonesia in future episodes. I'd say that ultimately JFK was an anti-colonial warrior and was killed for it. He may not have even grasped the extent to which that's what he was fighting. The Cold War was in large part a massive cover story to provide mythical cover for neocolonialism. And the corporate overworld knew it; they were thus dead set against JFK's support of nationalism as well as his efforts to end the Cold War. So while he was obviously not Che or Fidel, it is telling what Fidel, Nkrumah, and Sukarno all said about JFK's death...

TzzZach

Thanks Aaron, this is the best historical explanation I’ve heard giving credit to Kennedy for context of Vietnam pullout but not heaping him with too much praise as I’ve heard some of the respected, more senior researchers do as a cosmic moral decision of unmatched courage. Hard to feel like him and Bobby aren’t portrayed like a 2 part Greek tragedy sometimes, when in my mind, if there’s a lesson, it’s about the futility of JFKs political strategy and playing a secret game with the deep state without seeking the support of the masses. Contorting him into some anti colonial messiah who was cut down too soon overstates how useful he is to study compared to real anti colonial figures of our country and the third world. I think you’re making great contributions in tempering the dominant jfk conspiracy narratives with the realities of imperialism and capitalism, can’t wait for the book this year!