Island Dweller copies the Czar on some of his mail, which we in turn by our massive grace extend unto thee, dear reader:

Your majesty:

Esteemed Associate, still firmly ensconced like a tenacious polyp in the bowels of the government beast, forwarded another missive to me via the patented “little birdie” method. I in turn forward this to you as an unadulterated sample of the educational elixir my compatriot has an endless store of.

Kennedy did not like to back down on anything. It does make one wonder what he may have done to salvage the situation – back out, or go “root hog” militarily and finish it quickly? Deification – that’s an interesting word to use given the enormous amount of info now surfacing about JFK’s personal peccadilloes.

BTW, I still think Eddie Deezen is a fair comparison to Mr. Emanuel. You may eventually forget the name, but you’ll never forget the mannerisms or the voice.
ID

Subject: Santayana would be proud…

ID,

As our nation commemorates the 50th anniversary of JFK’s assassination, I see parallels with our current pop culture president. Beyond the obvious human and national tragedy, JFK’s assassination harmed our country in other ways. It is my opinion that, had he not been assassinated, Vietnam would have been Kennedy’s war. I think you and many of the Czar’s readers can certainly appreciate how that would have totally upended the liberal narrative of the last 50 years that had as its basis the post-mortem deification of the slain president. The standard liberal line is that Kennedy would have gotten us out of Vietnam before it got too hot. That’s because they dare not ponder any other scenario as it would undermine the majority of their political gains. The bottom line is that, had he lived, Kennedy would have reaped what he sowed. The difference is Mr. Obama now has no choice but to go down with the ship after he opened the scuttling valves.

Your Esteemed Associate

This is a subject worthy of much thought, and simple analysis may be impossible. Some quick gut thoughts for the reader to incorporate into his or her analytical stew?

First, Kennedy could indeed have escalated our involvement into Việt Nam. As we saw with the Cuban missile crisis, he was not one to back down. Call it Irish stubbornness. But at the same time, as we saw with the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy knew when he was licked and was well capable of backing down. Overall, he was a capricious military leader—which means he was famously unpredictable.

Second, the Czar will believes that JFK’s legacy as a liberal is a complete fabrication created by LBJ, RFK, and Ted Kennedy.

Well, JFK was no Calvin Coolidge; but he was a man who believed in limited government, and asked us not to ask not. He was very pro-business, and cut taxes in 1964; this was something Reagan used as leverage in 1986, as you recall. Additionally, he was indeed a most interventionist president. Sure, Clinton called out the military more times than any other recent president (Haiti, Kosovo, Croatia, Serbia, Somalia, Sudan, Pakistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Yugoslavia, and so forth), but Clinton never tried to assassinate Fidel Castro; heck, he even left Vince Foster for his wife to take care of. Kennedy was a strongly aggressive brawler.

However, after his tragic end, the Kennedy programs were largely stopped except for the most visible ones: Việt Nam and the Space Program (and the latter was something JFK did not really care for). LBJ was pretty quick to launch a boatload of pet liberal programs; suddenly, the surviving Kennedys were all behind LBJ, pink-washing the JFK legacy. Numerous times LBJ claimed this is what Jack would have done. In reality, JFK would have abhorred the War on Poverty, would have loathed hippies, and taken LBJ to task over his racism.

Esteemed Associate says that “The standard liberal line is that Kennedy would have gotten us out of Vietnam before it got too hot.” The standard liberal myth is that Kennedy was a standard liberal. He was probably the most conservative Democrat since Cleveland. Not sure about the War in Việt Nam but had he lived, the War on Poverty might been delayed by a quarter century.

Volgi? This is one of your pet topics, no?

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.