November 22, 1963, was the first day of my life of which I have substantial memories: Mrs. Gibbons, my ample, white-haired second-grade teacher from Central Casting, wheeling the giant blond-wood TV set into the classroom so that we could watch some dull educational program; the sudden interruption for breaking news from Dallas, which we all followed avidly during the hour or so that was left of the school day; the anxious minutes during which I ran all the way home, convinced that the murder of a president must portend something absolutely horrible, at the very least the veritable collapse of society; my even greater anxiety when, unprecedentedly and apparently in confirmation of my fear, my mother didn’t respond to my increasingly urgent knocks at the door; and the immense relief I felt when she called out from across the street, where she was watching the terrible news with the neighbors, and where I, too, would spend the next several hours, experiencing a turning point in human history.
The day that President Kennedy was assassinated marked an end to what, in retrospect anyway, seems like an innocent and harmonious era in American life and the beginning of a period – one in which we still live – during which American society has been marred, sometimes more than others, by political doubt, division, and distrust and by growing disagreement on fundamental questions. A few days ago, on the December 15 episode of his show on Fox News – about which more later – Tucker Carlson noted that the phrase “conspiracy theory” had not been in common usage until 1964, when it began to be used to describe people who resisted the Warren Commission’s conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone in killing the president and that Jack Ruby had acted alone in killing Oswald.
Those doubts about the JFK assassination, although back-burnered most of the time, have never been entirely quelled. And over the decades there have been other doubts. After Pearl Harbor Day, virtually nobody in America questioned the virtue of our involvement in World War II; but over the course of the 1960s and early 70s, more and more Americans considered our prosecution of the Vietnam War unnecessary, if not outright wrong, and expressed an unprecedented distrust for the wisdom and virtue of our supreme military leaders. Watergate further frayed the fabric of American society. And the fall of the Soviet Union, which felt at first like a magnificent victory, proved soon enough to have taken from us a conflict that (we realized) had played a crucial role in maintaining our sense of national unity, national identity, and national purpose. Similarly, 9/11 brought us together briefly only to see the Bush administration lead us into two wars – the second justified on the basis of assertions about Saddam Hussein’s munitions that turned out to be unfounded – and those wars, as they dragged on over the years, resulted in increasingly intense domestic discord. And this is not to mention the “conspiracy theorists” who, after 9/11, in what at the time seemed both outrageous and appalling, dared to suggest that President Bush, or other federal officials or agencies, had been behind the attacks on New York and Washington.
The election of our first black president, whose campaign speeches eloquently emphasized the oneness of Americans – those mystic chords of memory, don’t you know, that unite left and right, black and white, north and south – also seemed at first to be a marker of national unity: finally, once and for all, we had put racism behind us. But once in office the man did everything he could to divide us, to draw us apart, to drag us down; and when, toward the end of his eight years in the White House, a very different presidential candidate came along, promising a glorious restoration and renewal as well as a long-due reckoning with the largely mysterious permanent state that had grown steadily in size and power since the end of World War II, a sizable portion of the electorate responded with a degree of enthusiasm that was matched only by the level of dread with which the nation’s entrenched political establishment responded to his candidacy. Trump’s presidency was crippled from the start by absurd tales of Russian collusion – which were not described as conspiracy theories, because they were invented by major figures within the political establishment and were constantly represented in the mainstream media as nothing less than the truth.
Not since the Civil War had Americans been as divided as they were over Trump. So dug-in were his opponents that even after the Russian collusion stories were revealed to be lies, the Trump-haters showed no contrition, no embarrassment, and certainly no sign of having learned a lesson or of being willing to shut up and listen. On Election Night 2020, early returns suggested that Trump was headed for a second win, but after a highly mysterious break in the vote count in several states the whole thing turned around in a way that, in the view of knowledgeable observers, was exceedingly suspicious if not statistically impossible, but that one court after another refused to take seriously as a possible case of widespread, coordinated fraud. Finally, the kerfuffle at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, provided Democrats and their media allies with something, however trivial, that they could pin, however indefensibly, on Trump and use to back up their ridiculous contention – which was substantiated by absolutely nothing that he had done as president – that he was an autocrat out to overturn a legitimate election. Add to that claim, which has hung over America ever since like a toxic cloud, the manifest mental incapacity of Trump’s successor – who is obviously not running his own administration, and who on September 1 of this year, at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, with bizarre blood-red backlighting, delivered an angry, denunciatory speech of a sort that no president in history had ever given, virtually equating Trump and his followers with Nazis – and you have an electorate more angry and more polarized than at any time since those shots were fired in Dealey Plaza.
And the tension just keeps ramping up. This month, having just spent $44 billion to buy Twitter, the world’s most influential media platform, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has been releasing corporate documents proving what many of us already strongly suspected: that the people who’d previously run the firm had systematically colluded with the Democratic Party, with various Democratic politicians, and with the CIA and FBI to illegitimately block tweets that they knew to be factual but that would likely have done harm to Democrats. The most notable and most serious such case was that involving the New York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop, the contents of which, if they hadn’t been improperly blocked from Twitter, would likely have handed the 2020 election, fraud or no fraud, to Trump – and would have landed Biden not in the White House but, with any justice, in prison for corruption.
The Musk revelations shouldn’t have been a huge surprise. We always knew about the CIA’s role in regime changes in Iran, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Chile, Bolivia, and elsewhere – but we always excused these activities by telling ourselves that, well, most of them took place at a time when the U.S. was enmeshed in a Cold War with a totalitarian enemy that seemed at the time to be an existential threat to the free world. So it was easy, not all that long ago, for us to cheer on Carrie Mathison and her CIA colleagues in Homeland (2011-20). The same was true of the FBI. As a boy, watching movies like The FBI Story (1959, with James Stewart) and the TV series The FBI (1965-74), I viewed G-men as heroes. Yes, J. Edgar Hoover, during his long directorial tenure, had used his power to intimidate presidents; later, the bloody debacle at Waco had been a big blemish – but nobody, we told ourselves, is perfect. Even more recently, however, even before Musk began releasing documents, the FBI had damaged its image among decent American citizens by its role in the plot to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer and its staged arrest of Roger Stone, among other politically motivated actions.
As if all this weren’t enough, Tucker Carlson, on the above-mentioned December 15 episode of his Fox News show, discussed the trove of documents relating to the JFK assassination that have been kept under wraps by the CIA for generations and the release of which had, on that very day, December 15, been once again forbidden by the Biden administration. Carlson stated that an anonymous but trusted source familiar with the documents had confirmed the CIA’s involvement in the JFK assassination. This wasn’t entirely a surprise: during my teens and twenties, I’d avidly read several books that flatly rejected the conclusions of the Warren Commission and, instead, pinned the JFK assassination on, variously, the USSR, Cuba, the Mafia, the CIA, and even the Secret Service. Some of these authors’ arguments were persuasive. But there had never been definitive proof, and none of these theories, of course, had ever won official approbation.
But now, in late 2022, in an America when so many things had once seemed so certain and so good, everything seemed to be in question or in flux. Seven years after Trump began his presidential campaign with a promise to “drain the swamp,” it seemed as if the curtains were finally beginning to be pulled back in a big way on the Deep State. The very thought that colossal – and proven – revelations about the JFK assassination might be in the offing sent my mind flying back to November 22, 1963, a time when extremely few Americans were capable of imagining that respected government officials of either party might be responsible for the murder of their president. Now, I daresay almost all of us can imagine it. The high-handed regulations set down and cruelly enforced by a number of governors and mayors during the COVID pandemic – regulations that destroyed countless small businesses, caused untold psychological damage to tens of millions of American citizens, and affected virtually all of America’s children in ways that may not be fully clear for a long time – opened the eyes of many of us as to just how capable many of our leaders are of sheer tyranny.
For some of us, anyway, all of these experiences and revelations add up to something that can fairly be described as a rather earth-shattering epiphany. They’ve led us not just to recognize that we can’t necessarily trust the results of our own country’s elections, but to contemplate the possibility that perhaps we should never have trusted them all along. (Yes, we all knew about the chicanery that put JFK in the White House in 1960, but how many other elections were also stolen?) They’ve led us to wonder what crimes against American liberty the FBI and CIA have committed that we don’t know about and that would knock our socks off if we did know. They’ve led us, indeed, to question pretty much everything we’ve thought and felt about America ever since we were proudly and naively patriotic children in school, unquestioningly saluting the flag, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and singing the “Star-spangled Banner.” Of course we’ve always known that we weren’t saluting the members of our government, whom we knew to be flawed, and in some cases terribly flawed – we were saluting our beautiful land itself, saluting the remarkable society bequeathed to us by our forebears, and saluting, above all, our Constitution and the principles embodied in our Declaration of Independence, which reminds us that when our government denies us out freedom, it is our right to replace it. Our right, and our duty.
Well done sir. The mask has dropped and it’ll be hard for many Americans not to unsee the evil hiding in the shadows. Unfortunately, many American are willfully blind.
The good news is history, for good or evil, has always been made and will always be made by intellectual minorities. The majority simply follow. Most people are not inclined towards philosophical or intellectual inquiry they simply want to live their lives without thinking much about the big, philosophical issues. Thinking is too much trouble for them. Even too disturbing, painful, and anxiety provoking.
“History [for good or evil] is made by minorities—or, more precisely, history is made by intellectual movements, which are created by minorities. Who belongs to these minorities? Anyone who is able and willing actively to concern himself with intellectual issues. Here, it is not quantity, but quality that counts (the quality—and consistency—of the ideas one is advocating).” – Ayn Rand
History is made when the minority rise up, not by the intellectual academics who pontificate and theorize and create impractical philosophy after impractical philosophy which some government agencies will write a vast report that nobody reads..
It’s time for the practical people of this world to rise up and say no.
“It’s time for the practical people of this world to rise up and say no.”
That was the French “Revolution” which was the opposite of the American Revolution. The French Revolution lacked the proper philosophical and intellectual (academic) foundation to establish freedom and liberty and therefore had to collapse into a bloody terror followed by the strong-man distatorship of Napoleon to end the anarchy.
The Founding Fathers were highly philosophical and intellectual (academic). They were men of the mind, they were men dedicated to reason and to action, action guided by actual, objective, reasoning, the reasoning of a John Locke. Not the charlatan reasoning of a Robespierre and a Rousseau.
“A majority without an ideology is a helpless mob, to be taken over by anyone . . . . Political freedom requires much more than the people’s wish. It requires an enormously complex knowledge of political theory and of how to implement it in practice….
Politics is based on three other philosophical disciplines: metaphysics, epistemology and ethics—on a theory of man’s nature and of man’s relationship to existence. It is only on such a base that one can formulate a consistent political theory and achieve it in practice. When, however, men attempt to rush into politics without such a base, the result is that embarrassing conglomeration of impotence, futility, inconsistency and superficiality which is loosely designated today as “conservatism.” – Ayn Rand
Fortunately for us history will never be made by the sick little minority of Objectivism toadies you have been pushing.
Sadly many are blind to the truth. I pray we recover.
“Drain the swamp.” “Pull back the curtains?” Isn’t that a mixed metaphor?
Rip down the digital curtain to expose the corruption and fraud that has poisoned government, education, the military, judiciary and the 5th estate aka the swamp.
Excellent article Bruce, and applicable worldwide not just in the USA, the globalist elites are power hungry just like the CIA and all government bodies.
It’s time to smash government and bring it back to doing what the people want not what the U.N. Agenda 2030 wants.
Conspiracy theory?
It’s time to smash government and bring it back to doing what the people want ”
The people of Germany wanted and voted for Hitler; they got Nazism. The people of Venezuela wanted and voted for Hugo Chavez; they got communism. An ignorant mob is a deadly threat to human life.
“If we discard morality and substitute for it the Collectivist doctrine of unlimited majority rule, if we accept the idea that a majority may do anything it pleases, and that anything done by a majority is right because it’s done by a majority (this being the only standard of right and wrong)—how are men to apply this in practice to their actual lives? Who is the majority? In relation to each particular man, all other men are potential members of that majority which may destroy him at its pleasure at any moment. Then each man and all men become enemies; each has to fear and suspect all; each must try to rob and murder first, before he is robbed and murdered.” – Ayn Rand
The West have became victims of a silent, slow coup d’etat by Globalists who are in fact the latest manifestation of the crusading utopian impulse that appeared in Russia in 1917 with a Bolshevik Coup
Replace the name ”Putin” with the name TRUMP and you can see where this is going as it’s the same Establishment/ Deep sate/ Globalists and their Allies in the MSM out to get a leader who refuses to walk in lockstep to the ”Great Reset” !
As I’ve often said, the West are becoming a parody of the former Soviet Union insomuch they are Liberal Bolsheviks and the January 6th Committee are their version of the 1930s Show Trials with Trump as an ‘;’enemy of the people” , a latter day Kamanev or Zinoviev
Naturally, you could only recognise this historical comparison if you are familiar with the History of the Soviets AND refuse to be spoon fed drivel and lies from the latter day Bolsheviks, the GLOBALISTS with their version of the Five Year Plans and Collectivisation of Agriculture etc in the Great Reset” , but their Five Year PLans want to DE-INDUSTRIALISE the West as they have a romantic neo pagan view of the future due to the impact of Enrvronmantalism
unclear writing. Who would replace the name Putin with Trump?
loss of freedom, loss of representation, and persecution by government – the issues of today
To understand what is going on across the West it’s necessary to be broad minded and have 20 TH C history, especially the history of the Soviet Union as a historical template as the radical Dems who seized power in the US through a Flu d’etat in 2020 are really LIBERAL BOLSHEVIKS, and with that in mind everything they do comes into clear focus, especially the Show Trial of Trump , or is it Trotsky ? Yes , the West are becoming a parody of the former USSR and it was none other that Gorbychov who said he couldn’t understand why the EU would try to re-create the failed USSR
The grandiose projects and megalowmanical thinking is similar to what came out of the Kremlin in the 1930s whether the collectivasation of the peasants or the Five Year Plans… the Great Reset ?
It is driven by the resurgence of the 4th Reich. See, YouTube, The Nazi Roots of the Brussels EU by Dr Mathias Rath et al
Yes, there are always operatives at the edges but history is driven by the center and at the center of our society are leftist dominated educational institutions capturing the minds of our children. The “long march through the institutions” is what got us here today.
I am the ultimate conspiracy theorist.
God
Family
Country
2 genders
Yes Sir/ No Sir
Yes Ma’am / No Ma’am
Hold doors open
Help when not asked
Early to bed early to rise
Please / Thank you
Respect my Elders
I carry my own water
Yes I did that
My wife is a woman
My daughter is a woman
My son is a man
Pureblood
Any questions?
Yeh, what’s “pureblood”?
I suspect that by “pure blood”, he means “not pretending to be Black/Indigenous/the other sex when you’re not.” But I could be wrong!
Not vaccinated with a gene modifying experiment
Not jabbed
Not boosted
Not masked
Not fooled
Etc., etc.
You, and others like you, are necessary to the restoration of our nation and its blessings. But the sine qua non is revival of Christianity such that our politics and politicians adhere to its moral principles, creating human flourishing for all.
Christianity leads to the tyranny of theocracy (so does Judaism and so does Islam). History is proof.
Go look at how the Amish actually live, they live under a local, community, theocracy. Go look at how the Hasidim actually live, they live under a local, comunity, theocracy.
They say the Jewish people produce an astonishing number of brilliant intellectual, scientific, artistic, and business minds, and they do, once they become essentially Hellenized, i.e., secularized. When was the last time a Hasid or Mennonite won the Nobel Prize for science or literature?
The sine qua non for the revival of America is actual reason, actual logic, actual rationality, and actual objectivity.
A life based on Hudson Christian values is not a theocracy. Many of our Founders were more agnostic and clearly not theocrats.
“Judeo” Christian values
Whenever any of the monotheistic religions are led into an orthodoxy by radical fundamentalists they cease to flourish. Ditto for all idealogies.
Great article. Sad but true.
Hope against hope for a Happy New Year
A worthwhile read.
If only all that questioning of what has happened and is continuing to happen that Bawer mentions would lead to action and real change rather than more distilled rhetoric. A sad state of affairs.
The takeover of all our institutions and government by the leftist/progressive ideologues is near complete.
There’s the Democratic mantra of “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion”. DEI has brought about illegal laws that call for firing whites first, for hiring whites last, and anyone that disagrees with them is a Racist, a Fascist, a Homophobe, a Xenophobe, a Misogynist and now, an Ableist. Did I miss one? Of course, CRT. They want to teach your children to hate themselves and cower if they are white or be a perpetual victim and hate whites if they are black or brown. We now have biological males destroying women’s sports and we have a transgender fake “Admiral” as the “highest ranking official of the U.S. Public Health Service”. He/She? also thinks that it’s O.K. to mutilate and castrate children in the name of “gender equity”. It’s almost impossible to comprehend how we are living in such an upside down clown world.
And don’t dare to speak against any of it, or you are likely to be banned from any social media platform and investigated by the new “Stasi”; our own DOJ and FBI. Unless it’s stopped soon we will simply disintegrate into an evil, lawless, corrupt, society ruled over by the rich politicians in collusion with the “woke” corporate oligarchs. As the middle class is destroyed, the poor masses will own nothing. Just like every other Socialist/Communist state in history.
Remember Charlie Manson?
Helter-Skelter has arrived.
To bad he didn’t get to see
his goal arrive.
Just kidding of course, but
nevertheless his dream is
here.
We have become A Nation of DISTRACTIONS and OMISSIONS. To replace Common Sense and Critical Thinking, the “thrill seeker” looks for “immediate gratification. Through “immediate gratification, the “thrill seeker” get a rush of ‘delightfulness” until it vanishes and then they move on to the next “immediate thrill.”
Others become 100% irrelevant and unnecessary UNLESS they are apart of the COLLECTIVE. The Collective mindset reinforces THE myopic, delusional, corrupt, fraudulent, THE BIG LIES and tyranny IDEOLOGY. Couple THE IDEOLOGY with the “fundamental transformation of America” originated by obama in 2009 and the result is a blueprint for DISASTER. That DISASTER have been on display for MOST of the 21st Century.
IT is the DISTRACTION and Omission which is used constantly by the Left, “FASCISTIC SOCIALISTS’/AMERICAN MARXISM and their GAGGLE/Party of INSANITY, ANTI-AMERICANISM, FRAUD, THE BIG LIES& TOTALITARIANISM.
The MastPlan is to reinvent AMERICANISM to what George Orwell wrote about in 1984. Promise Utpianism But instead DUSTOPIANS rears its ULGY head of destruction.
Bruce Bawer’s piece is absolutely on-point, on every point and fact.
I guess I was a year older than Bawer, since I was in Third Grade that horrifying, at first unbelievable Friday early afternoon in 1963 when the horribly unimaginable news spread through my school and the entire nation and world.
Until then, and to my embarrassment for many decades since then, until recently, I’d faithfully believed that our most senior Government officials, certainly in the Executive Branch, and most of all the FBI and the CIA, were honorable experts protecting us, and on our side (at least against our foreign enemies).
But we now know that they weren’t, and to this day, aren’t.
Regardless of her flaws and faults, including her outdated and deadly gun laws and pro-Apartheid,pro-Zionist Foreign Policy, I would not want to live in a world without America. God Bless America and all who serve.