When
Khrushchev then backed down (thankfully, otherwise you might not be alive and
reading this book) and removed the missiles and the crisis suddenly ended
without any war, Americans felt an enormous letdown.17 The
media reported on "The Strange Mood of America Today Baffled and uncertain
of what to believe..."18 It began to ask what were seen as
frightening questions: "Will It Now Be A World Without Real War? Suddenly
the world seems quiet...Why the quiet? What does it mean?"19 The
prospect of peaceful quiet felt terribly frightening.
Americans
from all parties were furious with Kennedy for various pretexts. Many began
calling for a new Cuban invasion, agreeing with Barry Goldwater's demand that
Kennedy "do anything that needs to be done to get rid of that cancer. If
it means war, let it mean war."20 Kennedy was accused of
being soft on Communism for living up to his no-invasion pledge to the Soviets,
and when he then proposed signing a Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with them,
his popularity dropped even further.21
The nation's
columnists expressed their fury towards the president, and political cartoonists pictured Kennedy with his
head being chopped off by a guillotine (above). Richard Nixon warned,
"There'll be...blood spilled before [the election is] over,"22 and
a cartoon in The Washington Post portrayed Nixon digging a grave. Many editorialists
were even more blunt. The Delaware State News editorialized: "Yes,
Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. His name right now happens to be Kennedy
let's shoot him, literally, before Christmas."23 Potential
assassins all over the country-psychopaths who are always around looking for
permission to kill-saw all these media death wishes as signals, as delegations
to carry out a necessary task, and began to pick up these fantasies as
permission to kill Kennedy.24
Kennedy's
aides warned him of an increase in the number of death threats toward him. His
trip to Dallas, known as the "hate capital of Dixie," was seen as
particularly dangerous. His aides begged him to cancel his trip. Senator J.
William Fulbright told him, "Dallas is a very dangerous place...I wouldn't
go there. Don't you go."25 Vice President Lyndon Johnson,
writing the opening lines of the speech he intended to make in Austin after the
Dallas visit, planned to open with: "Mr. President, thank God you made it
out of Dallas alive!"26 Dallas judges and leading citizens
warned the President he should not come to the city because of the danger of
assassination. The day before the assassination, as handbills were passed out
in Dallas with Kennedy's picture under the headline "Wanted For Treason,"
militants of the John Birch Society and other violent groups flooded into
Dallas, and hundreds of reporters flew in from all over the country, alerted
that something might happen to the president.27
Kennedy
himself sensed consciously he might be shot. Two months before the actual
assassination, he made a home movie "just for fun" of himself being
assassinated.28 The morning of his assassination, an aide later
recalled, Kennedy went to his hotel window, "looked down at the speaker's
platform...and shook his head. 'Just look at that platform,' he said. 'With all
those buildings around it, the Secret Service couldn't stop someone who really
wanted to get you.'"29 When Jackie Kennedy told him she
was really afraid of an assassin on this trip, JFK agreed, saying, "We're
heading into nut country today....You know, last night would have been a hell
of a night to assassinate a President. I mean it...suppose a man had a pistol
in a briefcase." He pointed his index finger at the wall and jerked his
thumb. "Then he could have dropped the gun and briefcase and melted away
in the crowd."30 Despite all the warnings, however,
Kennedy unconsciously accepted the martyr's role. He was, after all, used to
doing all his life what others wanted him to do.31 So although
a Secret Service man told him the city was so dangerous that he had better put
up the bulletproof plastic top on his limousine, he specifically told him not
to do so.32 In fact, someone instructed the Secret Service not
to be present ahead of time in Dallas and check out open windows such as those
in the Book Depository, as they normally did whenever a president traveled in
public as Kennedy did.33 Only then, with the nation, the
assassin, the Secret Service and the president all in agreement, the
assassination could be successfully carried out.
vs.
Eventually
Nikita Khrushchev “wanted the Soviet Union to be admired rather than feared and
hoped for a thaw in the Cold War, removing Soviet troops from Austria.”94 Nevertheless, despite the ability of the U.S.
to destroy all human life on earth with its nuclear missiles, John F. Kennedy
got elected to the Presidency on a mythical “missile gap” claim, and then gave
the go-ahead to the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba over the objections of his
military.95 Then,
saying he had to “make us appear tough,”96 he began what was termed Operation Mongoose that included inciting
insurrection and sabotage in Cuba.97 One of the first plans the military suggested to him was Operation
Northwoods, “calling for innocent people to be shot on American streets and
people framed for the bombings, all blamed on Castro.”98 The CIA warned Kennedy that attempts to
remove Castro might cause the Soviets to “establish a medium-range missile base
in Cuba.”99 Krushchev
responded by putting Soviet missiles into Cuba.100
The origin of
Kennedy’s need to prove his masculinity was his early child abuse. His mother
had battered him as a child with coat hangers and belts, his father smashed his
childrens’ heads against walls, so that his resulting fears of impotence made
him fill the White House during evenings with sexual partners to demonstrate
how hyper-masculine he was.101 After the U.S. discovered that Soviet missiles had been placed in
Cuba, Kennedy deemed this a threat to his hyper-masculine hawkish pose, despite
the opinion of his Secretary of Defense, who “saw no major
threat to U.S. security from the missiles”102 since Soviet missiles were already in the area on their
submarines. The Cuban missiles were just the excuse for Kennedy to demonstrate
his manhood. As Wofford puts it: “The real stake was prestige…In the Kennedy
lexicon of manliness, not being ‘chicken‘ was a primary value.”103 Kennedy admitted “there may be 200 million
Americans dead” if he precipitated a nuclear war,104 but nevertheless when it looked like the
Soviets might not agree to keep secret his promise to remove the U.S. Turkish
missiles which might make him “lose face,”105 Kennedy sent American planes carrying 1,300 nuclear bombs into the
air on Sunday with orders to begin bombing Russia the next day if Khrushchev
didn’t immediately say he would keep the secret.106 Few Americans opposed Kennedy’s actions, even
though they said they would likely lead to a nuclear war.107 Only Khrushchev’s agreeing to remove his
missiles without making Kennedy seem “chicken” avoided a nuclear WWIII.
Kennedy soon
needed a new war to consolidate his defensive masculinity pose, increased the
U.S. military spending the largest amount in any peacetime, and then committed
16,300 U.S. soldiers to Vietnam. When he went to Dallas, where there were many
highly publicized death threats to kill him, he needed still more “toughness,”
and told his wife, “Jackie, if somebody wants to shoot me from a window with a
rifle, nobody can stop it.”108 “His Secret Service aides told him he better put up the
bulletproof plastic top on his limousine, so he specifically told them not to
do so,”109 committing
suicide to demonstrate his hypermasculinity.
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