The Cult Of JFK

Yesterday, I discussed how many people project their political views onto 35th President John F. Kennedy, essentially arguing that had he not been assassinated he would have ushered us into their personal utopia. Of course, if one wishes to know what a continuation of the Kennedy Administration would have looked like, they only need to understand what happened under Kennedy’s successor and Vice President, Lyndon B. Johnson. Many of Kennedy’s top agenda items — Civil Rights, a fight against poverty, and (as much as many do not want to admit this) hawkishness in Vietnam — were later carried out by LBJ, with Kennedy even picking Johnson for Vice President largely due to his ability to bend Congress to his will, a skill he showed famously as Senate Majority Leader for the previous six years.

Despite this, Johnson perpetually is treated as the bad guy in many different conspiracy theories, with Trump buddy Roger Stone and Mike Colapietro even publishing a book in 2013 with the title The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ. To give you an idea of what kind of book this is, the first chapter begins with several recounting of Johnson acting irrational and petty (mind you, the stories about RFK in chapter four show a man even more petty than Johnson, but that framed very differently, I couldn’t help but notice) — none of which point to him being behind the JFK assassination. I will not even be commenting on the…