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1. I don't what ? You're saying I'm lying about myself here ? Did you see that part where I said you shouldn't talk to me if you think I'm a liar ? 2. I didn't say I wasn't concerned. I do not take it personally the way you do. I acknowledge that I have a dislike for Trump and I work to try to rise above that in my analysis. I have also said good things about him here as I really dislike binary takes. 3. I have also said there's potential for him to do well, have expressed hope that he does well, etc. Do you think Trudeau or Singh have potential to do well ? Do you hope they succeed ? 4. Obama was a non-factor in so many ways. I would say he listened to the experts on the economy and it eventually went well for him, and I would say his foreign policy was inconsistent and weak. He had the least experience of any president I can think of back to... He was a one-term Senator but let's see Bush - State Governor Clinton - State Governor Bush Sr - VP and head of CIA Reagan - State Governor Carter - State Governor Ford - Not elected but I think he was a Senator Nixon - Senator, VP Johnson - Senator, VP JFK - Senator Eisenhower - Military Leader in European Theatre, WW2 Truman - Senator, VP Roosevelt - State Governor Hoover ... ? Ok I went back 100 years just out of interest and Hoover is the one guy who is less qualified than Obama

1. Yes but the Nixon JFK debate was left/right. 56 years later there was an all Republican debate that should have been mir civil since it didn't cross party lines. One of the candidates talked about his penis size. I won't mention his name, but he soon after became President. Facts, criticism, without time limits. Good things. 2. You seem to that the actions of labour weren't as significant as the emergence of the 1% wisdom. No, one of my relatives was shot at by hired goons during those times. 3. Are humans part of Earth's nature? Or maybe a universal force of distribution.

I don't dispute the perception, and to add: my take on it is that democracy as a framework depends on the public sphere, which exists in all systems, and is as such dependent on public media. I also agree generally with your call for solutions and more engagement - very much so. I don't think that we can say for sure that the system will fall, or the aforementioned chaos will consume it since it IS dependent on the public sphere and that sphere persists. There are other examples of new media formenting chaos... the results eventually balanced themselves on the new media. JFK, for example, was considered by some to have won his televised debate with Nixon because of imagery, which in turn was seen as a bad thing.

@Contrarian I haven't criticized JFK in the past much at all. The Democrats and Republicans have done dirty politics in the past, even JFK.

JFK and Ike were the clean images that got us out of the dirtyness... but they were linked with LBJ and Nixon... And JFK only seemed straight - he out-dirtied Nixon to win the presidency in crooked Chicago. That was the real stop the steal...

This is a new feature of Western politics definitely, in that the left have been the audience before very recently. But if you want the full scope of how this works, the analysis of record is a book called the paranoid style of American politics by Richard Hofstadter. Therein he posits that America was founded on an unbelievable conspiracy theory, that there were forces conspiring to rebel against the king and establish an independent republic for the first time. That turned out pretty well for them. And created a cultural cornerstone of sorts. The JFK conspiracy theory, anti-vaccine theories prior to the pandemic are the first two that come to mind.

https://repolitics.com/forums/search/?&q=JFK&page=2&quick=1&author=Michael Hardner&search_and_or=or&sortby=relevancy Also searched on Kennedy. The only bad thing I could find was when I said he never had a job, which as the son of wealthy man ... was true. He did serve in the South Pacific in WW2, US Navy.

Arguable but also not false. The southern "tradition" was gone after LBJ. They didn't universally vote for Republicans or Democrats after but there was less of a cultural lineage after LBJ's betrayal of Russell et al. I was reading a book on early Canadian history, for example, and there was a line in there something like "He knew that Alberta would never elect anything but Liberals so his only choice was to...". IF you want to break culture and start a new one, you need a major event like a GW Bush Jr. (Took Texas back to the Republicans for a generation) or Trump (Turned Georgia, Arizona purple) and so on... Obama didn't do much, nor did Clinton... they were not icon-breakers just seat fillers in that regard. The next Icon-Breaker is likely not ready to run in 2024 but then again it's hard to recognize big figures when they appear. Trump was a talk-show joke when he showed up. LBJ was the widower who got JFK's chair. Lincoln, Churchill were underrated when it came time for them to stand up. The President of Ukraine is/was a TV comic. We are history's playthings...

If course. The 9/11 inside job theory, the original anti-vax movement as incubated on Natural News, and the granddaddy conspiracy that made the ground fertile for ALL of the rest: that defense corporations worked with the military industrial complex and the mafia to assassinate JFK. And don't leave out a liberal hollywood, who for years sold fantasies of evil corporations conspiring with the deep state.... Oliver Stone etc. It's pervasive that people start to believe it's true.

1. Well given his aforementioned fame, you should be able to find it referred to somewhere ? I know he seemed to cry when announcing JFK's death but not Vietnam. It really doesn't matter though. 2. Only through today's cracked lens. Since there's no editorial content, or if there was it was managed via the Fairness Doctrine, we only have subjective views on such a thing. Lots of left wingers were blacklisted and prohibited from participating in films and media, though, and this is well known. Is there a right wing equivalent ? Maybe for Nazis I guess. 3. I already said this is irrelevant to the topic so I'm not engaging. Start a separate thread on school safety I guess. 4. Hmmm you are asking me for cites ? Did you provide all the ones I asked for yet ? I think people are suggesting democracy isn't a good idea anymore such as this guy 5. You're saying that every Democrat president has seen a recession over his term. I don't have to ask for a cite to know that's nonsense. 6. Eisenhower lorded over a major state apparatus that included astronomical tax rates and strong social programming by government. I guess that was before your time.

Not conservatives. Some conservative politicians try to appeal to conspiracy theorists, hence the confusion. Conspiracy theories used to be the domain of the left, see the JFK assassination.

I agree with you up until this last sentence. I was deeply interested in the JFK files, and when they were released I determined that the revelations were just the names of CIA agents whose employment status was not known previously. They were releasing the names after the agents had died.

The American politicians tend to be older than 'ours' but even ours were raised in the era of the 'television man', the image staked out by JFK in 1960. Trump has shown that a more 'real' candidate speaks to people, although it takes skillful navigation to navigate in that image. Well, you are now drifting into the area of substance instead of style and I disagree with your assessment that these things are somehow being handled against what 'the people' want. I suspect you may not live in Toronto ? I'll leave the subject to style only since I agree with the gist of your post there. If you don't think putting a Carbon Tax in is making a 'hard decision' then you are contradicting yourself. Do you want someone who make hard decisions or does what the people want ? Pick a side. The borrowing of money is 100% a Covid thing. My assessment is our problems are: political unity, the environment, the economy. While the current government is making policy on these fronts, and I think O'Toole would do many of the same things as Trudeau, neither of them have a bold vision for reform I grant you that.

1. Not lately. JFK raised eyebrows by promoting his very capable brother. Ivanka ? 2. Not like this. 3. Arguable. 4. 'like Trump' ? What do you mean - you are making the case that he's not even remarkable. 5. What a shitty low bar... he didn't take over yet therefore he is not a threat. 6. Hmmm. Obama didn't pile chairs in front of the door of the oval office as Trump likely will. 7. Guilty.

Well, I would say you are absolutely incorrect on both of those. Of course the war had just ended in the former case, and in the latter case LBJ was more of an FDR type than JFK ... But how much change is 'change' is a question too, I guess.

1. You can turn off the noise if you're tired of it. In an open society, information is a commodity with value - including entertainment value. The conspiracy industry has made millions with compelling, though false, information. Surely you can see the incentive for publishing this information, and must acknowledge that at least some of it is made up. 2. It is MUCH easier for liars to make up stuff than for the government to detect all the lies, and shoot them down convincingly. If I posted a lie here about 9/11 or the JFK assassination, there would be no way for a knowledgable and convincing person to know that I lied, and come in and dispel it. 3. Who are these people who would kill their fellow countrymen? How much impact does it really have? If populations were really as predictable as that (in that governments could predict with certainty the political impact of a 9/11 or a JFK assassination) then they would be able to achieve their goals far more easily. Elections would be won over and over again by the party in power. Scandals that bring down governments wouldn't happen.

1) ? You haven't heard of the Lewinsky scandal ? 2) I don't know the details of the JFK incident. You don't say whether JFK was the employer of these people, nor do I understand the relevance of this example. 3) Ok - you seem to be mistaking immoral behaviour with the openly immoral - and defended - behaviour I'm talking about. 4) Obama had no personal scandals in his presidency, nor did GW Bush.

1) Wait... NOW what are we talking about ? You were talking about people sneaking into 'government' 2) Or a black guy secretly being a Muslim who was born in Kenya ? If you think this stuff is ridiculous, as I do, even JFK had to respond to suspicions that the Vatican would tell him what to do. 3) Nah, it's racist. If a guy was born in England you wouldn't be asking if he was devoted to England in his dealings. For that matter, several federal party leaders have/had citizenship in other countries. Elizabeth May, Stephane Dion, and I think Michael Ignatieff.

1. Then give me a test that tells me the use of this is justified in a certain era, and not being used because of the prejudices of that time. 2. In any time, it's about people treating groups as being essentially inhuman. Posters on here regularly paint certain religions as inherently poison and unreasonable. Using the logic and facts of the day didn't solve the problem of suspicions of JFK in 1960 and it doesn't solve the problem of suspicions of immigrants today. If you want to herald facts and logic to fix a problem, then apply it first to people who are irrationally against immigration based on prejudice and bad information. Canadians have already spoken on the question of screening immigrants. We have a bigger problem in public figures, politicians and media who demonize immigrants and create a climate where violence can happen. Deal with that first.

I stand corrected. Let me rephrase: these lies were projects that were small in scope, easy to coordinate, and hinged on over-publicizing them to the world to gain political traction on falsehood. I am thinking of the incubators lie here: it was a PR firm getting one person to lie in front of many cameras. These are lynchpin issues that can turn political tide at sensitive times. It's informative to look at how these were found out when considering whether JFK and 9/11 Conspiracies could be manageable operations.

Me please. If you want to see the embodiment of pure class, watch her performance in A Very Murray Christmas. What you are talking about, though, is the collapse of the 'public persona'. It was false to being with, as your example in JFK points out. Every major communication revolution washes away a previous generation's personas. Kennedy washed out Nixon, and now the TV politician has been supplanted by the TV reality star.

1. Maybe, but JFK lived in the past and I don't. I subscribe to Toynbee's Challenge and Response model of history infused with McLuhan's theories of technology, which trigger the failure of creative leadership. You ? 2. This was the era of the ad-man, the mad-man... when plastics had just started to provide the slight malleability of the male character into the first tentative steps towards the dress-wearing monster he is today. 3. Absolutely. They are bookends of the advertising-made politician. The former being the first, the latter possibly... the last. 4. I have heard whispers that he may be more of a cad then is commonly imagined.

1. From what I have read, there seem to be a lot of agents and informants named who just died recently (of old age, I mean) which tells me that a lot of this is about protecting their own. Of course, we have confirmation that the US tried to hire organized criminals to kill a world leader and nobody is interested in THAT. That's because we have no public any more, we have a mass of dunder-headed gossips and celebrity fawners. 2. No, just more bullshit and selling books. Oswald tried to kill someone else just before he killed JFK, it's well known. He got the job at the book depository from a friend of his wife, not the CIA. It was all just bad luck. Lee Oswald was an angry Communist wingnut from the get-go and nobody would have bet a real conspiracy on a nut like him.

The JFK conspiracy is going the way of other 70s fashions such as bell bottoms. There was a huge archive of material released recently. Did you hear about how it proved the conspiracy theory ? Of course not. Back to the drawing board, or the basement I suppose, for the conspiracy cottage industry...

And the hundreds of witnesses on the ground and the video apparently mean nothing. My experience tells me that engineering a hoax on this scale is pure fantasy. But fantasy has its purposes: the hard-left proponents of masses of superintelligent bogeymen working against us enjoy the freedom to express their paranoid scaremongering just as the sane ones in our midst enjoy the freedom to discuss actual issues. Eventually, as with the fantastic JFK conspiracies, the interest and money feeding such cartoons trickles away and history provides us with the correct interpretation. ---- https://www.amazon.ca/Paranoid-Style-American-Politics/dp/0307388441 That's the fundamental essay on such noodlings, and gives a good survey of the now-forgotten "Free Silver" conspiracy. It had all the attributes of the truther theories, including anti-Semitic schemings being behind the whole thing. For those of you who continue to poke at the prophets of hysteria on this issue, please at least try to enjoy your pursuit knowing that such types will never be convinced. ( Anticipating the response, I have already stated that I'm open to looking at the academic response to the already-discredited open publication of the theory promoted here.)