Kennedy's Conundrum

Clicking around links I originally found in richie73's journal, I found a speech President John F. Kennedy made in 1961 called "The American Spirit." He was beset by lunatics on the left and right -- especially the right -- and was trying to discount those voices to return focus on his own policies. He said that we Americans know that the real threat facing the country come ". . . from without, not within. It must be met by quiet preparedness, not provocative speeches."

Which made me realize that things have changed so very much. We no longer have external threats as grievous as that posed by the former Soviet Union or Communist China. There are some small external threats, true; but they are minuscule compared to nuclear annihilation. (Really, what is the greater loss, two or three large buildings or two or three -- or more -- entire cities, perhaps entire metropolitan areas? Please.)

In order to discount his rhetorical enemies, though, he had to downplay forces he may have actually recognized and the opposition to which he may have sympathized:

In the most critical periods of our nation's history, there have always been those fringes of our society who have sought to escape their own responsibility by finding a simple solution, an appealing slogan, or a convenient scapegoat. Financial crises could be explained by the presence of too many immigrants or too few greenbacks. (Emphasis mine.)

(Remember that I think Kennedy here very deliberately uses the term "greenback" not as a slang term for our current money, but in the more specific meaning referring to the United States Note issued first under Lincoln.)

I emphasized that portion of his speech for two reasons. First, it corresponds nicely with my more recent posts under the tag Tango of Cash, especially that movie Secrets of Oz. Watch that and you will find strong evidence that financial crises were perhaps indeed started by bankers attempting to solidify their money monopoly. I believe Kennedy had to mention it, though, because the most vocal antagonists to banker trusts were (and pretty much still are) found in the extreme far right, especially the John Birch Society, a group that bedeviled Kennedy in speeches and in print throughout his administration. No matter what he personally might have thought about the Federal Reserve or suspected cabals of bankers, he first and foremost had to discredit the Birchers that continually discredited him:

They look suspiciously at their neighbours and their leaders. They call for a 'man on horseback' because they do not trust the people. They find treason in our finest churches, in our highest court, and even in the treatment of our water. They equate the Democratic Party with the welfare state, the welfare state with socialism, and socialism with communism. They object quite rightly to politics' intruding on the military - but they are anxious for the military to engage in politics.

Secondly, given that the financial incentive any existing banking monopoly might have over currency manipulations would be somewhat diminished if alternative currencies were circulated outside of the trust's control, isn't it interesting that Kennedy signed Executive Order 11110 authorizing the Treasury to expand the Silver Certificate program.

The more I look into this banker's trust, this banker's monopoly over our country's money supply, the more I see that the proponents of reform come not from the far right or the far left, but simply from Americans forced to pay the usury assigned to our money supply. Ah, but that conundrum of like goals, that weird conflation of aims, all but directly contradicts the demonizing sound-bite politics most politicians have been reduced to employing. You and your enemy cannot have common aims in this scenario, at least not stated and overt aims. After all, as president, policies you ridicule and diminish with a speech one day you might have to support another day with an executive order.

This is just sad. By comparison, look at the format for the Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858:

The format for each debate was: one candidate spoke for 60 minutes, then the other candidate spoke for 90 minutes, and then the first candidate was allowed a 30-minute "rejoinder." The candidates alternated speaking first.

Got that? Each candidate got an hour and a half of total speaking time per debate. Furthermore, even with this glut of information, the debates were covered widely by the press. Oh, and one final point: These debates -- seven of them in total, adding up to 21 hours of dedicated speaking time -- were for an election to a single US Senate seat!

Had President Kennedy (and others) the opportunity to actually address specific issues with the completeness and clarity several hours might have provided -- and had those on the far right actually given points mentioned in those addresses the time and respect they deserve -- the closer we as a country might now be to implementing a solution to this devilish problem.