"Fake News": The Emergence of a Post-Fact World

[David Horn]

(01-16-2017, 11:10 AM)SomeGuy Wrote:

David Horn Wrote:I'm not a great Nixon fan, even allowing for his supposed strengths. But comparing Nixon's 5 years and 7 months to Kennedy's 2 years and 10 months is a bit unfair. Even then, it was Kennedy who set our sights on the moon in 10 years, not Nixon.

I'm as little a fan of the "If JFK/Bobby had lived all problems would have been solved" school of thought as I am of the idea of Obama as a secular saint.  He also got us started in Vietnam, too, and a lot of the legislation passed by the later Johnson administration owes more to him than it does JFK.

But who cares, he's been dead for more than 50 years.

LBJ was able to do what he did, including getting us buried in that war, because he was the entitled heir to a fallen martyr.  That wouldn't happen today, but it did then.

And let's not litigate the Vietnam War, since I actually lived through the entire debacle.  

SomeGuy Wrote:

David Horn Wrote:And the entire Camelot thing was extremely powerful too.

 
Powerful?  I am judging you so much right now, I want you to know that. 

You have no idea how the country changed by having a young President with fresh ideas.  Of course, the Bay of Pigs tarnished that a lot, but Kennedy recovered and faced-down Khrushchev on missiles in Cuba.  Then it changed again when he was assassinated.  I remember where I was when I heard, just like I remember where I was when the bombers struck the World Trade Center.

So powerful?  Yes.