No Longer Jack
- Thread starter Plumber
- Start date
Well, he's certainly nuts. I'm looking forward to LBJ and JFK messing up just bad enough for a Goldwater win in 1964; also interested in ttl's RFK (my favorite Kennedy).
And giving JFK an evil eyepatch of power is a nice touch...
Keep up the good work!
And giving JFK an evil eyepatch of power is a nice touch...
Keep up the good work!
A really interesting timeline here, guys!
Reimagining RFK as Al Haig is a stroke of genius; I wonder if the little outburst will prove as deleterious to RFK's future ambitions as it was to Haig's.
More generally: even today, we know so very little about the extent to which gross physiological changes to the brain can alter the emergent properties of that brain (what we think of as a person's "mind" or true self). In particular, the work being done today with patients who have a severed corpus collosum -- so-called "split brain" patients -- is endlessly fascinating. Ultimately, we know so little about the question "what makes you you?"
I imagine that the TLIAFD nature here probably forecloses on the possibility that you'll look decades into the future -- but I have to imagine that direct, first-hand experience with a popular president gone Phineas Gage would directly influence both neuroscience and philosophy of mind among future generations, as people try and figure out "how could this have possibly happened?" (In the long run, I would think it'd be the death knell for dualism amongst all but the most die-hard of substance dualists.)
Anyway, I look forward to following where you guys are headed!
Reimagining RFK as Al Haig is a stroke of genius; I wonder if the little outburst will prove as deleterious to RFK's future ambitions as it was to Haig's.
More generally: even today, we know so very little about the extent to which gross physiological changes to the brain can alter the emergent properties of that brain (what we think of as a person's "mind" or true self). In particular, the work being done today with patients who have a severed corpus collosum -- so-called "split brain" patients -- is endlessly fascinating. Ultimately, we know so little about the question "what makes you you?"
I imagine that the TLIAFD nature here probably forecloses on the possibility that you'll look decades into the future -- but I have to imagine that direct, first-hand experience with a popular president gone Phineas Gage would directly influence both neuroscience and philosophy of mind among future generations, as people try and figure out "how could this have possibly happened?" (In the long run, I would think it'd be the death knell for dualism amongst all but the most die-hard of substance dualists.)
Anyway, I look forward to following where you guys are headed!
I like the timeline from what I've managed to get to so far, but I have to say that this may have passed the time limit for a "few days". 
Yes, he took us by surprise, too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MubY1HtbMOg
How batshit insane is TTL going to get?!?
Interesting, I'm curious to read more. I do like how JFK has become something of a conspiracy nut though.
Imagine some of the worse aspects of the Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton Adminstrations, in a year.
Very entertaining.
Thanks!
RFK is certainly going to be seen differently ITTL.
Hmmm, maybe we can get something like that into the TL. I don't know much about neuroscience, though.
Whooooooops. Fine, the next few updates will all come at once then. We've been mapping everything out, we just need to write it down when we have time. That should be soon!I like the timeline from what I've managed to get to so far, but I have to say that this may have passed the time limit for a "few days".
I like the timeline from what I've managed to get to so far, but I have to say that this may have passed the time limit for a "few days".
Hey, we just want to make sure that our updates are of the highest quality.
But no, Plumber and I have decided to significantly expand the scope of this project...
Events outside the US, yes, and also the next few at once. But that's not what vultan meant, I think.
Ah, that would be great! Thanks!
I'll propose this: If you want Kennedy to really go beyond a pale, have him swear in front of lady folk in an improper way, and/or children. During the era of your grandpappy, swearing like we may normally do now (with sex comments and a lot of use of 'fuck') was usually just for when the men were around. Maybe you could say goddamn, damn, hell, etc around mixed company, but you couldn't go to extremes in mixed company.
So to swear like a sailor in some outburst in front of mixed company would be a big, bad thing.
So to swear like a sailor in some outburst in front of mixed company would be a big, bad thing.
I was actually thinking of that the other day. Though my computer's broken now, so the next update is a little delayed.
Since I'm out of the hospital now, expect an update soon, everybody!
Additionally, the 2014 Turtledove New Character poll is in a dead heat to see who becomes second to Lord Roem and Meadow's Enoch Powell. Will it be Whanztastic's Lee Atwater, Jonathan Edelstein's András Weisz, or our very our Jack? Vote, vote, vote!
January 1964
LIFE Presents: “LYNDON JOHNSON’S MILLIONS”
“The Commission's report is concerned with the "governability of the democracies." Its American author, Samuel Huntington, was former chairman of the Department of Government at Harvard, and a government adviser. He is well-known for his ideas on how to destroy the rural revolution in Vietnam. He wrote in Foreign Affairs (1964) that "In an absent-minded way the United States in Vietnam may well have stumbled upon the answer to 'wars of national liberation.'" The answer is "forced-draft urbanization and modernization." Explaining this concept, he observes that if direct application of military force in the countryside "takes place on such a massive scale as to produce a massive migration from countryside to city" then the "Maoist-inspired rural revolution may be "undercut by the American-sponsored urban revolution." The Viet Cong, he wrote, is "a powerful force which cannot be dislodged from its constituency so long as the constituency continues to exist." Thus "in the immediate future" peace must "be based on accommodation" particularly since the US is unwilling to undertake the "expensive, time consuming and frustrating task" of ensuring that the constituency of the Viet Cong no longer exists (he was wrong about that, as the Kennedy programs of rural massacre were to show). "Accommodation" as conceived by Huntington is a process whereby the Viet Cong "degenerate into the protest of a declining rural minority" while the regime imposed by US force maintains power. A half-year later, when it appeared that "urbanization" by military force was not succeeding and it seemed that the United States might be compelled to enter into negotiations with the NLF [National Liberation Front] (which he recognized to be "the most powerful purely political national organization"), Huntington, in a paper delivered before the AID-supported Council on Vietnamese Studies which he had headed, proposed various measures of political trickery and manipulation that might be used to achieve the domination of the U.S.-imposed government, though the discussants felt rather pessimistic about the prospects....” – Noam Chomsky
“The October 1961 meeting with the President went disastrously. Premier Jagan ignored the advice of British attaché John Hemmings to refrain from labelling himself as a socialist, as only communists labeled themselves socialists, and all communists were agents of Moscow in the eyes of Washington. Jagan clumsily called himself a Bevanite who “was not sufficiently familiar with theory to distinguish between the various forms of socialism.” The President concluded that Jagan “appeared to include communism” within these forms of socialism, which was nothing short of an absolute disaster. Of the meeting, Jagan would later write that the “philosophy of the West...could not help the underdeveloped countries.” In short, the President saw Premier Jagan as “Castro bordering Brazil,” and resolved to depose Jagan as soon as possible.
---
INSIDE BOBBY BAKER, “LITTLE LYNDON”
---
The Administration had not initially planned on an invasion of Guyana, but the President’s increased hawkishness following his assassination attempt in 1963 and the enveloping scandals surrounding his Administration prompted a reevaluation (for the domestic motivations behind the invasion of Guayana, see the later chapter, “Wag the Dog.” The idea of Guyana being administered by the Organization of American States (OAS) had been downplayed in 1961, but in early 1964 was receiving serious attention from the Oval Office, particularly the perceived success of a similar policy being enacted in Vietnam.” —Dodd, Thomas J., Jr., A History of the State of Guyana
---
EAST GERMAN SPY INVOLVED IN BAKER CLUB
---
Playboy: Your dissatisfaction with the proposed Civil Rights Act reflects that of most other Negro spokesmen. According to recent polls, however, many whites resent this attitude, calling the Negro "ungrateful" and "unrealistic" to press his demands for more.
King: This is a litany to those of us in this field. "What more will the Negro want?" "What will it take to make these demonstrations end?" Well, I would like to reply with another rhetorical question: Why do white people seem to find it so difficult to understand that the Negro is sick and tired of having reluctantly parceled out to him those rights and privileges which all others receive upon birth or entry in America? I never cease to wonder at the amazing presumption of much of white society, assuming that they have the right to bargain with the Negro for his freedom. This continued arrogant ladling out of pieces of the rights of citizenship has begun to generate a fury in the Negro. Even so, he is not pressing for revenge, or for conquest, or to gain spoils, or to enslave, or even to marry the sisters of those who have injured him. What the Negro wants—and will not stop until he gets—is absolute and unqualified freedom and equality here in this land of his birth, and not in Africa or in some imaginary state. The Negro no longer will be tolerant of anything less than his due right and heritage. He is pursuing only that which he knows is honorably his. He knows that he is right.
But every Negro leader since the turn of the century has been saying this in one form or another. It is because we have been so long and so conscientiously ignored by the dominant white society that the situation has now reached such crisis proportions. Few white people, even today, will face the clear fact that the very future and destiny of this country are tied up in what answer will be given to the Negro. And that answer must be given soon.
Playboy: Relatively few dispute the justness of the struggle to eradicate racial injustice, but many whites feel that the Negro should be more patient, that only the passage of time—perhaps generations—will bring about the sweeping changes he demands in traditional attitudes and customs. Do you think this is true?
King: This act has not even been passed yet. I am not sure it ever will. To say that…"—Playboy Interview with Dr. Martin Luther King, January 1964
---
KENNEDY INVOLVED WITH EAST GERMAN SPY?
---
“If we don't do something real soon, I think you'll have to agree that we're going to be forced either to use the ballot or the bullet. It's one or the other in 1964. It isn't that time is running out -- time has run out!
1964 threatens to be the most explosive year America has ever witnessed. The most explosive year. Why? It's also a political year. It's the year when all of the white politicians will be back in the so-called Negro community jiving you and me for some votes. The year when all of the white political crooks will be right back in your and my community with their false promises, building up our hopes for a letdown, with their trickery and their treachery, with their false promises which they don't intend to keep. As they nourish these dissatisfactions, it can only lead to one thing, an explosion; and now we have the type of black man on the scene in America today -- I'm sorry, Brother Lomax -- who just doesn't intend to turn the other cheek any longer.
Don't let anybody tell you anything about the odds are against you. If they draft you, they send you to Korea and make you face 800 million Chinese. If you can be brave over there, you can be brave right here. These odds aren't as great as those odds. And if you fight here, you will at least know what you're fighting for.
I'm not a politician, not even a student of politics; in fact, I'm not a student of much of anything. I'm not a Democrat. I'm not a Republican, and I don't even consider myself an American. If you and I were Americans, there'd be no problem. Those Honkies that just got off the boat, they're already Americans; Polacks are already Americans; the Italian refugees are already Americans. Everything that came out of Europe, every blue-eyed thing, is already an American. And as long as you and I have been over here, we aren't Americans yet.
Well, I am one who doesn't believe in deluding myself. I'm not going to sit at your table and watch you eat, with nothing on my plate, and call myself a diner. Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner, unless you eat some of what's on that plate. Being here in America doesn't make you an American. Being born here in America doesn't make you an American. Why, if birth made you American, you wouldn't need any legislation; you wouldn't need any amendments to the Constitution; you wouldn't be faced with civil-rights filibustering in Washington, D.C., right now. They don't have to pass civil-rights legislation to make a Polack an American.
No, I'm not an American. I'm one of the 22 million black people who are the victims of Americanism. One of the 22 million black people who are the victims of democracy, nothing but disguised hypocrisy. So, I'm not standing here speaking to you as an American, or a patriot, or a flag-saluter, or a flag-waver -- no, not I. I'm speaking as a victim of this American system. And I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don't see any American dream; I see an American nightmare.
These 22 million victims are waking up. Their eyes are coming open. They're beginning to see what they used to only look at. They're becoming politically mature. They are realizing that there are new political trends from coast to coast. As they see these new political trends, it's possible for them to see that every time there's an election the races are so close that they have to have a recount. They had to recount in Massachusetts to see who was going to be governor, it was so close. It was the same way in Rhode Island, in Minnesota, and in many other parts of the country. And the same with Kennedy and Nixon when they ran for president. It was so close they had to count all over again. Well, what does this mean? It means that when white people are evenly divided, and black people have a bloc of votes of their own, it is left up to them to determine who's going to sit in the White House and who's going to be in the dog house.
It was the black man's vote that put the present administration in Washington, D.C. Your vote, your dumb vote, your ignorant vote, your wasted vote put in an administration in Washington, D.C., that has seen fit to pass every kind of legislation imaginable, saving you until last, then filibustering on top of that. And your and my leaders have the audacity to run around clapping their hands and talk about how much progress we're making. And what a good president we have. He talks big, but does nothing. When he was a Senator, he was bad for civil rights in Washington, D.C. Senator from Massachusetts! Had chickens come home to roost in Dallas, we would have gotten Johnson. But Kennedy is as no good as Johnson. He might as well be from Texas instead of Massachusetts. Because Texas is a lynch state. It is in the same breath as Mississippi, no different; only they lynch you in Texas with a Texas accent and lynch you in Mississippi with a Mississippi accent. Hell, let Eastland be president, he's from the South too.” —Malcolm X, “The Ballot or the Bullet” Speech, January 12, 1964
January 27, 1964
France and the People’s Republic of China announce that they will establish diplomatic relations.
PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY TAPES
JFK: FUCK!
O’Donnell: Mr. President!
JFK: Goddamn. Just goddamn.
O’Donnell: Mr. President?
JFK: DeGaulle has really gotten out of control. The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty is the best way to stop a Chinese nuclear test, you know. Such a test would be historically the most significant and worst event of the 1960s. I’ve said as much before, so what does he think he’s goddamn up to?
O’Donnell: Mr. President, I’m sure—
JFK: De Gaulle needs to get over here now, before he goes to Red China. That’s the last thing I need, Dick Nixon and Barry Goldwater would never shut up about it. De Gaulle needs to get onside for the Test Ban Treaty. Because if a test ban treaty fails, then it’s up to us and the Soviets to stop a nuclear China. It could be a snap decision. And the Soviets are too scared to do anything about it.
O’Donnell: I’m sure he will see reason, Mr. President.
JFK: Ugh, where’s the goddamn Sino-Soviet bloc when you need them to work together. Maybe the Soviets would be more inclined if we showed our strength back here in the Western Hemisphere. Cuba hasn’t taught them enough. We need to be strong.
O’Donnell: Are you thinking of Guyana again, Mr. President?
JFK: That son of a bitch is another Castro just waiting to happen.
O’Donnell: Are you still leaning towards the OAS option?
JFK: For De Gaulle?
O’Donnell: What?
JFK: Shouldn’t Bobby be here by now? We were supposed to talk strategy. We need to take out Lyndon once and for all. Then Hoover. Then the Republicans.
O’Donnell: I’m sure he’ll be here at any minute, but when you—hang on, I’m not sure if that’s the best order to go in. Hoover could—
JFK: Hoover let me get shot! That son of a bitch should be shot himself for treason or gross incompetence! No, with Hoover out of the way, we should be able to help out Goldwater in the primaries. Why, if he gets the nomination, I wouldn’t even have to leave the White House lawn. That Romney though… The American people don’t really buy that God and cleanliness crackerjack, do they? Even with this Rometsch stuff, I’m the President. The President. Goddamn Lyndon Johnson to hell.”
“In early January 1963, Kennedy tried to send a message to President Charles de Gaulle of France through Minister of Culture Andre Malraux, who was visiting the United States to present the Mona Lisa for exhibition. Hoping to convince the French government to join arms talks, Kennedy drew a terrifying picture of a world imperiled by a China armed with atomic weapons. Over dinner in the White House with Malraux, as William R. Tyler, assistant secretary of state for European affairs, recalled, Kennedy stressed that a nuclear China would be the "great menace in the future to humanity, the free world, and freedom on earth." Revealing his own alarm and racial bias, Kennedy claimed that the Chinese "would be perfectly prepared to sacrifice hundreds of millions of their own lives" to carry out their "aggressive and militant policies." De Gaulle and other European leaders had to realize that the differences within the western alliance paled in the face of such a threat. Kennedy, recalled Tyler, believed that the Chinese attached a "lower value" to human life." William C. Foster, the head of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) under Kennedy, later recalled that Kennedy was certain that the United States had to do "something about ostracizing or containing China. He felt that somehow there must be a way in which the rest of the world can prevent China from becoming a [nuclear threat]." Preventing China from acquiring the bomb loomed in Kennedy's thoughts about a test ban, as his remarks to his closest advisers. The recognition of China by France in January 1964 intensified the President’s anxiety, and he invited De Gaulle personally to visit the United States urgently to discuss the issue. De Gaulle was reluctant, as the invitation apparently contained a fair amount of abuse that was characteristic of Kennedy after November of 1963. Ultimately, it was agreed that De Gaulle would visit Canada, then the White House, then go on a tour of Louisiana during the fateful summer of 1964…” — Chang, Gordon, E. "JFK, China, and the Bomb." The Journal of American History, Vol. 74, No. 4, March 1988, pp. 1287-1310.
LIFE Presents: “LYNDON JOHNSON’S MILLIONS”
“The Commission's report is concerned with the "governability of the democracies." Its American author, Samuel Huntington, was former chairman of the Department of Government at Harvard, and a government adviser. He is well-known for his ideas on how to destroy the rural revolution in Vietnam. He wrote in Foreign Affairs (1964) that "In an absent-minded way the United States in Vietnam may well have stumbled upon the answer to 'wars of national liberation.'" The answer is "forced-draft urbanization and modernization." Explaining this concept, he observes that if direct application of military force in the countryside "takes place on such a massive scale as to produce a massive migration from countryside to city" then the "Maoist-inspired rural revolution may be "undercut by the American-sponsored urban revolution." The Viet Cong, he wrote, is "a powerful force which cannot be dislodged from its constituency so long as the constituency continues to exist." Thus "in the immediate future" peace must "be based on accommodation" particularly since the US is unwilling to undertake the "expensive, time consuming and frustrating task" of ensuring that the constituency of the Viet Cong no longer exists (he was wrong about that, as the Kennedy programs of rural massacre were to show). "Accommodation" as conceived by Huntington is a process whereby the Viet Cong "degenerate into the protest of a declining rural minority" while the regime imposed by US force maintains power. A half-year later, when it appeared that "urbanization" by military force was not succeeding and it seemed that the United States might be compelled to enter into negotiations with the NLF [National Liberation Front] (which he recognized to be "the most powerful purely political national organization"), Huntington, in a paper delivered before the AID-supported Council on Vietnamese Studies which he had headed, proposed various measures of political trickery and manipulation that might be used to achieve the domination of the U.S.-imposed government, though the discussants felt rather pessimistic about the prospects....” – Noam Chomsky
“The October 1961 meeting with the President went disastrously. Premier Jagan ignored the advice of British attaché John Hemmings to refrain from labelling himself as a socialist, as only communists labeled themselves socialists, and all communists were agents of Moscow in the eyes of Washington. Jagan clumsily called himself a Bevanite who “was not sufficiently familiar with theory to distinguish between the various forms of socialism.” The President concluded that Jagan “appeared to include communism” within these forms of socialism, which was nothing short of an absolute disaster. Of the meeting, Jagan would later write that the “philosophy of the West...could not help the underdeveloped countries.” In short, the President saw Premier Jagan as “Castro bordering Brazil,” and resolved to depose Jagan as soon as possible.
---
INSIDE BOBBY BAKER, “LITTLE LYNDON”
---
The Administration had not initially planned on an invasion of Guyana, but the President’s increased hawkishness following his assassination attempt in 1963 and the enveloping scandals surrounding his Administration prompted a reevaluation (for the domestic motivations behind the invasion of Guayana, see the later chapter, “Wag the Dog.” The idea of Guyana being administered by the Organization of American States (OAS) had been downplayed in 1961, but in early 1964 was receiving serious attention from the Oval Office, particularly the perceived success of a similar policy being enacted in Vietnam.” —Dodd, Thomas J., Jr., A History of the State of Guyana
---
EAST GERMAN SPY INVOLVED IN BAKER CLUB
---
Playboy: Your dissatisfaction with the proposed Civil Rights Act reflects that of most other Negro spokesmen. According to recent polls, however, many whites resent this attitude, calling the Negro "ungrateful" and "unrealistic" to press his demands for more.
King: This is a litany to those of us in this field. "What more will the Negro want?" "What will it take to make these demonstrations end?" Well, I would like to reply with another rhetorical question: Why do white people seem to find it so difficult to understand that the Negro is sick and tired of having reluctantly parceled out to him those rights and privileges which all others receive upon birth or entry in America? I never cease to wonder at the amazing presumption of much of white society, assuming that they have the right to bargain with the Negro for his freedom. This continued arrogant ladling out of pieces of the rights of citizenship has begun to generate a fury in the Negro. Even so, he is not pressing for revenge, or for conquest, or to gain spoils, or to enslave, or even to marry the sisters of those who have injured him. What the Negro wants—and will not stop until he gets—is absolute and unqualified freedom and equality here in this land of his birth, and not in Africa or in some imaginary state. The Negro no longer will be tolerant of anything less than his due right and heritage. He is pursuing only that which he knows is honorably his. He knows that he is right.
But every Negro leader since the turn of the century has been saying this in one form or another. It is because we have been so long and so conscientiously ignored by the dominant white society that the situation has now reached such crisis proportions. Few white people, even today, will face the clear fact that the very future and destiny of this country are tied up in what answer will be given to the Negro. And that answer must be given soon.
Playboy: Relatively few dispute the justness of the struggle to eradicate racial injustice, but many whites feel that the Negro should be more patient, that only the passage of time—perhaps generations—will bring about the sweeping changes he demands in traditional attitudes and customs. Do you think this is true?
King: This act has not even been passed yet. I am not sure it ever will. To say that…"—Playboy Interview with Dr. Martin Luther King, January 1964
---
KENNEDY INVOLVED WITH EAST GERMAN SPY?
---
“If we don't do something real soon, I think you'll have to agree that we're going to be forced either to use the ballot or the bullet. It's one or the other in 1964. It isn't that time is running out -- time has run out!
1964 threatens to be the most explosive year America has ever witnessed. The most explosive year. Why? It's also a political year. It's the year when all of the white politicians will be back in the so-called Negro community jiving you and me for some votes. The year when all of the white political crooks will be right back in your and my community with their false promises, building up our hopes for a letdown, with their trickery and their treachery, with their false promises which they don't intend to keep. As they nourish these dissatisfactions, it can only lead to one thing, an explosion; and now we have the type of black man on the scene in America today -- I'm sorry, Brother Lomax -- who just doesn't intend to turn the other cheek any longer.
Don't let anybody tell you anything about the odds are against you. If they draft you, they send you to Korea and make you face 800 million Chinese. If you can be brave over there, you can be brave right here. These odds aren't as great as those odds. And if you fight here, you will at least know what you're fighting for.
I'm not a politician, not even a student of politics; in fact, I'm not a student of much of anything. I'm not a Democrat. I'm not a Republican, and I don't even consider myself an American. If you and I were Americans, there'd be no problem. Those Honkies that just got off the boat, they're already Americans; Polacks are already Americans; the Italian refugees are already Americans. Everything that came out of Europe, every blue-eyed thing, is already an American. And as long as you and I have been over here, we aren't Americans yet.
Well, I am one who doesn't believe in deluding myself. I'm not going to sit at your table and watch you eat, with nothing on my plate, and call myself a diner. Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner, unless you eat some of what's on that plate. Being here in America doesn't make you an American. Being born here in America doesn't make you an American. Why, if birth made you American, you wouldn't need any legislation; you wouldn't need any amendments to the Constitution; you wouldn't be faced with civil-rights filibustering in Washington, D.C., right now. They don't have to pass civil-rights legislation to make a Polack an American.
No, I'm not an American. I'm one of the 22 million black people who are the victims of Americanism. One of the 22 million black people who are the victims of democracy, nothing but disguised hypocrisy. So, I'm not standing here speaking to you as an American, or a patriot, or a flag-saluter, or a flag-waver -- no, not I. I'm speaking as a victim of this American system. And I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don't see any American dream; I see an American nightmare.
These 22 million victims are waking up. Their eyes are coming open. They're beginning to see what they used to only look at. They're becoming politically mature. They are realizing that there are new political trends from coast to coast. As they see these new political trends, it's possible for them to see that every time there's an election the races are so close that they have to have a recount. They had to recount in Massachusetts to see who was going to be governor, it was so close. It was the same way in Rhode Island, in Minnesota, and in many other parts of the country. And the same with Kennedy and Nixon when they ran for president. It was so close they had to count all over again. Well, what does this mean? It means that when white people are evenly divided, and black people have a bloc of votes of their own, it is left up to them to determine who's going to sit in the White House and who's going to be in the dog house.
It was the black man's vote that put the present administration in Washington, D.C. Your vote, your dumb vote, your ignorant vote, your wasted vote put in an administration in Washington, D.C., that has seen fit to pass every kind of legislation imaginable, saving you until last, then filibustering on top of that. And your and my leaders have the audacity to run around clapping their hands and talk about how much progress we're making. And what a good president we have. He talks big, but does nothing. When he was a Senator, he was bad for civil rights in Washington, D.C. Senator from Massachusetts! Had chickens come home to roost in Dallas, we would have gotten Johnson. But Kennedy is as no good as Johnson. He might as well be from Texas instead of Massachusetts. Because Texas is a lynch state. It is in the same breath as Mississippi, no different; only they lynch you in Texas with a Texas accent and lynch you in Mississippi with a Mississippi accent. Hell, let Eastland be president, he's from the South too.” —Malcolm X, “The Ballot or the Bullet” Speech, January 12, 1964
January 27, 1964
France and the People’s Republic of China announce that they will establish diplomatic relations.
PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY TAPES
JFK: FUCK!
O’Donnell: Mr. President!
JFK: Goddamn. Just goddamn.
O’Donnell: Mr. President?
JFK: DeGaulle has really gotten out of control. The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty is the best way to stop a Chinese nuclear test, you know. Such a test would be historically the most significant and worst event of the 1960s. I’ve said as much before, so what does he think he’s goddamn up to?
O’Donnell: Mr. President, I’m sure—
JFK: De Gaulle needs to get over here now, before he goes to Red China. That’s the last thing I need, Dick Nixon and Barry Goldwater would never shut up about it. De Gaulle needs to get onside for the Test Ban Treaty. Because if a test ban treaty fails, then it’s up to us and the Soviets to stop a nuclear China. It could be a snap decision. And the Soviets are too scared to do anything about it.
O’Donnell: I’m sure he will see reason, Mr. President.
JFK: Ugh, where’s the goddamn Sino-Soviet bloc when you need them to work together. Maybe the Soviets would be more inclined if we showed our strength back here in the Western Hemisphere. Cuba hasn’t taught them enough. We need to be strong.
O’Donnell: Are you thinking of Guyana again, Mr. President?
JFK: That son of a bitch is another Castro just waiting to happen.
O’Donnell: Are you still leaning towards the OAS option?
JFK: For De Gaulle?
O’Donnell: What?
JFK: Shouldn’t Bobby be here by now? We were supposed to talk strategy. We need to take out Lyndon once and for all. Then Hoover. Then the Republicans.
O’Donnell: I’m sure he’ll be here at any minute, but when you—hang on, I’m not sure if that’s the best order to go in. Hoover could—
JFK: Hoover let me get shot! That son of a bitch should be shot himself for treason or gross incompetence! No, with Hoover out of the way, we should be able to help out Goldwater in the primaries. Why, if he gets the nomination, I wouldn’t even have to leave the White House lawn. That Romney though… The American people don’t really buy that God and cleanliness crackerjack, do they? Even with this Rometsch stuff, I’m the President. The President. Goddamn Lyndon Johnson to hell.”
“In early January 1963, Kennedy tried to send a message to President Charles de Gaulle of France through Minister of Culture Andre Malraux, who was visiting the United States to present the Mona Lisa for exhibition. Hoping to convince the French government to join arms talks, Kennedy drew a terrifying picture of a world imperiled by a China armed with atomic weapons. Over dinner in the White House with Malraux, as William R. Tyler, assistant secretary of state for European affairs, recalled, Kennedy stressed that a nuclear China would be the "great menace in the future to humanity, the free world, and freedom on earth." Revealing his own alarm and racial bias, Kennedy claimed that the Chinese "would be perfectly prepared to sacrifice hundreds of millions of their own lives" to carry out their "aggressive and militant policies." De Gaulle and other European leaders had to realize that the differences within the western alliance paled in the face of such a threat. Kennedy, recalled Tyler, believed that the Chinese attached a "lower value" to human life." William C. Foster, the head of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) under Kennedy, later recalled that Kennedy was certain that the United States had to do "something about ostracizing or containing China. He felt that somehow there must be a way in which the rest of the world can prevent China from becoming a [nuclear threat]." Preventing China from acquiring the bomb loomed in Kennedy's thoughts about a test ban, as his remarks to his closest advisers. The recognition of China by France in January 1964 intensified the President’s anxiety, and he invited De Gaulle personally to visit the United States urgently to discuss the issue. De Gaulle was reluctant, as the invitation apparently contained a fair amount of abuse that was characteristic of Kennedy after November of 1963. Ultimately, it was agreed that De Gaulle would visit Canada, then the White House, then go on a tour of Louisiana during the fateful summer of 1964…” — Chang, Gordon, E. "JFK, China, and the Bomb." The Journal of American History, Vol. 74, No. 4, March 1988, pp. 1287-1310.
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Goodness! That must not have been fun, this timeline's JFK is probably one of the most terrifying character AH.com has seen in a while.
Well it's about time we wrap this timeline up. A Timeline In A Few Days has been officially resumed. Coming up in an hour or two: the State of the Union! Let's try to get out the turnout of New Character while we're at it!
Additionally, the 2014 Turtledove New Character poll is in a dead heat to see who becomes second to Lord Roem and Meadow's Enoch Powell. Will it be Whanztastic's Lee Atwater, Jonathan Edelstein's András Weisz, or our very our Jack? Vote, vote, vote!
It'll never happen but I really want to see Brezhnev and crazy JFK have a debate about the merits of striking China to prevent them from getting nukes.
She didn't have access to nuking China, but she did to nuking my self esteem and opinions.
Vote, or JFK will call you a Fuck.
Indeed - I think it's safe to say that people won't be venerating this JFK
Great to see this back! And another update is already in the works? Perhaps you'll be true to your word after all, writing a Timeline in a Few (Non-Consecutive) Days
Indeed - I think it's safe to say that people won't be venerating this JFK
In time, they'll realize what went on. It'll be a tragedy. There's still room to venerate knowing that. The King was glorious until he went mad.