Alternate History: If JFK Had Lived

ElectricFetus

ElectricFetus

Sanity going, going, gone
Valued Senior Member
How would history be change if JFK was not assassinated, lets assume for detail sack that by some miracle that second bullet missed JFK head, assuming his first wound to the neck was survivable and that he would speak again, how would history be different today? Would he have got us in Vietnam? The moon race be different, etc, etc.
 
He lives.

An immediate investigation ensues and guilty parties are identified and prosecuted. Bobby lives too as the culprits are the same. Kennedy disbands the CIA and abolishes the Fed creating non-debt based dollars which undoes Wilson's folly of the Fed.
 
desi said:
He lives.

An immediate investigation ensues and guilty parties are identified and prosecuted. Bobby lives too as the culprits are the same. Kennedy disbands the CIA and abolishes the Fed creating non-debt based dollars which undoes Wilson's folly of the Fed.
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how do you get that
 
I don't know if we would have made it to the Moon, for one. I think because he died, it was a given we would continue to try and get there. Unfortunately, once the goal was met, we had no new goal to follow, hence the program died.

I don't know if he would have done similarly as LBJ as far as Vietnam. I know my dad hated Johnson, and blamed him for the mess.
 
JFK would likely have not gone to Veitnam, or at least that is what this documentary suggests: based on his performance as president when militants in the US government wanted war and when events prompted them he was what held them back. Cuban missile crisis just being one of them, though if we had attacked Cuba it would have been world war 3 as they didn't know it at the time but the soviets had tactical nukes in Cuba and would nuked the invading ships and soldiers off-shore or at the beach head.

Assuming he lived and assuming he never got us into Vietnam (or pulled us out before we committed actual soldiers) what would have happens, without a war for people to riot about how would it affect the hippie drug era? Without lossing that war how would it have affect US moral in the 1970's? Without the lesson of Vietnam would we have likely gone to war in other places (supposedly people would still be able to say we don't want another "korea war", but the Korean war was nowhere near as disastrous as Vietnam, which outshine it so well the Korean war is now known as the "forgotten war")? Without spending hundreds of billions on Vietnam maybe we would have had the money to keep funding the space program, sure we might not have landed on the moon before 1970, but we might have kept progressing pass the moon landing and built up a space industry instead of the catastrophic decision to scrap Apollo and make the utter failure and waste of money that was the space shuttle, or at the very least had more funding to make a better fully reusable shuttle.
 
One can only hope you weren't being serious, fetus.
JFK is only famous because of his accomplishments at home, as in domestic USA; his foreign policies were as damning as those of any American president, and the Cuban Missile Crisis was an event as much of his own making as anything else.
The Korean war is not the "forgotten war" anywhere other than perhaps in the USA or your own mind, and it was the policies of successive American governments, including JFK's, that led to the Cuban Missile Crisis to begin with.

I suppose one has to admire the ability of a superb politician to come out a hero from an event he helped bring about to begin with.
The only reason Kennedy is a liberal icon is because his domestic policies made the hippies feel like they were a part of... something.

God help anyone else; especially the Cubans.
 
The Marquis said:
One can only hope you weren't being serious, fetus.
JFK is only famous because of his accomplishments at home, as in domestic USA; his foreign policies were as damning as those of any American president, and the Cuban Missile Crisis was an event as much of his own making as anything else.
The Korean war is not the "forgotten war" anywhere other than perhaps in the USA or your own mind, and it was the policies of successive American governments, including JFK's, that led to the Cuban Missile Crisis to begin with.

I suppose one has to admire the ability of a superb politician to come out a hero from an event he helped bring about to begin with.
The only reason Kennedy is a liberal icon is because his domestic policies made the hippies feel like they were a part of... something.

God help anyone else; especially the Cubans.
Click to expand...

Well certainly the cuban crisis was something partake in as well as it being built up by previous presidencies, but in hte fundemental like Vietnam, would he or would he not have got us into that war? This guys argues he would have not citing his military record from the start of his presidency to its end and the decisions of LBJ afterwards: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvaAhOIfRy8
 
Fetus... The USa didn't "officially" start a conflict with Japan during WW2 either.

But what you need to do is get past the rhetoric and read a little about what they did without actually "attacking" anyone.
Starting a war doesn't necessarily mean you were the one to fire the first shot; it can also entail actions carried out to ensure that the other side had no other choice other than to fire first.

Vietnam? I really don't know. But then neither do you; and a documentary is only that, presented from one viewpoint or another.
I don't agree that Vietynam was any more significant than any other war America has been in, other than in it's significance to America.
 
The Marquis said:
Fetus... The USa didn't "officially" start a conflict with Japan during WW2 either.

But what you need to do is get past the rhetoric and read a little about what they did without actually "attacking" anyone.
Starting a war doesn't necessarily mean you were the one to fire the first shot; it can also entail actions carried out to ensure that the other side had no other choice other than to fire first.
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I not considering the rhetoric, the documentry present evidence: kennedy's actions, recodings of presidental meeting, etc, that show is was adverse to war, her had forbid an american invasion of cuba on more then one occation for example, he presistent stone walling of the militay's request for soilders and bombings in vietnam. I recommend you watch the documentry, you can do so free over hte internet, or better yet read the book.

Vietnam? I really don't know. But then neither do you; and a documentary is only that, presented from one viewpoint or another.
I don't agree that Vietynam was any more significant than any other war America has been in, other than in it's significance to America.
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I disagree, although I never said it was any more or less signifigent then any other war fought by the USA, not fighting vietnam would have saved the usa ~60,000 US lives and another half million tramatized both physically and mentally, would have saved 500 billion to 1 trillion in adjusted dollars, money that could have been used for other things like space exploration or the economy.
 
I agree on the economic ramifications of Vietnam on the USA.
But you have a video, and I have a book. "Hegemony or Survival" (Noam Chomsky).

See there are a hundred opinions, but the facts remain relatively obscure.
Personally, I prefer the book. Some might say "A picture draws a thousand words", but only, in my view, when that picture is targeted specifically toward an emotional reaction.

Watch less, read more. Perhaps a forlorn hope.
 
The Marquis said:
I agree on the economic ramifications of Vietnam on the USA.
But you have a video, and I have a book. "Hegemony or Survival" (Noam Chomsky).
Click to expand...

Actually its a documentary based on a book,"Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived Virtual JFK", also I don't see how the form evidence is presented in changes its value. If some scribbles 2+2=4 on toilet paper with poo, can I say it is incorrect?
 
The form evidence is presented in very much changes its value. This is a salient point and one often ignored.

The written word is often presented in such a way that a lot more information is divulged, but with less emotional content. A film of any length relies almost solely upon emotional responses because depth of information is not an option given time frames. It's visual, and visual is visceral.
Let me put it this way. If you were to scribble 2+2 = 4 on toilet paper using shit, I'd probably read read it simply because I'd want to know who the hell would write such a thing in such a way. It grabs attention. It does not make it correct. (I'd do exactly the same thing if you'd written 2+2=5 in exactly the same way).

Both mediums have their place, but the written word is still king with regard to depth of information. It's probable that we could get into an entirely separate discussion on this topic, but my view is that the departure from the written word in favour of video-bytes has resulted in a regression in terms of depth of knowledge, and an increase in the instance of "Cliff's Notes" discussion.
 
I never said the medium would make it correct, on that the medium can't change if its true or false. Beside if you want to read it the books there for the reading.
 
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