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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024

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Are the correct answers supposed to be, the official story every time?

Because we have enough evidence for Pearl Harbor and JFK to disprove the official story. Pearl Harbor was Let It Happen On Purpose so we would have causus belli to enter the war. There were at least two shooters in Dallas, and enough evidence of a coverup that I'm fairly certain who to blame (Dulles, among others).

If you'd like to wait fifty or seventy years, we'll find out about the others, but I don't think your list is doing what you want it to be doing.

I get why people don’t buy the JFK story, even though we’ve disagreed on it before.

But Pearl Harbor? Who masterminded this, and how? Why would they need a “casus belli” other than the actual aircraft launched in anger? Wouldn’t they at least have the defenses ready to shoot back, maximizing the material gain from such a convoluted scheme?

Who masterminded this, and how?

FDR, and his administration, and anyone else who wanted to enter WW2. How is ignore warnings and set up the circumstances.

Why would they need a “casus belli” other than the actual aircraft launched in anger?

Because Americans remembered Woodrow "He Kept Us Out Of War" Wilson, and were smart enough to avoid another European land war. FDR couldn't go after Hitler just because, he didn't have the coalition or the political will.

Wouldn’t they at least have the defenses ready to shoot back, maximizing the material gain from such a convoluted scheme?

The material gain is to drive the country into war it didn't want. The material gain is to get attacked by Japan in the Pacific, which justifies crossing the Atlantic to invade France and drive out the Germans, which is what they wanted the whole time. Germany was allied with Japan, but we squeezed Japan because we wanted to attack Germany, so when Japan predictably attacked due to the fuel blockade, we had the excuse to invade Europe.

Assuming you’re completely right about the strategy—enact an intolerable fuel blockade to “invite” an attack—the tactics are still absurd. From the moment bombs were dropped, you had a perfectly good casus belli. Why not warn the defenders and rack up some kills while you’re at it? Why not give the elusive Pacific Fleet contingency plans to capitalize on the not-so-shocking attack?

That said, we’d been fussing over Japanese aggression since before the Nazis seized control of Germany. It’s hard for me to see the equipment and oil embargoes as a diversion from existing plans.

There were at least two shooters in Dallas, and enough evidence of a coverup that I'm fairly certain who to blame (Dulles, among others).

What's the evidence for a second shooter in Dallas?

The best I've seen is the unaccounted for bullet which left a mark on the curb and exploded near a witness (James Tague).

The best I haven't seen is the video which shows puffs of smoke, like gunshots, coming from the grassy knoll. The reason I haven't seen that video is because it disappeared after too many people saw it and described it.

One thing I found amusing is that, while filming JFK, Oliver Stone filmed scenes of people firing period-appropriate rifles over the fence on the grassy knoll - but to his dismay, they hardly produced any smoke at all, forcing him to resort to smoke machines to achieve the desired effect. This obviously undermines the credibility of witness testimony reporting rifle smoke from the grassy knoll (cue the obvious jokes about Stone "blowing smoke" at the American public).

And what about James?

This article argues that Tague was struck by a fragment of Oswald's third bullet: https://www.jfk-online.com/jfk100tague.html

Given that the Warren commission established that Oswald's first shot missed the car and its occupants entirely, the most likely explanation is that Oswald's first shot struck the pavement near Teague and caused a chunk of concrete to strike him in the face. In the absence of any more persuasive evidence for a second shooter (which both the Warren commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations were unable to find), that strikes me as the null hypothesis.

(We could have moved more of our fleet out of the harbor and still let the Japanese bomb the harbor if we had in fact had advance warning. If you want to use deceit to get into a war there are far less stupid ways to go about it.)

Bruh this is beneath this place. What are we doing here. All of the carriers and multiple battleships were out of 'the' (pearl) harbor that day on a 'last-minute training exercise.'

K, but far from all, like the 2400 killed personnel and eight battleships that took damage.

With advance warning, the US could have intercepted the attack, which was an act of war from the get go, and simultaneously had the justification for war and started off by fucking over the Japanese. An ambush on a surprise attack is the best kind.

What’s beneath this place is conspiratorial thinking that doesn’t even make sense in the context of what the damn conspiracy theory context even is.