words matter

[novapsyche]

Clinton refers to RFK assassination on trail: Says it's a reason why she should continue her uphill campaign battle

Keith is excoriating her. He will also feature a special comment.

Update: Reading Keith's DailyKos diary, I came across this: The Emotional Life of Nations. You must read it. Believe me.

Comments

[jojomojo.livejournal.com]

An interesting - and spooky - read.

I have to wonder, though, why Americans of all political stripes tend to assume that they either have now or have had during most of the past 'the greatest human freedoms anywhere on earth'. American exceptionalism is an interesting phenomenon.

[bonerici.livejournal.com]

emotional life of nations has a real problem with logic, it's got the same problem taht studies which prove esp and ufos have, that is, they collect all the data they want in the way the want after the fact and prove whatever they want because of it. there's no real study here, no control effect, the control effect is to get another hokey pschohistory researcher and have them sense for psychopathic feelings "in the air."

so let's do a real research. First of all, everyone knows about Jodie Foster. Without Jodie Foster there is no assassination attempt period. And hinkley was just plain nuts. there are a million ways he could have chosen to impress her, and to me it is utterly unconvincing that the assassination attempt was caused by a national emotion.

I know plenty of people like hinkley and let me tell you, they aren't able to sense emotions "in the air" like you or I can do. They can get set off by walking in a park and seeing a sign which says "No dogs" and then they feel they are a dog and then if they are a dog, maybe they are like rosa parks, and hey parks, I'm in a park, it's a sign from god, and they go kill rose mcgowan. And in the meantime, he has a newspaper in his hand which says, "The president needs to be taken out!" by some random op ed guy. Hinkley was just as likely to be affected by a face on a postage stamp as he was to be affected by something "in the air."

So that's hinkley as a case study. Next, it's clear that this pschohistory picks and chooses it's assassination attempts.

andrew jackson was attacked by someone much like hinkley, a guy who aimed a flintlock at him, and then was found not guilty by reason of insanity.

Shrank, teddy roosevelt's attempted assassin also found legally insane.

fdr, one month after being sworn in was accidentally shot at by zangara, who was found to have mob ties, and this was actually an attempted hit on chicago mayor anton cermak.

puerto rican independence activists tried to kill harry s truman.

jfk i wont go here, make up your own mind on it.

richard m nixon arthur bremer just wanted to kill someone for i guess political reasons, he couldn't get nixon so a month later he shot george wallace instead paralyzing him.

byck tried to kill nixon in 74, OK THIS IS THE ONE that I can blame on national emotion. This is the single assassination attempt that fits the criteria that this emotional life article says all assassination attempts follow.

ford, a charlie manson follower tried to get him.

second attempt on ford was by this patty hearst group, the symbionese liberation army.

jimmy carter, raymond lee harvey tried to kill him.


ronald reagan, already talked about that

SADDAM HUSSEIN tried to kill george h w bush. Remember that one? George W. Bush certainly didnt. There was some sort of car bomb involved.


francisco martin duran tried to kill clinton in his first term. said he was saving the world from "alien mist"

Vladimir Arutinian threw a grenade at bush while w was in russia, tried to kill him. this would have been a plain old political assassination if it had succeeded.



so of the 14 or so assassination attempts which I just listed, we can safely say that about 3/4 of them are just by people that are off their medications, 1/4 of them are political assassinations, and I guess a single solitary one is because of this psychohistory reason.

Not to say this emotional life of nations is not a cool idea. It's a great idea, but I call shenanigans in how the theory is presented. Just too much bad research.

[bonerici.livejournal.com]

uh i meant "George W. Bush certainly did" not didnt. it's kinda one of the reasons we invaded iraq of course

[bonerici.livejournal.com]

oh and abraham lincoln was a political assassination, it was a last ditch disparate attempt to win the civil war. nothing more nothing less.

it reminds me by the way of how when hitler found out that FDR had died, he danced a jig in the bunker, exclaiming "We won the war, we won the war!" And his advisers had difficulty explaining to him that it wouldn't matter, america would continue fighting.