A few brief words about two big lies

I spent part of this morning checking out the tweets and comments on the right. A couple of things leaped out at me...

1. John Kelly's Big Lie. Even though it has been established conclusively that Trump's Chief of Staff lied his ass off, the Trumpers continue to lambaste Democratic congresswoman Frederica Wilson. Some have even pretended that she is not actually a friend to the family of La David Johnson, even though the family has defended Wilson's accuracy.

Wilson has behaved in a dignified and honest manner throughout, yet the Trumpers keep referring to her as flaky and "wacky." That's right: Wilson is wacky -- as opposed to, say, Roy Moore or Whatzername-the-alien-abductee-candidate in Florida.

Wilson has become the new person that the right loves to hate. They're fixated on her. Trump tweeted: "Wacky Congresswoman Wilson is the gift that keeps on giving for the Republican Party, a disaster for Dems."

The incessant attacks on this fine woman go well beyond the controversy over Trump's call to a grieving family. Bigotry is the only explanation for what we're seeing. The Trumpers will never so admit, but there is no other way to interpret their behavior.

My mind keeps flashing back to that classic All in the Family episode from 1972, when Sammy Davis Jr. visits Archie Bunker's home:

Lionel Jefferson [of Archie]: But he's not a bad guy, Mr. Davis. I mean like, he'd never burn a cross on your lawn.

Sammy Davis Jr.: No, but if he saw one burning, he's liable to toast a marshmallow on it.

I used to dismiss Trump as a blundering, Bunker-esque marshmallow-toaster. Now I'm starting to think of him as a cross-burner. (Just like his dear old dad...?)

Things have gotten very ugly very rapidly in this country.

2. JFK. The (welcome) news that Trump will not impede the release of further JFK assassination files has spawned an Alt Right meme: The new files will show that Dems killed Kennedy. That idea keeps coming up with unnerving regularity; it's obviously a programmed talking point.

As some of you know, Trump's pal Roger Stone wrote a terrible book in which he claimed that LBJ masterminded the assassination. (Actually, the Johnson theory is crap.) Stone has claimed that he was asked to reveal the "facts" about the assassination only after the 50 year anniversary had passed. That claim, if true, would make Stone an accomplice in the cover-up -- and if not true, makes Stone a liar. Note that the "facts" in Stone's book contradict an earlier unpublished biographical manuscript.

Quoting once again from an invaluable expose of Stone:

As said at the very beginning of this long piece, I came across what appears to be a memoir of Roger Stone’s on a very public, very legal document sharing site, which displays a voice uncannily like that of Stone’s, and replete with obscure details which would not be easy to pull off by a casual hoaxer. In this memoir, he also gives lengthy space to the assassination, and he does mention Lyndon Johnson as a possible player. The essential, indisputable players, however, the ones to which he gives the majority of his focus, is the mob. He makes no mention of this Lodge anecdote. He makes no mention that Nixon knew Ruby. He does not write at all of Ruby being put on anyone’s payroll, or Johnson knowing Ruby in any way. Though he writes of politicos such as Nixon at great length in other parts of the book, he does not write at all of Nixon, of Lodge, of Ruwe, or of Mitchell clamping down on his pipe and giving fateful suggestion. These episodes that would reverberate through anybody’s life, are not there at all, as if they never took place.

That Stone’s perspective on the assassination in his memoir causes one not simply to question the credibility of the theory he puts forth, but whether he even believes his own allegation, is why I now give lengthy excerpt to the relevant sections in his memoir.

The stuff about Ruby and Lodge later appeared in Stone's JFK book, but did not appear in the earlier work. The Alex Jonesians think that Stone is helping to uncover the Grand Conspiracy; in fact Stone seems to be doing what he has always done -- obscuring the truth for partisan purposes.

All of this has me wondering: What if the upcoming release of assassination-related materials includes a ringer, a fabrication, a false document?

If a document shows up which seems to buttress Stone's "Blame the Dems" theory, examine it very carefully. Fortunately, there are people in the assassination research community who possess expert knowledge of how these documents should be formatted. Don't believe any shocking headlines until you hear from someone like John Newman, a former Army intelligence officer who has a deep expertise in the paperwork produced by the intelligence community in that era.