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William Byrne's avatar

Great piece that I’ve circulated among friends of both sides of the political cultural divide. As a Catholic I loved the play on both definitions of indulgence. You pop the liberal bubble with extraordinary perception and skill and you do the bipartisan thing with the right. However it seems a little of “both sides ism” to me. Certainly the left and its wokeism is stupid and destructive to our national cohesion, but it pales by comparison to the MAGA “strong man “ who will fix it all and squash all the misfits. This is American fascism and the real danger to our democracy.

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Richard Weinberg's avatar

I completely agree with your core point, but not with your take on JFK and RFK. In my view they were both dangerously toxic. Ignoring their flawed personal lives, I consider JFK notable for his meager Presidential accomplishments, his encouraging our military entanglement in Vietnam, and his apparent readiness to start a nuclear war. Likewise, I see RFK as notable for helping his brother to escalate the Cuban Missile crisis, and for bringing an authoritarian tilt to the Justice Dept. (Ted Kennedy was an effective Senator, though I blame his 1980 presidential run for the election of Ronald Reagan). I may misunderstand some of the underlying facts, but it seems to me that the Kennedys' main skills lay in warping historical memories. Sorry if this sounds bad, but I think assassination bestowed a soft glow of virtue on two deeply-flawed politicians.

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