Precocious of him for a nine year old.
Kudos to you for trying to fill in the huge gaps in your education that came from leaving school so very young. You’ll find it a lot more rewarding if you go about it differently. Try listing your assumptions in the form of questions: How did LBJ feel about JFK? Why did he feel that way? How did LBJ feel about Nixon and why? Then find the answers. DON’T assume. (Hey, JFK was handsome, and LBJ was not, so I bet LBJ was jealous!) Don’t speculate. Don’t jump to conclusions. Learn first.
Example: Why would US leaders, many of whom had strongly opposed the Nazis in WWII, be willing to hire former Nazis as NASA scientists?
(By the way, LBJ, JFK, and Nixon were all decorated WWII veterans. None of them had kind words for Nazis.)
I understand what you saying and I agree with you, ok… it just seems like ‘anyone’ who dares to voice their thoughts, and ideas is discouraged, censured, mocked or ignored. People think ideas or theories or their gut feelings may learn something then 20 minutes later revise thier ideas, or theories because they changed their freaking mind , either because of better source, or someone was more convincing. Or just maybe their gut feeling said this is right.
It just seems any conversations on sex, religion, politics better have a source or 2 or 3. What happened to people just having back and forth conversation without mind f*king people or making them wish they had kept mouth shut.
My advice is to learn the facts about an issue first and then form your opinions about it. You’ll find the quality of your gut feelings will be improved.
If you’re asking a question, no. If you’re making a heated proclamation about the nature of the world, yes.
Here are a couple of quotes that seen to apply to your predicament:
“What are the facts? Again and again and again – what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what “the stars foretell,” avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable “verdict of history” – what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!” -Robert Heinlein
“Everybody has opinions: I have them, you have them. And we are all told from the moment we open our eyes, that everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. Well, that’s horsepuckey, of course. We are not entitled to our opinions; we are entitled to our informed opinions. Without research, without background, without understanding, it’s nothing. It’s just bibble-babble. It’s like a fart in a wind tunnel, folks.” -Harlan Ellison
Everyone was better off with the Shah governing Iran than Iran is governed now.
Or as Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”
“I just put it up. Where it comes down is not my department.”
Everyone? No, probably not everyone. No doubt there are a lot of happier clerics and there is a limited constituency for that regime beyond them. Many/most? Yeah, probably. To the extent that getting your fingernails ripped out is worse than getting kicked in the ribs. But that’s kinda beside the point. It was not like there was only a binary choice between the royalists and theocrats in 1953.
The Pahlavi post-'53 regime was a corrupt and frequently quite brutal plutocracy/autocracy. It was certainly worse than the constitutional monarchy that it replaced. Although there is no telling where the National Front would have wandered if it had not been overthrown, it is worth something that Iran had a stronger democratic tradition than most of its regional neighbors at that point. I’d be willing to roll the dice on them any day over the Shah.
I don’t know about that… Why not try voicing some of your ideas, and seeing what happens? So far, you… really haven’t done that. You’ve just strung some words together, like “Nazi”, “JFK”, and “conspiracy”, without any ideas to actually connect them.
It sounds like you prefer college dorm high philosophy, or drunk-at-the-end-of-the-bar wisdom. Either way, this is probably not the right place for that sort of stream of consciousness riffing. Still, you floated some ‘ideas’ and ended up learning something. So it hasn’t been a complete waste of your time, right?
Of course I’ve learned new information. In my opinion a meandering, and free flowing conversation leads to more topics which might not have surfaced when strict enforcement and adherence to rules are strictly enforced.
Topics are a dime a dozen. What I like are informed discussions.
Don’t you?
Now that you learned more than what you came with, I think you’ll find that meandering on the ‘ideas’ you previously held is no longer necessary, or even fruitful. You can now cut to the chase when conversation turns to the topic of “Operation: Paperclip”. Now that you are better informed, you can dispel myths that it was a conspiracy of some kind, or that it was a black and white moral matter in a complex and nuanced time and world. Right?
I’ll be honest – if what you really want is the sort of discussion where you can just float unfounded hypotheses because they just popped into your head (like, “maybe Johnson resented Kennedy because Kennedy was young and good-looking”), this may not be the site for you.
The Straight Dope (and, by extension, the SDMB) has always had a goal of fighting ignorance (go look at the home page – the very first two words are exactly that). As a result, the culture of this board has always been one where the members will ask for someone to provide credible evidence or citations to support statements or hypotheses.
If you want to ask about “gut feelings” that came into your head, then, at a minimum, I would suggest that you label them more clearly as such. For example, “I had this idea – maybe Johnson resented Kennedy, and had him killed. Is there anything to that?” When you start a statement with “I think,” as you did in post 1:
…people will read that as “I believe that’s why Kennedy was assassinated” not “I wonder if that’s why Kennedy was assassinated.” When they see that here, they will, yes, jump on you and ask you to provide evidence as to why you believe that.
I never said operation paperclip was a conspiracy. This is what posted further down in the replies. Yet
it seems no one read it.
Below in quotes and italicized is part of my OP and what I think you and several others are referring to.
Below in quotes and italicized is part of my OP and what I think you and several others are referring to.
I understand they had to have those scientists because of the advantages the US would have. I think that’s why Kennedy was assassinated too.
Any old timers here remember if this was a conspiracy theory back in the day? I don’t think it was called that though.
I understand they had to have those scientists because of the advantages the US would have. I think that’s why Kennedy was assassinated too.
Any old timers here remember if this was a conspiracy theory back in the day? I don’t think it was called that though.
------ the REASON I used "conspiracy theory " is because I didn’t know, and that’s why I asked . They did not use that word back then. Think about if that happened last month or so. If I came and said our government is bringing Nazi scientists here. I bet if I said that here you my point.
Not at all. Just certain ones, and for good reasons. If it keeps happening to you, then you should figure out what those good reasons are. That’s the best type of learning.