Puxa! Number four, the year’s end. Who would’ve thought I’d last another year? Winter is upon us. In an effort to make this issue less Satanic than the last we brought in a curandera. She’s okayed the magazine but recommended that I be burned at the stake. Which would be okay with me, it’s cold at night now, and I’ve fallen down and skinned my knees again since the last time we talked. You know the story: boy meets girl, boy falls in love, boy loses girl, girl meets girl, girl falls in love, girl goes to lesbian rally, girl vandalizes private property for the approval of her chubby lover. At least it wasn’t that great New Mexican Christmas story: boy meets girl, has two children with girl, cheats on girl, girl drowns the children, girl becomes living dead. La llorona and the wicked witch, eat children’s hearts beside the ditch… Enough chit-chat. To the column!

I had intended to write a column entitled the mechanism of evil about how evil is nourished and allowed to exist when everyone is in general agreement that they’d like an end to it, but it was growing into the twenty page range and with the recent assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy still such big news, I figured, what the heck? If you know anyone in the CIA and you want to limit my possible future in governmental jobs, or perhaps have me killed, get a copy of this majenta to them. These 1341 words may be the only things that jump out of the closet and ruin my 2016 Presidential bid. So have your friends buy their copies now!

JFK. I don’t have a memory of where I was when JFK was assassinated. I wasn’t alive yet, my parents were in junior high. I did not experience the national pathos. I have no emotions surrounding the event to color my interpretation of historical record. How about you? The cover ups, conspiracies, and magazine covers continue. The hero worship, glamorization, and regaling the glory days of the finest first family ever. Boy, those were the days. Life was simpler, and we could trust our leaders. I guess I had no choice but to jump into the ring. Hey man, it’s alright, one time won’t hurt, everyone’s doing it.

First off. What’s all the worry and debate about conspiracies, and foreign assassination plots? Who cares who did it? Just so long as it got done. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. And since Bobby got popped riding the crest of glory to the Presidency we should be thankful we didn’t have to attempt to survive a second Kennedy in the White House. Sirhan Sirhan, whatever cell block you’re in, thanks! Now if someone would just get Teddy I think the younger generation of the clan might be diffused in time to prevent further fatal plunges off bridges, movie star murders, miniseries, and Florida underwear incidents. The cult of personality—these modern day Borgias—will die with Arnold Schwartzenegger’s kids as the last of the line.

Okay, I can forgive JFK’s cheating heart. We’ve all been cheated on, right? What’s the big deal? So what if he screwed around on his wife? All the time? While she was in the next room? What is so great about Jacqui O anyway? I mean just because a man treats his marriage vows like cold caca doesn’t mean he can’t take the oath of his job seriously. And mob ties? What mob ties? You can’t prove that!

So, to the facts. Let’s review our historical data. JFK won his party’s (Demoncrats) nomination by one vote. You can’t get less popular with your own party and still make it into the Presidential race. JFK won the 1960 Presidential election with 49.7% (to Nixon’s 49.5%) of the popular vote. You can’t be less popular and still win the popular vote for President.

Let’s check on the policies that swung the vote for him. He said the Republicaaners were not aggressive enough in hunting out and destroying communism, and that he would be. He said that Soviet military was amassing huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons and that he would make sure the US had more and better to maintain nuclear superiority. At the time of this campaign, the Soviet military had between four and six nuclear bombs, none of which could be delivered on any US target with any likelihood of success. The incumbent party was honest with the public about this issue, sharing the intelligence information that the Soviets were not even remotely a nuclear threat. That’s part of why they lost and part of why it’s so fucking tough for honest politicians to survive. The boneheaded public would rather hear paranoid rantings about commies, overseas threats, bombs, and burned hospitals than the stone cold sober gristle of the truth that our responsibilities, futures, and lives are on this continent. Thusly, JFK, nearly single handedly (give Kruschev some credit for playing along and barking loudly), began the nuclear arms race that has decimated our economy and left the capability for near total annihilation of life on earth’s surface in the hands of multiple nations. Don’t blame Reagan. By the seventies, the Soviets had been forced into this imaginary arms race and were forcing us to devote most of our economy to continuing it. Mutual Assured Destruction may be a dickheaded scenario, but it has worked so far. Maybe if we had it to do over again 0.2% of the population would have changed their vote and there never would have been need of an MX program.

Kennedy’s domestic policies were ineffective, at best, and he could not budge the Congress to pass much legislation at all. So he did what all poor Presidents do in peacetime in the face of economic backslide. He shifted the focus of our nation to foreign policy. He began by extending support in South Vietnam. Part of his pledge to wipe out the commies. I think we all know how this do-it-yourself kit finished up. But hey, without this President and this political experiment, what the heck would Oliver Stone be doing? At least this proves there’s no God. If there was a God, Stone would be a janitor.

Can’t leave out the Bay of Pigs. To sum up: Kennedy ordered the botched CIA assassination of that evil and horrible dictator Castro, tactical strikes against Cuba, and the initiation of a nuclear strike against the Soviet Union in response to the alleged (though probably real) installation of nuclear weapons in Cuba. The Soviets backed down just in time. A few more hours and Kennedy would have been the single man who decided to plunge the entire world into a full scale nuclear war, finally a war to end all wars. By a single person’s will, we all came literally within minutes of dying, or being left for what passes as alive in a nuclear wasteland.

So, you ask, how did JFK—the originator of nuclear proliferation and upscaled US involvement in Vietnam—go from being a wealthy mob supported commie hunting Catholic womanizer to probably the most celebrated US leader today? He got his brain shattered on camera in Dallas with a piece of lead. Therein lies the secret of his success. Because up to that moment he was debatably one of the worst US Presidents (though competition is fierce) and certainly the most unpopular President (save among Irish Catholics, gangsters, and women ages 16-35) since Andrew Johnson was impeached in 1868.

Perhaps if Hinckley had spent the extra cash in 1981 for the thirty-eight instead of the twenty-two, those bullets would have pierced Reagan’s cardiac muscle instead of ricocheting off a rib, then Reagan’s popularity would be rocketing today just like JFK’s. And the Brady bill wouldn’t have taken a decade to pass, plus the extra two hours it took Clinton to show up and sign it into law.