Senator Ted Kennedy is dead, surprisingly of natural causes, an aggressive brain tumor. It is the end of the the American House of Atreus, the end of the Kennedy brothers, our Valois dynasty.
“The House of Atreus’ family history had been marred by rape, murder, and treachery, a result of the curse placed upon Pelops by Myrtilus, whom he had murdered. Thus misfortune hounded the entire House of Atreus.”
The House of Valois. “Nostradamus was consulted by Catherine de Medici — regarding the fate .. of her three sons. His predictions …. were proved true.”
So we have a curse, and a prediction, where do we start? We start with the curse, which brings us to Ambassador Joseph Kennedy. Most people live normal lives because they are normal. They live through birth, high school, love, marriage,divorce, tragedy, accidents, heartache, death. To paraphase Tolstoy, all normal people are alike, strange people are strange for different reasons.
The history of the world is on occasion , dotted with strange lives. People from another plane, not aliens per se, but higher evolutionary types who have either seen the Devil, and if not God, an archangel.
They come in all fields;,
Michelangelo was normal, DaVinci was not.
Monet was normal, Van Gogh was not.
Thomas Edison was normal, Nikola Tesla was not.
Genghis Khan was normal, Alexander The Great was not.
Mussolini was normal, Hitler was not.
John Ford was normal, Roman Polanski is not( if you don’t believe me, go watch THE NINTH GATE starring Johnny Depp, there is no better examination of the Devil’s psychology).
Normal people succeed by being better at the rules; strange people smash the rules by a compact with mysterious forces.
Joseph Kennedy was strange. He had decided to break the Protestant hegemony of political power, to raise one of his sons to the Presidency, as the first Roman Catholic President.
He did, and in doing so he brought down upon himself and his family, the curse of the House of Atreus. His ambition, his hubris caused a family saga which could only really be honored by the Big Three of Greek tragedians, Sophocles, Euripides or Aeschylus.
Agamemnon was a member of the House of Atreus. He had a great ambition, to fight and win the Trojan War. He gathered the greatest army ever seen, to go fight and win that war, but in doing so he angered the Gods. The winds died down and he could not sail. Agamemnon then did what strange people do, he bargained with the Gods to fulfill his ambition. For a fair wind, The Gods asked for the life of his daughter Iphigenia. It is nice to say, Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter for a fair wind, but we know better. Agamemnon murdered his daughter for a fair wind. He got the wind, won the war, and nurtured the curse.
JOSEPH KENNEDY JUNIOR
Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., the oldest son of Joseph Kennedy
Joseph Senior picked the oldest son, Joseph as the son who would be the first Roman Catholic President of the United States. It seems to have been an inspired choice. He was smart, open minded and brave.
“Joseph, Jr.entered Harvard College in 1934 and graduated in 1938 (political historian Theodore White was a classmate). There he played football, rugby, and crew, and served on the student council. He spent a year studying under the tutelage of Harold Laski at the London School of Economics, before enrolling in Harvard Law School. In 1940, he made his first step in what would have been his political life, as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. He left Harvard Law before his final year for officer training and flight training in the United States Navy. He earned his wings as a Naval Aviator in May 1942 and was sent to England in September 1943. Although Kennedy had completed his 25 combat missions and was eligible to return home, he volunteered for a secret mission in which he died on August 12, 1944.”
Understand this, VERY FEW pilots survived 25 combat missions over Europe, very few, infinitesimal. There is a great film starring Gregory Peck, TWELVE O’CLOCK HIGH about all the pilots who did not come back. Joe Jr did, but then he volunteers for what was a secret mission; which many consider a suicide mission.
When I read about Joe Jr’s suicide mission, I tried to think of a motive for this suicidal lunacy; all I could muster was LARRY KELLER, the unseen son in Arthur Miller’s play ALL MY SONS, and how he also volunteered for a suicide mission because of his shame of his father.
Joe Jr’s volunteering for a suicide mission makes no sense on our plane of logic. But Miller may be close. If the Gods did promise Joseph Senior that one of his sons would be the first Roman Catholic President of the United States, they did not specify which one. The Gods are like that, they write cruel contracts, only visible in the details and fine print. The Devil is in the Details.
Joe Junior’s life was asked for by the Gods so that one of his sons could be President. Joe Jr. was Iphigenia. To complete the bargain, the Gods took the Kennedy daughter Kathleen in an airplane crash, and daughter Rosemary to madness. Rosemary is Cassandra, another victim in Greek tragedy of the curse of the House of Atreus.
Joseph Senior, the man of hubris did break the Protestant hegemony. He lived to see his son John President of the United States, a Roman Catholic. Joe Senior died in 1969. Yet, he may have gotten the short end of the bargain, for he had a stroke in 1961 which left him mute, alert and encased in silence.
In silence he saw John assassinated, Robert assasinated, and Ted broken by Chappaquiddick. After Chappaquiddick, the old man refused food and willed himself to death. A self induced starvation, a bitter end to a man who achieved his goals.
The Prediction,
The HOUSE OF VALOIS. Nostradamus predicted to Catherine de Medici that all her sons would be Kings. She was delighted, until she lived the prediction. Her sons were:
François II — 1559-1560
Charles IX — 1560-1574
Henri III — 1574-1589, all kings, because their brother had died before them. The best film about the House of Valois is the French film, QUEEN MARGO,Directed by Patrice Chéreau.
The three Kennedy boys became Senators, all three sought the Presidency, two after the death of their brother.
When Bobby Kennedy was about to run for the presidency in 1968, he was asked, was he worried about meeting the fate of his slain brother? He answered no, for he said, if his parents had stopped with just four children, Joseph, John, Rosemary, Kathleen, they would have been without any children in 1968, three lost to death and one to madness.
JOHN KENNEDY
John F. Kennedy
The first Senator Kennedy, the first of the House of Kennedy(Valois) to sit on the throne. Funny, smart, witty as hell, virile.I have two problems with him, one, I think he stole the election of 1960(in Chicago, of all places). But if Nixon did not complain, why should I?
But more to the point, after he became President, he had a summit meeting in Vienna with Nikita Khrushchev,head of the Soviet Union. Khrushchev was the grandson of a serf, a slave. He was a ruthless, shrewd peasant,volatile, mean and dangerous. He had outlasted Stalin, Malenkov, Beria, Bulganin, Molotov, Zhukov to be in power. “Khrushchev assisted in the liquidation of many friends and colleagues in the Moscow province. Of 38 top Party officials in Moscow city and province, 35 were killed,…. Of the 146 party secretaries of cities and districts outside Moscow city in the province, only 10 survived the purges….Khrushchev noted that almost everyone who worked with him was arrested;…”
Khrushchev was a TONY SOPRANO with unlimited power. He measured Kennedy at Vienna, in his own peasant way, and found him wanting. He found him callow, and unprepared. He found him weak, and able to be rolled.
He shared his opinion of Kennedy with Castro, and they decided to place missiles in Cuba, figuring they could best the Kennedy. Two old revolutionaries took JFK’s measure, and from that measurement pushed the world to the brink of World War III.
I think President Kennedy’s legacy will always suffer because Comrade Khrushchev measured him so weak. It bothers me that the peasant, the gangster, the Communist, the Mafioso saw the President as weak, that given the choice between War and Capitulation, JFK would pick capitulation. My God, he saw JFK as Neville Chamberlain.
But the peasant miscalculated, because of the runt in the Kennedy litter.
ROBERT KENNEDY
The adored ROBERT KENNEDY
It is scary to realize that this world almost stumbled into World WarIII because Khrushchev thought JFK could be rolled. What the Communist did not factor in was Bobby Kennedy, the runt of the litter.
I am a boxing fan, why Muhammad Ali is so great is not because he is a great fighter, but because he was the greatest fighter in an era of great fighters, Frazier, Foreman,Norton,Shavers,Foster. Everyone was great, but Ali was a wee bit greater.
So too the 1960s, great politicians, Nixon,Humphrey, LBJ, JFK, McCarthy, George Wallace, Rockefeller,Goldwater. Bobby Kennedy was just a wee bit greater.
During the Cuban missile crisis, all the Generals wanted to respond to the Soviet missiles in Cuba by bombing Cuba. The scene in the War Room in the film, DR. STRANGELOVE OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB, is based on the actual discussions about bombing Cuba, and plunging the world into nuclear war.
General Curtis LeMay was the inspiration for the George C. Scott General. He wanted to bomb the Russians in Cuba without warning.
It was Bobby Kennedy who stated, in the meeting, in the room, not to some newspaper ten years later, that neither he nor his brother would be an American Tojo(the Japanese leader who bombed America at Pearl Harbor, without warning).
Bobby Kennedy understood what French Premier Georges Clemenceau knew, “War is too important an issue to leave to the Generals.” It was his advice which kept us out of World War III. Bobby was THE ONE.
After John Kennedy died, his widow gave an interview in which she stated that she and her late husband loved to listen to the music from the musical CAMELOT. Thus was born the legend of the Kennedy Presidency as Camelot. The musical CAMELOT, the movie CAMELOT, the Disney Cartoon, THE SWORD IN THE STONE are all based on one book, THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING by T.H. White. That book is anything but a musical, anything but a cartoon. It is one of the great tragedies of English literature.
In the book, the two greatest Arthurian knights, LANCELOT and GAWAINE are great foes. However Gawaine’s brothers, GARETH and GAHERIS liked LANCELOT. After LANCELOT is disgraced for sleeping with the Queen, the two brothers push GAWAINE to reconcile with LANCELOT for the good of the country, GAWAINE agrees.
But just as Civil War is averted, LANCELOT, in a burst of blood fury, kills both GARETH and GAHERIS ending all attempts at reconciliation, plunging the kingdom into a destructive Civil War.
Bobby Kennedy was the last chance this nation had to reconcile before it split into right wing and left wing.
How do we know that?
Because after he died, his Hispanic supporters stopped voting; his black supporters drifted left to support Jesse Jackson, and his working class white supporters drifted right to support first George Wallace and then Ronald Reagan. Why did they support Bobby? Because they felt he would make the right decision for the little man, and then deliver. That’s right, gun totting, Bible thumping, racist bigots wanted Bobby Kennedy to lead them to a better place. He was the greatest man in politics between the death of FDR and the rise of Ronald Reagan.
SENATOR TED KENNEDY
Mary Jo Kopechne, was a passenger in Senator’s Kennedy’s car when it went off a bridge. He walked away. She drowned. Ten hours later, ten hours later, ten hours later he reported the accident to authorities.
Eleven years later, Teddy Kennedy ran for President of the United States. That is some kind of ego.
Much of the political bitterness and partisanship current in American affairs flows from this man. He was short sighted.
Right before he died, he wrote a letter to the Massachusetts Governor, seeking a revision of state law. Under current state law, there has to be a special election to fill his vacant seat. Til that special election, which must happen in the next 145 to 160 days, Massachusetts will have only one Senator, when President Obama needs every Senator he can corral to pass health reform.
His last dying wish was to give the Governor, the power to appoint his replacement. But the catch here, is that the Governor of Massachusetts DID have the power to appoint Senatorial replacement until 2004. That year, Senator John Kerry was running for President, and when polls showed that he had a chance of winning, Senator Ted Kennedy was afraid a Republican Governor, Mitt Romney, would appoint a Republican as Kerry’s replacement. So Teddy changed the rules; he nuscled through a state law, taking the power away from the Governor and giving it to the electorate. So clever, so clever by half.
Now Massachusetts has a Democratic Governor, and no Senator because Teddy Kennedy was clever by half.
This current situation where Massachusetts has no Senator, could also have been avoided by another option. Teddy Kennedy knew he was terminal over a year ago. He could have resigned, allowing the State to have its replacement election. He would have died a private citizen,but Massachusetts would have had two Senators. His vanity precluded him from dying just as a citizen.
In 1987, Ronald Reagan nominated Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. Ted Kennedy made a short sighted decision, believing that Democrats would never regain the White House. He decided the Supreme Court must be defended as a liberal institution at all costs; he led a partisan attack on Judge Bork. He BORKED Robert Bork. They even went after his personal DVD rentals to see if the Judge was renting porn(he was not). As they invaded Judge Bork’s privacy, not one liberal stood up and defended his privacy rights. Their hypocrisy is still disgusting.
All this modern rancor, and divisiveness over Supreme Court justices flows from Senator Kennedy’s decision to bork Judge Bork. Guess what? the Democrats did win the White House again, and now their people are borked.
Teddy Kennedy was a short sighted, egotist, and maybe worst.
His last days were bitter, his niece was denied the New York Senatorial seat, his health care bill was stalled, and he could not attend Senate meetings.
He served a long time in the Senate, 47 years, but the mad King Henry VI served as King of England for 50 years;Haile Selassie served as Emperor of Ethiopia for 44 years, longevity means nothing in and of itself. The final legacy of the final Kennedy Brother is the verb to be BORKED.
Mary Jo Kopechne, 1962 College Yearbook, The Person who Knew Senator Teddy Kennedy Best. 
Bobby Kennedy, America In Death
