Premise
Human cloning tends to discombobulate our moral compasses; the potential for scientific gain and the potential for abuse are vast. Now, contrast this moral dilemma with the public sentiment concerning the assassination of JFK. Seeing as JFK was assassinated, he clearly had enemies, but he was loved by many as well. As such, JFK's assassination was much lamented; Adlai Stevenson put it well:
All of us will bear the grief of his death until the day of our own.
If there was ever a man people would accept cloning, would it not be the charismatic, intellectually gifted and universally loved US president?
That, folks, is a rhetorical question -- at least in my world. My world assumes that nearly everyone would rally around the fresh-from-cryosleep JFK clone. The way it works is:
- Once a week, the real JFK undergoes a consciousness upload to a server
- A secret facility stores the data as well as several JFK clones
- In the event a clone needs to be activated, JFK will be able to have administrative continuity by virtue of downloading his consciousness to the clone
- The process of downloading consciousness to the clone takes 18 hours
- The new JFK clone then attends a meeting where he is debriefed about events of the past few days (everything that happened after the most recent upload)
- This secret facility aside, everything else about the 60's can be assumed to be the same.
Question
BANG! BANG! BANG! The president has been assassinated. However, the next day JFK makes it public knowledge that he has been brought back to life via cloning and consciousness streaming. Would this dissuade further assassination attempts? Why or why not?
Putting ourselves in the minds of the assassins, and using an organized progression of logic are the keys to answering this question. Of course there are a bazillion theories on who was responsible for the assassination, but I'm curious if JFK could perpetually clone himself, why bother assassinating him?
Further Clarifications
In the interest of keeping this question from being too broad, I am not stipulating that the answer needs to be robust to all the theories of who assassinated JFK. You may answer this question simply in the context of plausible motives for the general case.
But if you can't help yourself, you may choose your favorite assassination theory or choose one of the ones below. If you want to go overboard you may do all of them!
- Lee Harvey Oswald | Motive: Unclear (emotional immaturity? random act?)
- Military Industrial Complex | Motive: It would not be in their best interests to deescalate from the cold war (which was the trend of JFK's policies)
- The Mafia | Motive: Retribution for Robert Kennedy's hard stance on organized crime
- Mossad | Motive: Safeguarding Israel's existence in the region by taking out Kennedy, who was firmly opposed to nuclear proliferation in the Middle East and often pressured Israel.
- Banksters | Motive: Kennedy was allegedly proposing a silver-backed dollar policy that threatened the Federal Reserve and the banks ability to turn on and off the fiat printers at will.