“…we stand today on the edge of a new frontier-the
frontier of the 1960’s, a frontier of unknown opportunities and paths, a
frontier of unfulfilled hopes and threats…I believe the times demand invention,
innovation, imagination, and decision.”
Senator John F. Kennedy,
Nomination Acceptance Speech, 1960.
I didn’t expect to recognize the place. After all, it
was just something from my distant past. Something that happened fifty-nine
years ago. When I was only eight years old. Hell, it might have been mythology.
It certainly had the bright colors and cartoon angles of something viewed from
an eight-year old’s perspective. Something you read in a comic book or see in a
Ray Harryhausen film. Jason and the Argonauts. Kennedy and the New Frontier. It was
just too phantasmagorical to be real.
Why was I here? Curiosity? Nostalgia? To see the wellspring
of one of my earliest memories? Or a pilgrimage?
“The
American people expect more from us…for the world is changing. The old era is
ending. The old ways will not do."
John F. Kennedy, Nomination Acceptance Speech, 1960.
The bus took me from the Arboretum on the edge of town
to downtown Dallas. A thirty-minute drive. Through different neighborhoods, under
many overpasses, and down many thoroughfares of the breathing modern city of
Dallas, Texas.
Alongside parks and past monuments to the city’s history and
testimony to its greatness. We stopped numerous times to slurp up and disgorge
the busy human corpuscles of the city. I watched from my window, drinking it
all in.
“Let the word go forth…that the torch has been passed
to a new generation of Americans…”
President John F.
Kennedy, Inaugural address, January 20, 1961.
We rounded a corner. I got off at the bus stop.
“So this is Dealey Plaza?” l asked the city as I was disgorged
onto the sidewalk. “The birthplace of Dallas?”
The city answered me as all
cities do-with a shrug and smug disinterest, totally indifferent to the
newcomer and his ignorant questions. I walked about a bit. Read some informational
plaques. Was, “God bless you’d” by some young women with signs, and good intent and
informational literature to offer.
I marveled at the architecture, some outlandish, some
traditional or even old fashioned, some outright garish as if the architect
wished to violate every rule of geometry, mathematics, and symmetry from
Phidias to Frank Lloyd-Wright. I glimpsed the statue of a man across the street.
It was George B. Dealey, who gave the plaza its name.
And I walked along the sidewalk in meditation of it
all.
I stopped on a pillared platform by a fountain on
South Houston Street and looked down at the ramp of Elm Street curving and
descending toward an overpass. I didn’t expect it to feel familiar. Or eerie.
Or haunted by the entrails of history’s viscera, wrenched from its bowels and
left in the dust. Or to feel anything at all for that matter, other than a busy
intersection of traffic. A photo op. But it did all those things.
Down what appeared to be an on ramp of some kind,
ushering traffic to another busy intersection. I looked across the street. Then
further up to the right. Across an embankment and past a monument of some sort.
To a building. And stopped.
I knew that building. Seven stories tall. All of brick
pillars and arches. Hundreds of small, glass paned windows and early twentieth
century architecture in the graveyard of the surrounding post-modern buildings.
It looked solid. Practical. Municipal. It looked out of date and quaint as if
it yearned to get back to Euclid and Archimedes. And it looked horrifying.
The Texas School Book Depository.
Just down the street
where my eyes had recently scanned, was a hillock of lawn with a fence on top
and a parking lot beyond. Next to it, between the lawn and the building, was a
stone memorial overlooking the street. It must be. Yes, it is. I see it now.
The Grassy Knoll.
“Americans are free…to disagree with the law but not
to disobey it… no man…no mob…is entitled to defy a court of law.”
John F. Kennedy, 1962.
Half of the population of the United States at the
time was under twenty-five years old. Truly a new generation. A new frontier. A
passing of the torch to hands barely able to lift it.
“We and the Communists are locked in a deadly embrace
all around the world.”
John F. Kennedy, 1960.
“We will bury you!”
Nakita Khrushchev, 1956.
In 1956 Nakita Khrushchev famously declared, “We will
bury you!” speaking of the escalating Cold War between the two superpowers. He
never banged his shoe at the United Nations, though he came close. In 1962 the
Cuban Missile Crisis was successfully ended by negotiations between the two
leaders, Kennedy agreed to take US nuclear missiles out of Turkey and
Khrushchev agreed to do the same in Cuba.
W
e were only told about the second
half of that agreement. That Khrushchev’s actions in Cuba were in response to
American provocation wasn’t revealed for decades. The past is prologue.
A treaty banning atmospheric testing of nuclear
weapons was signed between the US and the Soviet Union in 1963. The infamous
Hot Line was installed between the Oval Office and the Kremlin as well as agreements
on shipments of American grain to Russia.
These were the first stirrings of Détente
which outraged the War Hawks, the Neocons of his day. Kennedy was considered by them to be a tool
of the Kremlin. Too much butter. Not enough guns. He had taken their missiles
away and given wheat and open communication in return. It might as well have
been bread and salt-a universal sign of welcome and a hope for friendship to the Slavic people.
These all predated the ABM, the Anti-Ballistic Missile
treaty, negotiated by Richard Nixon, by a decade. A treaty that formed the basis of the fragile thirty-year Cold
War peace until George W. Bush ended it in 2002 and began a new arms race, all
too willing to rise from the ashes. Happy to incinerate bread and salt.
Kennedy countered communism in SE Asia, encouraging
different provinces to form alliances and coalition governments in 1961, though
he still supported the increase of American military advisors and elevated the
position of the Green Berets as US special forces in Vietnam.
“…this nation should commit itself to achieving the
goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him
safely to earth.”
John F. Kennedy, 1961.
The Mercury program. Gemini. Alan Shephard. John
Glenn. The first Telstar telecommunications satellite. The Apollo program which
eventually led to Neil Armstrong’s somewhat bumbled, “That’s one small step for
(a) man. One giant leap for mankind.”
And his encouragement of physical fitness
and gym classes in school, along with an emphasis on math and science.
These were his contributions to the new generation of Americans. All
before STEM.
“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of
Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be
able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.”
Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. March on Washington, 1963.
Civil rights marches and clashes were breaking out.
Kennedy pushed reforms of poll taxes that barred the poor from the ballot box and
sent federal troops to integrate the Universities of Alabama and Mississippi.
He submitted a civil rights omnibus to Congress. 1963 saw a peaceful march of
250,000 demonstrators in Washington, DC, led by the charismatic Dr. Martin
Luther King.
The people were speaking. For once the leaders were
listening.
His popularity was never supremely high, seeing as he
represented something for everybody to be dissatisfied with. For the Marxist
left, it was his opposition to communism around the world, including
militarily. Conservatives thought he was soft on communism with his willingness
to speak and negotiate with them. Labor leaders and the mob resented his
rattling of their comfortable cages and big business despised his regulations
on industry and minimum wage.
He was the ultimate chameleon of distaste to every
party.
“The streets were lined with people-lots and lots of
people-the children all smiling; placards, confetti, people waving from
windows.”
Lady Bird Johnson, Dallas, Texas, November 22, 1963.
Around 12:30PM on Friday, November 22, 1963, a man named
Abraham Zapruder started filming with an 8mm camera from his superior position
on a marble plinth along Elm Street. To his left was the Texas School Book Depository. To his right, a grassy knoll of no importance.
“Mr. President. You can’t say Dallas doesn’t love
you.”
Nellie Connally, Dallas, Texas. November 22, 1963.
They called it Camelot. The Kennedy administration.
Not just the presidency. Not just the occupant of the oval office. It was in
reference to the family living there and the country that they represented. The
whole zeitgeist.
A young family. A young nation. Its growing pains from an
adolescence of war, depression, civil strife, and stagnation that lasted half a
century. Into a decade that had known peace and prosperity and a phenomenon
that would one day be called the Baby Boom, as such a one as I. And now…into a
new frontier.
And it was something different. Something unimagined. It
offered something with a place for everyone and a place where everyone had
something to offer. Words like, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask
what you can do for your country,” were not empty rhetoric or fodder for late
night mockers. They meant something. Words that inspired confidence, self-awareness,
and resolve. These were words made flesh. The flesh of the new generation.
John F. Kennedy pressed for programs such as The National
Endowment for the Arts and The National Endowment for the Humanities.
Legislation to address mental retardation and to improve health, education, and
housing. Medicare, Mass Transportation, The War on Poverty. The Wilderness Act and The Peace Corp.
Many were stymied by congress due to the usual suspects: Special
interests, big industry, and conflicting power structures embedded in the
architecture of the government, today referred to simply as: The Swamp. Kennedy
wanted to clip the wings of organizations like the FBI and the CIA, unelected
groups of ideologues with black budgets and even blacker agendas incompatible with the
American people.
Attorney General Robert Kennedy pursued organized
crime and corrupt labor leaders, including James Hoffa. The two men seemed unstoppable.
And they had a lot of enemies.
“From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official,
President Kennedy died at 1:00PM Central Standard Time, 2:00 O’clock Eastern
Standard Time. Some 38 minutes ago.” Pause for several seconds, visibly shaken.
“Vice
President Johnson has left the hospital in Dallas, but we do not know to where
he has proceeded, presumably he will be taking the oath of office shortly and
become the 36th president of the United States.”
Walter
Cronkite, CBS news anchor, November 22, 1963.
But Camelot always has its Mordred. Arthur always carries
his fatal wound.
The assassination of President Kennedy shocked a
government, a nation, and the world. People spontaneously held vigils and
gathered at US embassies to express their support. From London to Paris to
Berlin to Moscow to Kenya to Japan to Cambodia to the Dominican Republic to the
Panama Canal. Lights were dimmed, dirges were played, memorial wreaths were
tossed into the sea, trains and airplanes stopped and were grounded.
“When the news came through shortly before eight o’clock
last Friday night, more than a thousand people all over London caught busses or
tube trains, took taxis, drove or walked to the American Embasy…they had to do something.
BBC Television, “This Was the Week that Was,” November 23, 1963.
Representing their nations and organizations, 220 Presidents,
Prime Ministers, Ambassadors, Foreign Ministers, Vice Presidents, Chancellors,
Premiers, Kings, Emperors, Governors, Military Commanders, Secretaries General,
Mayors, High Commissioners, United Nations Representatives, Ministers,
Apostolic Delegates, the Brother of the Shah, Chiefs of Staff, Chiefs of Police,
Hereditary Dukes, Princes and Princesses representing their Monarchs, Attachés to
the Cabinet, Ministers of Justice, Inspectors General, Directors General,
Crowned Princes and Princesses, First Ladies, Undersecretaries, Deputy Chairmen,
Chiefs, Consort representing the Queen, and Party Leaders from
92 countries attended the funeral.
French President Charles De Gaulle spoke for every foreign
leader attending the funeral of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, “(the) people send me
here.”
“The year 2000 will see men still arguing about the
president’s death.”
Harrison Salisbury, New York Times
journalist, 1964.
An investigation was conducted by the city of Dallas as
it was in their jurisdiction. Their suspect was Lee Harvey Oswald, who had been
placed on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository at the time of the
murder, for murder it was and was to be treated as such.
Rifle shells and a rifle belonging
to him were found by a corner window with a clear shot to the president’s limo
from a ‘Sniper’s perch.’ Oswald, an ex-marine sharpshooter, had defected to the
Soviet Union and advocated for Castro and Cuba. It was a clearcut case.
Still, the law requires due process and counsel for
the accused, which Oswald did not get immediately, due to his own request. The
Dallas Bar Association offered him legal counsel, but he wanted an American
Civil Liberties attorney to represent him, delaying any legal procedure. Meanwhile,
the Dallas police force was inundated with reporters, barking questions and
filing reports, making prejudice toward Oswald difficult to avoid.
“I think the case is cinched.”
Dallas Police Chief Will Fritz, 1963.
“Don’t believe this so-called evidence.”
Lee Harvey Oswald, 1963.
The Dallas police force announced that they would
transfer Oswald to the county jail on Sunday morning. Crowds of reporters were
there, as they had been since his arrest. Out of the milieu Jack Ruby, a local night
club owner who was known to the local police already, and who had been
infiltrating the reporters all weekend, broke out of the crowds and shot Lee
Harvey Oswald point blank with a pistol.
He died in the Parkland hospital a few
hours later. Ruby was tried and sentenced to death for first degree murder, but an appeal
got him a retrial. Before he could be retried, he died of cancer in 1967 in the
same hospital as Kennedy.
Case closed.
But that was not going to be enough. President Johnson
created the Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, chaired by
Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren.
Case opened... again.
In 1964 they issued a voluminous
report. Their conclusions were that Lee Harvey Oswald killed the president of
the United States. And that he acted alone.
Case closed…again.
“Police and a lot of spectators started running up the
hill on the opposite side of the street from me to a fence of wood. I assumed
that that was where the shot was fired from.”
Witness
Hugh Betzner who stood on the South Elm Street curb. November 22, 1963.
That was simply not
enough. People started viewing the Warren Commission Report with increasing
suspicion and disbelief. How could Oswald have been the only shooter? One of the shots
supposedly went through Kennedy’s neck, Governor Connally’s right rib cage, out
again, and then through his left thigh, exiting, and landing on the floor of
the limo. They even had what they believed to be this bullet, almost pristine,
which critics started referring to as ‘The Magic Bullet,’ since it showed
little sign of hitting anything after going through not one, not two, but three
entries and exits of flesh and bone and landing on the floor of a limousine.
Another shot missed and a third shot hit Kennedy in the head, killing him.
As evidence came out that
government agencies, such as the CIA and the FBI, withheld information from the
Warren Commission, and that the CIA had colluded with Organized Crime groups in
assassination attempts against Fidel Castro, plus the fact that the commission
refused to look at the official autopsy, public opinion that more than one
person was involved in the assassination grew.
And more pointedly, so
did lack of trust in our government.
In 1976 Congress created
the House Select Committee on Assassinations to investigate the killings of President
Kennedy and Doctor King. They conducted forensic tests concluding that there
were two shooters during the 1963 slaying. In 1978 the film shot by Abraham
Zapruder from a marble plinth on Elm Street, with the Grassy Knoll to his
right, was released to the public.
Case opened...once more.
“I never believed that Oswald acted alone, though I
can accept that he pulled the trigger.”
Lyndon B. Johnson, 1973.
Based on two more
government sponsored studies, the Justice Department concluded in 1988 that
there was no persuasive evidence of a conspiracy, thus completely validating the
Warren Commission report’s findings in 1964.
Case closed… once more.
“Depending on your
point of view, [the Zapruder film] proves almost anything you want it to
prove.”
Former Life magazine journalist Richard Stolley,
1983.
During this time the term ‘Conspiracy Theory’ emerged
in-some say was introduced into-the public discourse. Conspiracy Theory came to
describe any narrative of a known event that is considered mentally unbalanced,
anti-social, or paranoid in nature. One who believes such a clearly ill-defined
and obviously insane theory is a ‘Kooky Conspiracy Theorist,’ and he, and everything he says, can be dismissed with ridicule.
This is a clear ad hominem response, and invites
ridicule on both sides, completely derailing any meaningful discussion. The
questions of whether or not the arguments presented are true, false, or contain
elements of both, and if there is any evidence supporting them, are
avoided. Public discourse was degrading into petty schoolyard bullying.
“…there are simply a great many people who cannot
accept…that one rather insignificant person was able to assassinate the
President of the United States.”
Warren Commission counsel
Norman Redlich, 1977.
Maybe Americans just couldn’t accept that a crime of
this magnitude could happen here. Not in Camelot. Not to us. Not in this modern
time. Not in America. Maybe they were grasping for a reason. Something to make
sense of the monstrous. So, like primitives drawing pictures on a cave wall,
they slipped into a religious fervor of fantastic beliefs that gave meaning to
their suddenly shattered universe.
Some believe that the term ‘Conspiracy Theory’ was
introduced by the CIA, being liberally fertilized by absurd distractions such
as ‘tinfoil hats’ and ‘alien abductions’ and cultivated into circulation by
well refined propaganda, a subject the CIA excels at. It has since been used to
shut down legitimate debates about important issues and continues to be used to
this day.
If you don’t like what someone is saying, just call it
a conspiracy theory. The truth is nowhere, Mulder.
End of discourse. Shut up.
“In 1978 the House Select Committee determined that
Oswald’s actions were part of a larger plot, but admitted that it could not
identify any individual conspirators. In the interim hundreds of conspiracy
theories were offered by critics of the Commission… Groups of individuals
placed under suspicion have included the government of Cuba and the Soviet
Union, pro- and anti-Castroites, organized crime, wealthy conservative oil
interests, right wing and racist domestic factions, the U.S. military, the FBI,
the CIA, the Secret Service, the Dallas Police Department, government leaders
and aliens from outer space.”
The Sixth Floor Museum.
Case reopened?
Many did not want to shut up. Science is not a god,
after all. It should not be worshiped as one. And insults are not rebuttals. There have been many reasons to
doubt the Science. The fact that the government still refuses to release
declassified information, for one.
After the Warren Commission report, the
American people were pretty much split 50-50 on whether it was correct. By ten
years later this number reached 80% according to Gallup. More than three
quarters of the population believed there was a conspiracy.
Personally, I agree with President Johnson. Oswald was
the main shooter, but not the only one. Beyond that? I can only speculate. We
may never know.
I am more concerned about what that event did to my country in
its aftermath.
President Lyndon Baines Johnson was sworn in as the 36th
president of the United States aboard Air Force One. A grieving Jacklyn Kennedy
at his side. The casket of his predecessor in the rear of the plane.
President Johnson was able to implement many of
Kennedy’s projects with the momentum of his martyrdom. The Civil Rights Act
outlawing discrimination based on race, religion, or sex. The Twenty-fourth
amendment eliminating poll taxes. The Voting Rights act eliminated literacy
testing and the Open Housing Law outlawed discrimination in housing.
The Great Society, as it came to be called, was in
large part the fulfillment of Kennedy’s dreams.
He also escalated the war in Vietnam, a conflict that
many think Kennedy would have deescalated.
The latter half of the 60’s grew grim. With the Vietnam war growing more unpopular, hundreds of thousands protesting, not only in
Washington but all over the country, the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and
Dr. Martin L. King, jr., sparking the 1968 Chicago riots, Kissinger’s bombing
of Cambodia in 1969, the National Guard shooting of four students at Kent State
University in Ohio in 1970, it looked like the new frontier was burning into a
desert.
The Great Society was failing.
"Turn on, Tune in, Drop
out.”
Timothy
Leary, 1966
Some took up extremism and handbooks of anarchy like Saul
Alinsky’s, “Rules for Radicals.” Some just took Timothy Leary’s advice to ‘Turn
on. Tune in. Drop out.” Abby Hoffman’s “Steal This Book” celebrated the
counterculture of the 1960’s while Jerry Rubin, the “annoying pot smoking
hippie,” helped found the Yippies, bringing the radicalism of the times to
politics and declaring that he “never trusted anyone over 30.” He was a suspect in the trial of the Chicago 7 in
1969 having been charged with conspiracy and crossing state lines to commit
felonies. He was especially adept at teaching people how to make Molotov
Cocktails.
The sexual revolution, a phenomenon that occurs
every forty years or so in history, was supercharged during the age of
advancement and chaos by drugs, birth control, and abortion, layered in rebellion. Illicit, illegal, and dangerous activities
were all the rage.
Along with rage, of course. Rage is always all the rage. It’s
what lies just under the veneer of civilization, biding its time, waiting for
the cracks to appear. They always do.
Woodstock was the Sermon on the Mount of the
counterculture. The new religion. Grace Slick of the Jefferson Airplane was
its unVirgin Mother holding a communion wafer laced with LSD. Jethro Tull’s Aqualung was its seamy underside.
Underground magazine, The Rag, had a regular
comic called, The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. I would see it in Playboy
magazine when I wasn’t looking at the, er, dangling participles. It chronicled the adventures of Phineas,
Freewheelin’ Franklin, and Fat Freddy, three hippy brothers, as they practiced
the dogma of turning on, tuning in, and dropping acid while being three depraved
Aqualungs. The comic, ironically, originated in Dallas.
The torch had been passed to a new generation, who promptly
threw it through a window.
By the time I was in high school, I was too young to
have more than just longingly watched the obsessions, race riots, acid queens, wars,
moon shots, love-ins, overdoses, conspiracy theories, and freaks that were rampant. I would later say
that I was old enough to remember Woodstock but too young to go.
The Sixties was
an institution. It spanned the lopsided decade from 1964 to 1973, bracketed by
Dealey Plaza and the Watergate Hotel.
Food fights bubbled up periodically in the cafeteria
of the Norwich Free Academy. Teachers were apathetic. Administrators were
hamstrung. Student advisors were professional coffee drinkers. Mine didn’t know
who I was, let along offer me anything remotely approaching advice.
It seemed as if our whole new Camelot had swayed,
stumbled, skidded across the sidewalk, and rolled into a gutter. Our leader, our Ozymandias, now ruined before a
sea of sand. As we blinked,
bled, and looked around through the blood and the dirt, old demons of history
flew around us, stabbed us and mocked all our grand ideas, turned at once
into anarchy. The best we could do was to stumble around, lost,
cold and in the dark.
This was our new frontier.
It could have been just the naiveté of the child or
the hope of the innocent. But it had at first seemed to be a new world. A new,
bright light shining in the middle of a tortured century. God only knew how
much more tortured it would get.
It was
It was the was that was supposed to
be,
It was our Tomorrow,
It was our Now.
And the last bit of the was that was
supposed to be vanquished.
It was the was that was different,
And familiar.
A world reborn that stretched,
yawned, looked,
And said, “Hello, Old Friend.”
It was the was that was something
unimagined,
Something felt,
Something tingling in the air,
It was the was that was Something.
It was the was that was under the skin,
In the blood,
On the fingertips.
It was Rebirth.
It was the was that was in our hearts,
In our minds,
In our muscles, sinews, and tendons.
It
was the was that made us think all things were possible.
It felt like I was there,
And so I was.
So were we all as it was the was that
was at the heart of the American soul.
It was the was that was.
Until we all heard the shot that
killed tomorrow.
“History, after all, is the memory of a nation.”
John Fitzgerald Kennedy,
1917-1963.
Afterthoughts
1. Quotes and pictures in
this essay were mostly taken from the Sixth Floor Museum, 411 Elm Street,
Dallas, Texas. Photography is allowed by the museum.
2. Walter Cronkite’s
image, the ‘most trusted man in America,’ is from CBS archives. The remaining
are from public domain sources or the author.
3. The rise of the term
‘Conspiracy Theory’ and its use in silencing unwanted discussions and the voicing
of unwanted facts is nothing new. It is just the new version of a very old form
of specious reasoning. The ad hominem, the straw man, the non-sequitur, changing
the subject, cherry picking useful facts while willfully ignoring unwanted ones,
gaslighting, demonizing or shouting down the opposition, IOKwwdI (It’s OK when
we do It,) and poisoning the well.
The appeal to a
conspiracy theory is new only in its industrial application. And the term
sounds scientific. A process that will later be mocked as ‘Sciencey,’ by late
night talk show hosts. The generation that followed is best called ‘The Deluded
Generation.’ A process further degraded in 2021 by Dr. Anthony Fauci declaring
to an incredulous congressional committee that anyone who criticizes him criticizes science,
adding, “I represent science.” Science was now a cult of personality, apparently.
And he is its high priest. According to Dr. Fauci. We are now ‘The Fuck Off’
generation.
No wonder the truth is
hard to discern, a single fact can be mobbed and mauled by a thousand
fallacies. People who see conspiracy theories behind every curtain will fail to
ever see the truth.
4. The famous shoe
banging incident at the UN in 1960 never happened. Nikita Khrushchev’s shoe had
accidentally come off of his foot, due to another delegate stepping on it. In
the cramped environment, he just took it off and set it on the table. Later, he
waved it around for effect. Photos were airbrushed to look like he was banging
his shoe on the table. Imagine what they would have done if they had Photoshop?
The 50’s weren’t all that
hostile between the superpowers. Many officials on both sides declared their
wish to have peaceful relations with the other side. On a state visit to
Washington in 1959 as a peaceful gesture, Khrushchev met with Eisenhower. The
two men came to an impromptu agreement on some security issues, which would
lead to the signing of a treaty at Lake Baikal a year later.
Khrushchev was also
introduced to corn, which intrigued him, so he introduced the vegetable to
Russian farmers, who found it well suited to the Russian climate. Sadly, the
shoot down of the U-2 spy plane and airman Gary Powers over Russia killed the
treaty.
5. While researching this
essay I wanted to focus on my personal memories and how the years following the
Kennedy assassination played out as a logical consequence of that sad fact, dominoes
where the first one tippled two, which tippled four, which tippled eight, etc. Titles
are given after the fact, whether the things titled deserve them or not. They
must own them in abstention. Who called it World War One? Or the Great
Depression? Or the Sixties? History names them such. And as such they are
named.
I did not want to make
the brief Kennedy era out to be too much of a golden age which we mortals in
the dark ages that followed could never hope to recapture. The old is new,
sadly. The temptation to glorify the past to feel smug about the present is a
very dangerous thing. An attribute of the old, I am told.
Kennedy may have been just
a figurehead, a nexus between times that would have played out the same way anyway,
no matter who was in the oval office. Maybe things would have happened the same
way if Richard Nixon had been elected president in 1960. Or he might have more
skillfully played the game, as was his talent, accomplishing some of these
worthwhile goals while staying alive long enough to do so.
Politics is a game of bargaining
sugar for shit and hoping you get sugar more than fifty-one percent of the
time. Kennedy wanted all sugar for the American public. A worthy goal, rarely
attained.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and
though
We are not now that strength which in
old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we
are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong
in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not
to yield.
Ulysses,
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Like a top, once tipped,
that rights itself from its own mass, we can expect the American dream to also right
itself from the inertia of the mass of Americans. Some moments are more massive
than others. I’m still reeling from this mass’s inertia.
6. In viewing these
exhibits on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, I was surprised
at just how many pictures I remembered. They could not all have been direct
memories from 1963, though I clearly remember when Kennedy died. Everybody
alive back then does. These pictures, quotes, and narratives have just entered
the collective unconscious. At least the collective unconscious that has grown
since then and of which I am a plant seeded and nurtured in its multi-faceted
soil.
Plants have deep roots.
These are among the deepest of mine.
