JFK

So 50 years ago last week JFK was shot. When I was born he had only been dead for 20 years and his brother Bobby had been dead for 15. But of course after all the shit that happened between 63 and 84 it seemed like a lifetime for many people of my parents generation. It was funny growing up you heard two things about JFK either he was a saint who was on his way to being the greatest president ever and could of saved humanity from an earthquake or that he was an evil fuck who murdered maralyn Monroe with his bare hands after fucking her and half the women in the country while the mob was winning him elections and feeding him drugs. Also he was killed by the Mob cause he dissed Sinatra, the Russians killed him cause he had really good hair, the Cubans killed him cause Castro was still pissed off about the Dodgers moving to LA, the Miami Cubans killed him cause they're all crazy, a fascist gay  army led by Tommy Lee Jones and Joe Pesci in silly wigs killed him cause he was selling out the country to Canada and the most hated enemy known as the Dutch, evil jerks. 

The man has become since his death one of the most mythologized and villianized politicians in the last 80 years besides Ronald Reagan who can burn in hell.  The "what if" he had lived question and " the who shot him" have become more American then Apple pie and baseball. I think for many people of my parents generation JFK getting shot was the  beginning of all hell breaking loose in the land. But as a NYTimes article pointed out all hell had already been breaking loose for a while.

By 1963 a cold civil war had been escalating throughout the country. In the south you had violent confrontations between the civil rights movement and the violent racist powers that ran life in the South and yes they were Democrats such as Strom " I have jungle fever" Thurmond. You also had the ultra right wing john birch society with the support of men like former Gen Curtis LeMay and many others of the  military establishment  openly talking about overthrowing the government because that catholic in the White House was selling us out to the reds. Not counting the mob which pretty much had its hand in every major industry in America and the corrupt ultra right wing businessmen who supported these groups and the foreign affairs issues, things where not right in Camelot. But of course we like to idealize what life was like. That if one thing hadn't happened maybe just maybe things would of turned out the way everyone had hoped they would have.

Of course this is always the lost dreams of youth. Even now people of my generation are starting to romanticize the 90s. And I do admit looking back things weren't as fucked up as they became after the 2000 election and 9/11. But we forget how messed up the 90s where at times. There was the crack wars that were destroying cities, you had Rodney King, you had the rise of the original gridlock master Newt Gingrich, in the early 90s people were dying of AIDS left and right and well if you were gay young and living in someplace like Wyoming you had a good chance of getting killed. So things weren't that great. But I do admit I look back at that period of my life between 1998-2001 as an almost happy dead period. Maybe it was because I was a teenager and hadn't dealt with the fucked up realties of adulthood . Yes things were tough in my life dealing with issues with my dad, but it was still happy. 

My mom always joked that heaven was probably the summer of 1962. I guess for me it would be the summer of 2000. For my grandparents it was probably 1945. For the people who lived through World War I it was 1913-1914. In a survey from the early 70s, they found that people became obsessed with Nostalgia. The idea of an idealized time before things became fucked up became a national obsession. I guess when you go through a traumatic period you search for what went wrong and try to fix it. That is why JFK's presidency and Assasination still captivate the nation to this day.

Now I grew up in a liberal catholic family. So JFK was looked at fondly but we also looked at him realistically ( I am personally a Bobby Kennedy guy myself). We knew he wasn't the saint that they made him out to be, but he wasn't this evil gangster. He didn't kill Marilyn Monroe. Joe Kennedy would of tried to do something like that but he was a vegetable by then so he couldn't do squat. Maybe mobsters helped swing the election in Chicago but the real power lay with Boss Daley who was the one who got the voter turn out. Also people forget that southern Illinois which was a republican stronghold, was just as corrupt and rumors circulated for a long time that Nixon didn't contest the election cause he knew stuff would come out about what the republicans had done there. Yes the man was on drugs but so was a lot of people in the establishment, hell just watch Mad Men. He was such a product of his time and place it's a little unbelievable. I mean the man ran right of Nixon!But the man grew and moved in a total different direction. 

People of my generation don't realize how close we came to the world ending during the Cuban Missile Crisis. We where unbelievably close to a total nuclear war that would of left the world full of mutants and bands of mohawked gangs roaming the wasteland searching for petrol. But JFK and his brother Bobby kept their heads and didn't give into the pressure of the pentagon who was all gung-Ho to bomb Cuba. They knew they could strike a deal and avert the end of humanity as we know it. Now imagine Nixon in that situation or Reagan or Carter, what do you think would happen? Yeah don't. For that alone that makes JFK pretty cool. 

A lot of people said the man changed after the Cuban Missile Crisis. That he realized the way we as a country had been going was wrong . That maybe we could find peace with the Russians through other means. That maybe we shouldn't be scared of these people. I  think the idea of his own children dying scared the hell out of him. Kids do that to a person. They help a person realize that maybe you shouldn't fuck around, that you have a responsibility to leave things better then you found it ( yes I don't have kids but this is what I hear). If you go and listen to the audio tapes during the coup of Diem in South Vietnam you find him and his brother wondering if doing that will come back and bite them in the butt and saying maybe this is a bad idea( Henry Cabot Lodge JFK's senate opponent in 52 who was the ambassador to South Vietnam gave the coups go ahead without the White House final say).

Now I am not going to be one who's going to say that if JFK hadn't died we wouldn't of had Vietnam or the chaos that became the 60s. But I will say that maybe things might of been different. We'll never really know. But for the short time period he was in power and especially the last year he was alive he started becoming the president that he was meant to be. He didn't accomplish as much as he could of , but what he was able to do did inspire people to believe that maybe we had a responsibility to help one another and leave the world a better place then the one we found.