I came of age in the 60’s and early 70’s, as turbulent an era as any in recent memory. There were wars, nuclear crises, race riots, political polarization, cultural conflicts, generational gaps, the explosion of drug use, left wing radical terrorists, yippies, hippies, antiwar protests, the Kent State shootings, and the exposure of high crimes and misdemeanors by a standing President who was forced to resign in the face of impending impeachment proceedings. Yet nothing hit home more than the rash of political assassinations and assassination attempts that marked that era.
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I was seven years old when John F. Kennedy was killed, either by the incredible marksmanship of a disturbed loner , ex-Marine and Soviet sympathizer, or by the collective efforts of unknown conspirators. It didn’t really matter at the time to me. I was too young to be aware of the possibility that Oswald had not acted alone. Kennedy was the first President of whom I have a clear memory. He was young, attractive, and even to my youthful ears a powerful orator. He exuded charisma every time you saw him on television. His loss was inexplicable, deeply disturbing and has haunted me throughout my life. JFK had been my hero, especially after he had resolved the Cuban missile crisis peacefully, and to my seven year old mind literally saved my life and the lives of my family. I still remember standing in line for hours in the cold merely to walk past his recently dug gravesite at Arlington cemetery with it temporary eternal flame amid the upturned sod. Ever since that day I have distrusted the tradition teachings of the goodness and greatness of America.
Yet, perhaps I would have recovered my initial belief and faith in America’s greatness if that assassination had not been followed by a raft of others. Malcolm X in 1965. And then that terrible year of 1968 when Martin Luther King Jr. was gunned down in Memphis on April 4, 1968, only to be followed two months later by the assassination of Bobby Kennedy the night he won California’s primary on June 5, 1968. To say that these horrific events, one right after the other, caused me to experience deeply surreal and absurd sense of reality would be to understate the impact they had on me. I was only eleven years old, but already I admired both men tremendously for their courage and their passion. Yet within a short time two of the greatest voices for a progressive and liberal causes, for the very dignity of every human life, were snuffed out.
The result was predictable. The left lost its bearings, some degenerating into the violence of groups like the Weatherman, the SLA and others, while many simply gave up on party politics altogether. Nixon ran against LBJ’s designated successor, and the rest is they say, history. The greatest dreams of a generation were extinguished, and both the Republican and Democratic parties began their slow march toward domination by the big money interests of multinational corporations, and the abandonment of populist causes.
Even the failed assassination of George Wallace in 1972 can be seen in this light. Wallace, despite all his bigotry, was still at heart a southern populist, and more importantly, the biggest obstacle to a clear sweep of the South by Nixon in his 1972 re-election campaign. There could have been no successful Republican southern strategy if Nixon had had to contend with the regional third party candidacy of George Wallace, which would have siphoned off numerous votes in the Southern states.
So, in a very broad sense, all of those assassinations changed this country forever, and for the worse. The gains made under FDR and Truman for ordinary Americans cane to a standstill, and many of them have since been reversed and even eliminated. The idealism and progressive principles epitomized by JFK, RFK and MLK during the sixties gave way to the disenchantment, cynicism and economic malaise of the seventies. This in turn allowed the rise of the conservative movement, fueled by wealthy ideologues and corporate interests and energized with the fanatical followers of a revitalized and profoundly intolerant religious extremism. The last 25 years of crimes, political polarization and misrule by the republican administrations of Reagan, Bush the elder and his idiot son, aided and abetted by Republicans in Congress and their allies in the new right wing media infrastructure that has been contracted to mislead and misinform the American public about their multiple lies and failures is the direct result of the murders of our greatest liberal and progressive leaders.
But I am not writing this now merely to mourn the tragedies of a bygone era when hope and dreams of real change seemed capable of realization, and a true transformation of this country into a land “of the people, by the people and for the people” seemed truly within our grasp. No, this retrospective look at an earlier time of political tumult has, in my view, a great deal of relevance to our own era, and particularly to the political situation in which we currently find ourselves. True, the differences are great, but the similarities are even greater. Both involved political and cultural infighting of a particularly virulent nature. Both eras are faced with an unpopular foreign war and an equally unpopular President whose policies, both foreign and domestic have been failures. Indeed, the case can be made that the failures of the Bush administration vastly outweigh the failures by LBJ, who at least saw the enactment of civil rights laws that ended what was essentially apartheid in the South, enfranchised African Americans and other minorities and extended to them the legal protections that white Americans had long reserved for themselves.
What both eras share most of all is a great divide between a truly people powered politics and the politics of powerful conservative interests among the corporate, religious, military and media elites. The people powered politics of the sixties was tied to antiwar candidates like Eugene McCarthy, civil rights leaders like Martin Luther king Jr. and the charisma and idealism of Robert Kennedy. And when Kennedy and King were killed, the heart and soul of that movement was torn apart and left bleeding on the terrace and in the cramped hotel hallway were they fell.
And this is what makes it so dangerous for those political figures who dare to appear different, or to suggest that the traditional answers, solutions and wisdom we have had spoon-fed to us by the establishment figures in both parties and the media are dead wrong, and that new approaches are needed if we are to have any hope of salvaging our democracy and even our world. For make no mistake, the problems we face at the dawn of the 21st Century are even greater than those faced by the “Greatest Generation” or by the leaders who led us through the terrors and vicissitudes of the Cold War. Global warming, Peak Oil, the current health care disaster, the debt bomb, the coming water crisis, nuclear proliferation, the threat of religious fundamentalism, the rise of conflicts among the great powers, both economic and military, and a possible economic collapse of the world economy are the stuff of nightmares for those whose job it is to objectively assess present conditions and trends in America and around the world.
Yet, the established political powers, the corporatists, the free market ideologues of the international banking system, the leaders of the major religions — none of them — are willing to face these issues with anything but their own failed and outdated theories, ideas and well worn assumptions and talking points. Whether blinded by ideology, greed or mere stubborn, inflexible stupidity, they will continue to refuse to recognize that we must change our politics and the way our democracy operates, and change soon, before it is too late.
Up to now, these elites have been able to sabotage any political leader who championed different viewpoints than their own, or whose appeal was broad based and not founded upon traditional sources of campaign funding, toadying to lobbyists and the advice of established and backward looking consultants. Think of the manner in which Howard Dean was taken down by the media in 2004 as the classic example.
But I fear the time when the media and it’s beltway pundit class of sheepish shills can make or break a candidate, or turn the tide of an election, is on the wane. Try as they did, the media elites were unable to prevent the Democratic tsunami in 2006, even though they have done their best to downplay its significance. No, to quote Bob Dylan, the times, they are a changin’ and much like the late sixties people are looking for new ways to participate in the political process and for new leaders who will promote those interests. Leaders who will courageously and unabashedly stand up for principles that can unite, rather than divide Americans, one from another based on class, religion or race. leaders who will unashamedly promote a progressive agenda that people come first: before wealth, before the profits of corporations who depend on overcharging us for weapons systems we don’t need and medicines that the citizens of other countries receive at less than a third the cost, before the demands of hypocritical religious moralists whose culture of life is nothing more than a narrow and cynical manipulation of their own faith’s precepts, before the failed ideologies of free market economists whose abstract theories have proven disastrous when applied to real world situations, and before the interests of politicians whose loyalty is to anyone but the people they are supposed to represent.
So what does that leave them with, if they cannot upend the these new leaders. I fear it sets the stage for a return for that time honored tradition of American politics: the assassination of political opponents. Lincoln fell victim to an embittered supporter of an immoral “cause.” Roosevelt was almost killed by an assassin in Chicago, and was the object of a coup attempt proposed by some of the largest industrialists and right wing fascist sympathizers of his time. The rumors about who was behind JFK’s assassination are rampant, but hardly anyone accepts that Oswald, an itinerant bookseller, communist pamphleteer and Castro supporter acted alone. A white racist, whether acting alone or with help, gunned down Martin Luther King Jr. And who really believes that Sirhan Sirhan killed Robert Kennedy al by his lonesome.
It is not that far fetched to imagine that groups of individuals or “lone wolfs” inspired by vicious and violent rants by the likes of Ann Coulter, Michael Savage and other rapid right wing attack dogs might take the elimination of popular progressive and Democratic politicians into their own hands. There are any number of potential victims. Al Gore comes to mind, for his principled and determined stance on the threat of global warming. The hatred that many on the right have for Hillary Clinton and her husband is well known, and even with the protection by the secret service details provided to them, attempts to murder one or the other by some fanatic misogynist or religious nutcase isn’t that far fetched. If john Edwards campaign took flight, his populism could become the basis for anger and assassination plots by those fearful of his growing national prominence.
And then there is Barack Obama. It doesn’t really matter that his views are less progressive and liberal than are often portrayed in the media. What matters is that he is a Democrat, a black man, and a charismatic politician who may become the first junior senator since JFK to receive the Democratic nomination. The numbers of racists and white supremacists out there who would be more than willing to place them in their gun sights can probably be numbered in the thousands, and if he runs for the Presidency as now seems likely, they will have numerous opportunities to execute those violent fantasies.
I don’t mean to be a prognosticator here, or suggest that such violent and politically motivated crimes are the likely result of current trends. But neither can I ignore that possibility. All one has to do is read Dave Neiwart’s series on eliminationism at his blog Orcinus to get a good idea of how ingrained are right wing fantasies of murdering political adversaries and others despised groups.
If Robert Kennedy had run against Nixon in 1968, I believe Nixon would have lost, and lost badly, and the course of our subsequent history would have been effected in ways that we cannot begin to imagine. We are at the cusp of another such momentous Presidential election, between a Republican candidate, like McCain, who will likely continue the failed domestic and foreign policies of the Bush administration, or a Democratic candidate who will propose a dramatic return to the progressive politics of FDR, JFK and RFK. Let’s hope that this time our generation’s RFK, whomever she or he may prove to be, gets that opportunity without first being forever silenced by an assassin’s bullet.