Yet his tenure started with great promise. With that "good life beckoning", the American Dream was at its most expansive and inviting. Putting aside the oft-referenced threat posed by the supposedly world domination-fixated Kremlin politburo and their cadres in the KGB, along with 'concern' over the ever-moving feast that was the USSR's oft-alleged nuclear superiority over the U.S. -- not to mention America's existential anxiety of having been beaten into space by the Russians -- America arrived in the 60s with unbridled, unprecedented, Disneyesque optimism.
As for JFK, for his part few politicians before or since have corralled -- and at once reflected -- that optimism better than he did. He seemed to personify amongst other things the Manifest Destiny that was America's for the taking. Kennedy strongly hinted of a future level of unmatched national prosperity, well-being and achievement that was, in more or less equal measure, as assured as it was rightfully theirs. That JFK struck both a generational and aspirational chord with the American people few people doubt. To the extent that Americans broadly sensed their own 'unique' place in history and in the world order -- their 'exceptionalism' -- in equal measure JFK embodied and promised it in spades.
With this in mind, whilst not the first or last of the significant moments of the tumultuous, traumatic sixties, Kennedy's assassination nevertheless was the most portentous, harrowing and sinister. It is also the one event that America has never come to terms with. To suggest over half a century later they may never do is not, one suspects, unreasonable. For those looking hard enough, the JFK hit was both a signifier of how much things had changed and also of things to come.
But in some ways what was to come underscored that age-old maxim that the more things change, the more they actually do stay the same. And if what discernible "change" did take place by and large was not necessarily for the better, for those who weren't looking it didn't really matter either way; even for those who might have been inclined to look, they were discouraged from doing so. The less they looked and the less they found if and when they did look, the better. Such change and the rationale for it was strictly on a need-to-know basis. And for those who didn't appreciate this, it was often a career -- indeed, life -- -limiting move not to. That it might still remain so is also a point we shall return to later.
To underscore the premise of the previous statements about the US presidency, let's consider The JFK Thing further, an event that permeates the overarching American Narrative in obvious and not-so-obvious ways. If one can generously view America's brand of democracy as being a 'two steps forward, one step back' work in progress, then the "work" came to a screeching halt just like the president's life did that fateful day, and it has never picked up the pace. At best, it became a 'one step forward, two steps back' project, which is where it -- appearances notwithstanding -- has remained.
To the extent that America's geopolitical power, influence, control and moral authority was a potential force of good in the world at large, the assassination also became a de facto pivotal point in the history of many other countries, if not world history as a whole! A singular example to illustrate this was -- at the behest of Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ), JFK's successor -- my own country Australia's unquestioning, 'full-tilt' entry into Vietnam alongside the U.S. This decision caused our country almost as much existential angst as America's involvement did for its own citizens. Had JFK not been assassinated, most historians and observers consider it highly unlikely the U.S. would have entered into Vietnam on the scale it did. And Australia -- like America -- would have been spared the pain, trauma and ultimate tragedy of doing so too. Of course the "pain and anguish" does not even compare to the "pain and anguish" of the affected nations in Indochina itself including not just Vietnam, but Laos and Cambodia.
Consider the following. One of the most insightful works written on the assassination, Jim Douglass' 2008 book JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why it Matters, is at once a frightening and fascinating insight into the U.S. national-security apparatus that facilitated all the threads necessary to pull off the hit and then get away with it. As the title suggests it is essential reading for those who think the JFK hit 50 plus years after the fact has no relevance to today.
Without doubt, the 'event' of Kennedy's death was accompanied by a political -- and one might also add, psychological -- 'multiplier effect' that still resonates today domestically and globally, and not in what might be defined in positive, or for that matter, subtle ways. Along with the writings of diverse, yet not completely unlike-minded folk (Peter Dale Scott, Russ Baker, Jim Marrs, L Fletcher Prouty, Phillip Nelson, James DiEugenio, Michael Collins Piper, and a few others), his work is essential reading for those who are keen to understand why JFK was taken out, who were the prime suspects, and most importantly, why all this -- as Douglass' book makes plain -- does actually still matter. If "they" can 'off' a president, surely everyone and anyone else is fair game. Why so? Because that "national-security-state" apparatus -- the larger, more powerful forces aforementioned -- is as real and as potent as ever.
Giving Peace a Fighting Chance
Although it may not have been widely recognised at the time, in June 1963, just a few months shy of the Big Event, JFK, in his American University (AU) Commencement Address, delivered what is arguably the most significant oration of his ill-fated tenure as commander in chief. To be sure, it may well have been one of the most pivotal in American foreign policy in the modern era up that point. Forget the "... ask not what your country can do for you" spiel and other memorable lines. The following gives us some idea of where Kennedy was coming from:
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