shattering institutions

unanswered doubts

I angrily wanted to be Super Man in front of him, able to shield him from the bullet, as soon as I heard the woman, whose name I can no longer recall, announce President Kennedy shot in Dallas, wherever that was. We rode the busses home in silence, not realising we would not return to school Monday.

Like so much of the country, I am not sure we turned off the television that November weekend. I am sure I saw Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald as everyone watching did but it was all such a blur, especially to someone my age. All the adults were on a hair trigger of anger, though; that was unavoidably clear.

I recall the black and white images of the caisson on the Memorial Bridge leading from the District into Virginia. My father’s work took us to D.C. two and a half years earlier for an entire month so I had actually been by the White House, the Washington Monument, and other famous places. My father loved to note that my brother and I had watched JFK and Prime MInister MacMillan float down the Potomac in the Presidential Yacht because our rental unit was on the river’s bank. He thought it so cool because the sail coincided with the Bay of Pigs invasion. Most of what I recalled was my brother learning to walk by holding on to the belt of my dress. We had visited Arlington Cemetary as that was what tourists did but I certainly did not realise it was the same place the horses were taking this casket.

My mother did not like LBJ; she didn’t like anything about Texas but she sure wasn’t happy he was the new president. My great aunt lived in Houston in the 1930s and 40s and was sure she had heard bad things about Johnson. Over the hushed Thanksgiving meal, an occasional snippet of ‘JFK would have…’ or ‘Well, could it be that….’ or ‘What will happen to Jackie and those poor kids?’ wafted across the table. Doubts and questions.

The U.S. Mission in Colombia was pretty small when we arrived three years later. The father of one the families arriving with us was an FBI liaison to Colombian law enforcement. Apparently a frequent topic of conversation for what seemed never- ending grown up socialising among the Mission folks revolved around soliciting the FBI guy’s knowledge on the Kennedy murder. My mother never forgot he predicted ‘once everyone is gone, the truth will come out about the assassination’. Ah, a clue that we did not know the whole story. I am not sure that was fact or his interpretation. I don’t think many folks he referred to are still, except Caroline Kennedy. I doubt that FBI agent is still alive. But conspiracy theories and assumptions of institutional lies still swirl decades later.

The Warren Report, a bipartsian effort to get to the bottom of the Kennedy assassination, appeared in the mid-1960s before Martin Luther King, Jr.’s shooting and Bobby’s two months later. The nation burned and mourned—and doubted institutions.

The draft, Tet, Richard Nixon, Roe v Wade, Watergate, the tapes, Detente and denounment, the Forbidden City and forbidding competition, the Pardon, the Iranian Revolution and the failed hostage rescue, Iran-Contra, the Wall falling, Monica, 9/11, weapons/no weapons found, the financial crisis, Obama care bad/Affordable Care Act good, the Tea Party, disinformation, doubts, storming the Capitol, COVID lies, overturning Roe and countless other institutional norms shattered over the years following JFK’s death. Sixty years of doubt, incredulty, recriminations, growing distrust and polarisation, and moves to destroy the rule of law and institutions are legacies of his era ending.

Millions of Americans not longer merely doubt institutions but now actively reject them. We no longer teach much history or civics so most Americans know not why we have the institutions we do or the often horrible conditions preceeding their creation. Similarly, the paucity of history means a frightening number seem bent on repeating the mistakes of other countries where doubters replaced institutions by personal rule with malevolent intent. This legacy from the assassination is both clear and dangerous.

I don’t know whether JFK would have ended the war in Southeast Asia although many are convinced he would have. I don’t know that he would have handled Civil Rights as Johnson did or that the Kennedy legacy would have included the Great Society. He had inspiring rhetoric but I am not so sure of his ultimate score card after either four or eight years in office. We will never know.

I do know Kennedy inspired an optimism, hope, altruism we no longer seem to welcome as we continue hungering for it. If someone announced we were going to the moon in this decade, first thing to happen would likely be a lawsuit. JFK brought light and enthusiasm almost completely lacking at present. That alone is a terrible loss.

Sixty years to the day after his assassination, please take a moment to consider what if we trusted our institutions again instead of automatically and cynically rejecting them? What if we engaged with our candidates to select people who we vote for because of the proposals they bring rather than for because they aren’t the enemy? What if we took up the cause of being Americans who build each other up instead of relentlessly objecting to others?

Thank you for reading this. I wish you a health and happy day with your Thanksgiving mates. We have so much, even if we could do better for all.

Be well and be safe. FIN