Today marks the 58th Anniversary of the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, an event that has been shrouded in more mystery, unanswered questions, speculation, innuendo, rumors, and conspiracy theories than any other event in American history.
I prefer to think of it as The Day America Died.
JFK was a bright, shining star in American politics, the youngest President ever to take office, and was well on the way to making America the superpower that it is today (or was before January 26th of this year, anyway). He was a member of the New England Elite, coming from a family that was rich in both monetary means and political power. His father was a member of Congress, he himself had served in Congress, and his brother Robert was appointed Attorney General and would later run for President (and be assassinated himself). He and his brother were on a mission to build up America and free it from the powerful grip of organized crime, and needless to say they made many powerful domestic enemies along the way both on and off of Capitol Hill.
Some believe that it was these powerful domestic enemies that were behind the assassination, while some believe that it was Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone. Some think there was more than one shooter, and some think that Oswald was the only one shooting. The sad thing is we'll never know, because the US Government sealed hundreds of thousands of pages of information on the assassination, originally locking it away for 50 years after which all of the people named in the documents would be dead. But in 1992 the US Congress passed a law which required some of the documents to be released and the rest to be gathered and stored out of public view, stating that only the President of the United States could order their release. Several Presidents have done just that since then, releasing some of the documents, but they have also delayed the full release of ALL documents for "reasons of national security."
Except for Mein Fuhrer, who said that the delay was caused by the "COVID 19 pandemic." (What a fuckin' clown.)
When I was in Korea in 1989 I went to the base library and checked out two books, those books being "The Warren Commission Report" and "Three Days In Dallas." I read both of them and came to two conclusions: first, the Warren Commission Report is a fairy tale at best, and the members of the commission were obviously trying frantically to cover something up. And second, there was more than one active shooter, with the fatal shot being fired from the grassy knoll.
I have also seen the Zapruder film in its entirety, and in my mind this provides the irrefutable evidence that the fatal shot did indeed come from the grassy knoll - which means there were at least two shooters.
AT LEAST.
All I know is that on that fateful November day in Dallas a great man was killed, and the course of our country was forever changed - and not for the better. I often sit back and wonder just how different this country would be if JFK had not been assassinated. He surely would have run for a second term, and I'm quite sure he would have won. The events in Viet Nam would absolutely have turned out differently as JFK was a military man and understood how warfare needed to be conducted. I don't think he would have let the politicians run the war the way LBJ did, but we'll never know.
Things were going so well for Kennedy and his Administration that his time in office was referred to as "Camelot," the magical kingdom glorified in the hit musical of the time, and things in the United States were going just as well as were things in the fictional Camelot.
Then someone killed the King, and America died along with him.
Rest in peace, Jack. You are loved, remembered, and missed.
Deo Vindice
IHC
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