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There are moments of clarity in every life where you know you are seeing the end of something significant, even if you dont quite understand it.
The first time such a moment settled upon me was precisely 52 years ago. I was in boarding school in rural Victoria, about as far from the centre of everything as it seemed possible to be.
And there on the black-and-white TV in the school hall came the news from across the world that Bobby Kennedy had been shot dead; assassinated like his brother, US president John F. Kennedy, had been five years previously.
In US time, it was June 6, 1968.
Robert Francis Kennedy, having just won the Democratic Partys primary in California, seemed destined to become president of the United States of America, at the time the most consequential nation in the world.
Far away in country Victoria, plenty of my friends and I were barracking for him. In his first campaign speech, to students at Kansas State University, hed made it plain he wanted an end to the Vietnam War.
I am concerned that at the end of it all, there will only be more Americans killed; more of our treasure spilled out; and because of the bitterness and hatred on every side in this war, more hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese slaughtered; so that they may say, as Tacitus said of Rome, They made a desert, and called it peace. I don't think that is satisfactory for the United States of America, he said.
<snip>No one can presume to know what kind of president this Kennedy might have made. He would be lost to the world two months later. Richard Nixon won that years presidential election.
Impromptu stump speeches by politicians beyond 1968 were swept away by the rise of television, which required scripted performers, and latterly by the shallow and easy lies of social media.
US President Donald Trump with a Bible at St John's Park in Washington DC on Monday.
US President Donald Trump with a Bible at St John's Park in Washington DC on Monday.Credit:AP
And this week, as the US faced yet another storm of violent outrage, its genesis in the death of another black man, the President of the United States cringed in a bunker within the White House, and ventured out holding a Bible as a prop for a photo opportunity, having ensured his path was cleared by truncheons and tear gas.
We are surely seeing the end of something.
We might hope it is merely the end of a barren, loathsome presidency, and not something far more significant.
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Here's the whole thing: https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/love-and-justice-words-that-died-with-a-kennedy-52-years-ago-today-20200604-p54zg1.html
I remember his death very well. I was in the 5th grade and the teacher was a woman and she was polling the class to see who they would vote for (figuring who the student said they would vote for represented the parents).
She was all for RFK I remember and that was our assignment, to watch the convention in L.A. that night. And so I did -- the whole bloody mess.
I remember waking up my parents and telling them that Bobby had been shot and they both got up and just plain cried.
Jesus, it was sad.
May he RIP too -- another victim of violence and hatred.
Historic NY
(37,449 posts)lapfog_1
(29,166 posts)I dream things that never were and say 'Why not?'
https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/ekennedytributetorfk.html
CountAllVotes
(20,854 posts)Last edited Fri Jun 5, 2020, 01:50 PM - Edit history (1)
Morning kick for the rest of the story.
So, RFK was shot and killed. I went to school the next day.
The teacher stood there in front of the class and just cried.
I remember that too well.
Little did I realize at the age of 12 years that something horrible had occurred the night before. I knew it was bad, but horrible?
That fact hit me a few days later.
And here we are today ...
The horrible part of it never died. It has grown like a cancerous tumor across the land.
ArnoldLayne
(2,060 posts)Last edited Fri Jun 5, 2020, 11:28 AM - Edit history (1)
In 1968 when that happened. I got up early went out to get the morning paper and the Headlines read RFK shot and killed last night in Los Angeles. I ran to my Mother and Father's bedroom and told them. They said JFK, Martin Luther King and now Bobby Kennedy. My Mom said what's going on in this World it's terrible is the World ending. I remember it like it was yesterday.
CountAllVotes
(20,854 posts)The fifth grade too eh?
Sure was a different time in the world wasn't it?
burrowowl
(17,607 posts)to take photos with my $5 official press pass when he came to Albuquerque.
Buckeye_Democrat
(14,848 posts)I was a baby, so I obviously wasn't aware of it at the time.
He loved JFK too, but thought RFK was a better person. He was sure that he'd get the nomination and start healing the country.
VOX
(22,976 posts)I only mention that grim fact because he didnt die immediately as some are recalling. The real situation was particularly cruel, as there was some brief hope that Bobby might actually survive the shooting. Neurosurgeons worked extensively to remove the bullet and fragments. Alas, he was lost.
The assassinations of JFK, MLK, Jr., and RFK forever negatively altered the direction of American politics, particularly regarding the issues of racial inequality and overseas wars.
Kid Berwyn
(14,652 posts)...with RFK and MLK and JFK. Murdered by the same group of people who seem to get richer and more violent all the time. Fascist-White Power-What Evolution? Types.
CountAllVotes
(20,854 posts)Ironically the same day as the Invasion of Normandy.
Karma or coincidence?