In memoriam: President John F. Kennedy

[chuckstevens]

53. WHO CAN SAY WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN?

Speculative history is consider by many historians to be a stupid exercise and massive waste of time. However, every year on Nov 22 and June 5, I still lament how much better the nation and world might have been had history gone differently.

* If JFK had not be murdered in 1963 and/or RFK had lived and gone on to win the White House in 1968, thousands of young Americans might not have needlessly died in the jungles of Vietnam in what amount to an international pissing
contest.

* There would not have been a reemergence of Richard Nixon and the creation of such cynicism about government after the abuse of power in the Watergate Affair and a young Dick Cheney and Karl Rove might not have gotten a start in their pathological lust for power.

* There might not have been Reaganomics, scapegoating unions, and a mentality that "Greed is Good".

* It is unlikely that 911 would have occurred and thus, there would not have been a George W Bush lying us into an immoral war in the Middle East and deregulating everything.

In the melancholy words of Aurthur Schlesinger Jr., "Who can say what might have been?"