There’s an anniversary this November that probably won’t resonate much for anyone under fifty. This short history lesson from Adam Gopnick in the New Yorker was posted before today’s Confederate-flag-at-the-White-House incident:
… As it happens, I’ve been doing some reading about John Kennedy, and what I find startling, and even surprising, is how absolutely consistent and unchanged the ideology of the extreme American right has been over the past fifty years, from father to son and now, presumably, on to son from father again. The real analogue to today’s unhinged right wing in America is yesterday’s unhinged right wing in America. This really is your grandfather’s right, if not, to be sure, your grandfather’s Republican Party. Half a century ago, the type was much more evenly distributed between the die-hard, neo-Confederate wing of the Democratic Party and the Goldwater wing of the Republicans, an equitable division of loonies that would begin to end after J.F.K.’s death. (A year later, the Civil Rights Act passed, Goldwater ran, Reagan emerged, and we began the permanent sorting out of our factions into what would be called, anywhere but here, a party of the center right and a party of the extreme right.)
Reading through the literature on the hysterias of 1963, the continuity of beliefs is plain: Now, as then, there is said to be a conspiracy in the highest places to end American Constitutional rule and replace it with a Marxist dictatorship, evidenced by a plan in which your family doctor will be replaced by a federal bureaucrat—mostly for unnamable purposes, but somehow involving the gleeful killing off of the aged. There is also the conviction, in both eras, that only a handful of Congressmen and polemicists (then mostly in newspapers; now on TV) stand between honest Americans and the apocalypse, and that the man presiding over that plan is not just a dupe but personally depraved, an active collaborator with our enemies, a secret something or other, and any necessary means to bring about the end of his reign are justified and appropriate. And fifty years ago, as today, groups with these beliefs, far from being banished to the fringe of political life, were closely entangled and intertwined with Senators and Congressmen and right-wing multi-millionaires.
In their new book, “Dallas 1963,” Bill Minutaglio and Steven L. Davis demonstrate in luxuriant detail just how clotted Dallas was with right-wing types in the period before Kennedy’s fatal visit. The John Birch Society, the paranoid, well-heeled, anti-Communist group, was the engine of the movement then, as the Tea Party is now—and though, to their great credit, the saner conservatives worked hard to keep it out of the official center, the society remained hyper-present. Powerful men, like Ted Dealey, the publisher of the Dallas Morning News, sympathized with the Birchers’ ideology, and engaged with General Edwin A. Walker, an extreme right-wing military man (and racist) who had left the Army in protest at Kennedy’s civil-rights and foreign policies—and who had the ear of Senators Strom Thurmond and John Tower….
The whole thing came to a climax with the famous black-bordered flyer that appeared on the day of J.F.K.’s visit to Dallas, which showed him in front face and profile, as in a “Wanted” poster, with the headline “WANTED FOR TREASON.” The style of that treason is familiar mix of deliberate subversion and personal depravity. “He has been wrong on innumerable issues affecting the security of the United States”; “He has been caught in fantastic lies to the American people, including personal ones like his previous marriage and divorce.” Birth certificate, please?…
I had just turned eight that November, and what I remember most is the shock that all the adults in my life agreed this was a terrible, terrible event for the whole country. My family and the parish that was my world usually held true the “two [individuals], three opinions” school of political activism, so the comity of sorrow seemed like a pivot on which the whole universe must be swinging. Fifty years from now, what will today’s eight-year-olds remember about our politics?
Trentrunner
One difference from 1963 to today:
If an assassin killed Obama tomorrow, 27% would approve.
Yatsuno
Ironically enough, the real social progress they were dreading happened under the man who replaced Kennedy. But back then he was almost unelectable just by virtue of being Catholic. That bends the brain these days.
Lee Rudolph
Fifty years from now, what will today’s eight-year-olds remember about our politics?
They’ll remember one of the greatest achievements of the present crop of right-wing millionaires and their useful idiots: that we lost the last chance to somewhat mollify (not even avert) the catastrophic global climate change that they’ll be living, miserably, in.
Southern Beale
Yeah I read a story in Harper’s years ago that talked about the unhinged right of the early ’60s, conspiracy nutters that would put the FEMA re-education camp folks to shame … but we don’t know about them because back then, the news media considered them fringe crackpots and didn’t give them the ink or the airtime.
trollhattan
From that Wiki link.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:JFK_Wanted_Dallas_1963.jpg
Does the language sound familiar? Are the brothers Koch proud of daddy founding the John Birch Society? Half a century and not only have we forgotten the many, many painful lessons of the ’60s we seem to now be dipping into the ’50s with tailgunner Ted.
ETA Recall being dragged on this or that car trip with the folks and seeing “Impeach Earl Warren” billboards in the Washington sticks. “Who’s Earl Warren?”
RareSanity
Anne,
Your title made me immediately think of this classic from Dennis Green:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDAq5tyfk9E
TAPX486
Every time I get ‘comfortable’ (or maybe just numb) with the level of wing nut crazy, some one has to come along and upset the apple c art. Congress critter Loony Louie Gohmert has announced that he will not vote to increase the debt limit but if the US breaches said limit it is an impeachable offense for Obama.
I realize there is a concept called cogitative dissonance where a person can hold two opposing points of view at the same time. But Loonie Louie gives a whole to meaning to the crazy. I’m not sure that the reality based world has even invented a word to describe it
Elmo
@Trentrunner:
At least that many approved of the Kennedy murder. There were schoolchildren who cheered when they heard the news.
JPL
@Elmo: That’s something I’ve never heard of and hopefully it’s not the same thing as thousands of soldiers being spit on after VietNam..
Josie
@JPL: It’s true. It was in an elementary school in Dallas. I was at the U of Texas at the time and remember reading about it.
Tehanu
@Elmo:
I was not quite 16 so I remember it very, very vividly. Even more vividly, I remember being driven home after school that day and seeing the local John Birch chapter head strolling down Main Street with a transistor radio held to his ear and a big grin on his face. There’s a scene in Ursula K. LeGuin’s great book, The Left Hand of Darkness, where a politician in one country laughingly proposes a toast because the newborn baby of the king of a rival country has just died: “May all the kings of [rival country] live so long!” Whereupon his own countrymen turn away in disgust at his laughing at a death. As far as I can tell, the rightwing assholes are still what they always were, assholes.
JPL
@Josie: It’s shocking to me but hate can be spread. I had turned fourteen a few months before and remember my parents mentioning that he shouldn’t have gone to Dallas.
Lady Bug
I’m actually reading “Dallas” right now, and I also noticed the similarities between then and now. I’m not done with the book, but one particular part that struck me, was when Kennedy, after the Birmingham church bombing that killed four girls, makes mention of how America is ‘working to address the wrongs of our own country’ at his last UNGA speech. For the far right, Kennedy was ‘apologizing’ for America.The reaction from the far-right, was of course, outrage: how dare he apologize for America! Their reaction is no different from Glenn Beck and co deriding Obama for his ‘apology tour.’ Except with Obama, it seems even worse, they derided him for this alleged apology tour, before he even left the country.
From cries of socialism and apology tours, as the saying goes, ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same.’
trollhattan
@efgoldman:
Fred Koch is described as “One of the founding members of the John Birch Society.” Dunno whether it was his napkin sketch that kicked off the awesomeness, but close enough for me.
raven
@JPL: @JPL: You mean bullshit?
James E. Powell
They are who they are because people with real power need them. Need to enrage the crowds and to distract the general population.
They are who they are because powerful people want them to be. Or they would be like the radical left. Virtually non-existent.
Poopyman
@TAPX486: Read Kafka.
Mark B.
It just pisses me off that Cruz shows up at closed monuments to flap his gums. It’s likable an arsonist showing up at a burning building to yell at fire fighters. You’re the idiot that started the fire, you dumb jackass.
Keith P.
Once you plant the seed in someone’s head…
Every since Obama was elected, I’ve heard a ton of people – many of whom I usually think a lot of – say that Obama is a Socialist. I can go “Socialist? What decade are we living in? Gimme a fucking break!”, and I get in response, “No, no, no, seriously – socialism is the purchasing of the means of production by the government, and that’s what Obama is doing. Obamacare *is* socialism!” “Obamacare is requiring you to have insurance, like right-wing Texas requires all drivers to have auto-insurance. This is nothing like Soviet Russia.” “Yeah, but it puts us on the road to Socialism.” And on and on the conversation will go, with just about every radio/Fox News cliché thrown in there. They just put the words out there, and people lap it up and repeat it.
Mr. Longform
I was just shy of 5 that day in 1963, and like Anne says, the thing that impressed the most was the shock of the adults around me. I can still see the look on my dad’s face as my mom told him the news. Scared the shit out of me — the look on his face, I mean. I didn’t know enough to be scared by the event itself. I feel scared now, in a more sad and profound way, because the nutjobs seem to be more integrated into the fabric of our politics and our society. It’s the Newtown Tea Party era, and it isn’t real clear that there will even be another era after this.
Mustang Bobby
I was eleven on that day in November. I was in Grade 6, and I remember that entire weekend as if it was yesterday: the flash news bulletin we heard in the locker room after gym class, the sudden assembly in the gym with the announcement, the arrival of the school buses to take us home, the girls crying.
The TV set was on when I got home and it was never off: the grainy image of the arrival of Air Force One, the hearse, the White House and the parade of cars, and then the flash back to Dallas when Oswald was shot. It made deep, deep impression on me then and it still does today.
It does not surprise me that the hate still survives. It feeds on tragedy and horror.
trollhattan
@Keith P.:
I have loads of fun asking conservatives to “define socialist” when they use the term. So far they’re 0 for a lot.
Mark B.
Off topic, but the iPad version doesn’t work right: when you post a comment it says it failed but it’s there when you refresh the page. Forget trying to edit a comment. And the desktop version is unreadable on the iPad, the crap in the margins takes up 75% of the page. I realize nobody’s getting paid to do this, but could you make it work better? I’ll help.
Aurona
I, too, was 16, but lived in the San Fernando Valley (So Cal), where my tendencies prior to Kennedy becoming President were me voting for Nixon in a straw poll in junior high. Three years later, I was smitten with The Kennedys; they were so different from the sane and sober Eisenhowers of the 50’s. It shook me when he was killed; I followed and read everything I could find, and of course, read and heard about the people who really wanted him out of office – the Texas and Southern states money guys. I will never forget nor forgive, but because good ole Lyndon pushed the Civil Rights Act in 64, I became a lifelong Democrat and never looked back. Thank god, but oh, so sad. And then to be followed up just five years later with MLK and RFK. Troubling times – no wonder the Boomers got so f*d up.
jon
Adlai Stevenson said of his assailants: “I don’t want to send them to jail. I want to send them to school.”
There are schools in jail today.
pseudonymous in nc
Peak Wingnut is forever.
JGabriel
@Trentrunner:
You’d be surprised. Anti-Catholic bigotry was still pretty widespread at the time, as was Cold War paranoia. I don’t know what percentage of people were happy about Kennedy’s death, but I’m sure it was probably larger than you might suspect.
Though I’d guess a greater percentage than today would know enough to mask their glee.
Edited to Add: And now I see that Elmo got there first.
TAPX486
I was 17. I had a 6th period study hall in the auditorium. I was kinda in the middle of the room and you could see some kind of word spreading like the wind thru a field of grass. When the whispering reached where I was sitting we all thought it was a joke. Presidential assassinations were so 19th century. When a teacher came in and told us it was true everyone was in a total state of shock.
Gray Lensman
@Elmo:
I was 21 years old and teaching in a small junior high in SE Texas. I was in my third period math class when the principal came on the pa system to announce the death of the President in Dallas. Almost immediately most of the seventh graders in the room rose as one and began to cheer.
My whole feeling about the country changed that day and has not changed since. I was raised a conservative Democrat in Texas but the state has gone overboard since the early 60’s. I have lived in Colorado for 28 years and I refuse to go back to Texas even to visit family.
cmorenc
@Trentrunner:
IMHO the number who would actually approve would be vastly smaller than 27%; probably no more than one or two per cent. However, 27% is probably an accurate estimate of the percentage who, while disapproving of the assassination, would nevertheless wholeheartedly agree that Obama was hugely at fault for creating understandable provocation to those capable of homicidal anger. In other words, 27% would disapprove of the act, but nevertheless approve of the sentiment that drove them to do it.
Mike in NC
I was 9 years old when the PA system in my Catholic elementary school in Boston announced the JFK assassination. He had appeared less than a year earlier at a hospital near the school where Jackie had suffered a miscarriage. I was about ten feet away from him sitting on a mailbox when he exited the hospital. My huge claim to fame…
Roger Moore
@cmorenc:
No. 27% would approve of the act, but many of them would realize that it’s socially unacceptable to applaud it, and would try to have it both ways by simultaneously deploring the assassination and excusing the assassin.
priscianus jr
This is their culture. It’s their world-view. It doesn’t change, and they will fight to the bitter end to defend it.
Actually, if you go deeper into history, you’ll find that this permanent state of paranoia goes at least as far back as the early 17th century Puritans and Covenanters in England and Scotland.
cmorenc
We’re being a bit too self-congratualtory here; had George W. Bush been assassinated while in office, the reaction among progressive-minded folk who loathed him would have been mixed. Strictly among ourselves, we probably would have briefly felt a small but of guilty “the damn bastard DESERVED it” perverse pleasure, but we’d be quickly sobered into regret and disapproval by: 1) seeing Dick Cheney sworn in as the President for the remainder of W’s term; 2) realization that the net effect of the event would more likely be strongly toward a direction counterproductive to progressive interests for a couple of decades at least.
Fluke bucket
Funny how living in Georgia can skew your world view. IMHO a full 75% would unashamedly dance in the god damn streets around here if it happened to our current President tomorrow. They would think that The Lord had looked down on us and pitied us by removing the Anti-Christ. It is truly fucked up here in the land of cotton.
TAPX486
There is no way that this will end well.
If Obama caves then he might as well turn the White House over to Ted Cruz.
If the GOP caves an economic disaster will be avoided on Thur. but the right will go thermo-nuclear and Obama will not be able to get a Mother’s Day resolution thru Congress. The economic crisis will simply be postponed for 60-90 days
If we breach the limit it will be an economic disaster. No one really knows what will happen, but other than the tea partiers, no one wants to find out
If Obama invokes emergency powers of some sort and tells Treasury to keep paying the bills then a total economic meltdown may be avoided but the political cost will be impeachment at the very least. Unless he is prepared to go whole hog and order the government to reopen also, the shutdown will continue. At some point Congress will have to pass a budget and raise the debt limit. The constitutional system cannot stand a permanent rule by executive fiat.
Even if the President and the ‘sane’ GOP reach some kind of deal it will still leave the loaded gun on the table to be used in a few weeks. And the right will be even more determined to get their way.
I have read several articles which make the argument that this is past the point of political compromise. The tea party and the conservative Republicans view this in religious term. They are the true bearers of the nation’s Christian soul. They are the ones doing God’s work and anyone who disagrees must be working for the devil. For them there simply is no way to compromise with Satan and still keep their souls. Michelle Bachmann is not just using figures of speech when she says the end is near. This is the deeply held belief of the religious right. The GOP has been feeding this monster for 30-40 years because it helped them win elections. And now like Frankenstein, it has turned on its masters.
Our system depends on the political actors adhering to a set of rules, some written and other unwritten custom. No matter the outcome over the next few days I fear that we will be a very different country on Oct. 18th. Those written and esp. unwritten rules have been torched and it will be a long time before they can be re-established.
LAC
Just to be clear: NOW is it ok to call it what it is – racism ? We got clearance now that you have seen muthafuckas with confederate flags at the White House? We see eye to eye on this?
Good…
NotMax
Also remember it as if it were yesterday. The shock. The hush prevalent everywhere.
For those of us around then, it is a wound which shall never heal.
TAPX486
@cmorenc: We don’t have to do a thought experiment. No one in any public position said ‘Hinkleys only mistake was his poor aim’ when Reagan was shot. I’m sure there were some on the left who had a passing moment of glee but it was wasn’t expressed publicly. Prior to the event there were no Democrats talking about 2nd amendment solutions or watering the tree of liberty with blood. Obviously in the pre-internet/twitter world these ideas, if the existed, spread much more slowly. Today one Sarah Palin or Loonie Louie Gomhert can send out 140 char. tweet and in a nanosecond the entire worlds knows about it.
Frankensteinbeck
@TAPX486:
Cognitive dissonance is the process where your beliefs and actions have to line up together, so you change your beliefs to support your actions. Humans are great at believing two conflicting things at the same time. The wikipedia article on cognitive dissonance is one of the star examples of why wikipedia is not always reliable.
Tokyokie
@Elmo: In my 4th-grade class in Oklahoma, one of my classmates (whose name I remember but won’t divulge here) leapt from his seat and cheered (although I can’t remember whether it was when the principal announced on the PA that JFK had been shot, or a few minutes later when he announced that the president had died). Even our teacher, an unreconstructed Louisiana bigot, was taken aback by my classmate’s reaction. But he was lucky that the principal was in his office, not in our classroom. The principal had served as a first lieutenant with Merrill’s Marauders and was a hard-core patriot in the good sense, and I doubt he would have tolerated such a lack of respect for democratic institutions.
cmorenc
@Roger Moore:
More accurately, they would experience dissonance between undeniable feelings they were glad to be rid of the bastard versus feelings of disapproval of the act itself (compounded by awareness of the need to avoid experessing their feelings of being glad to be rid of him in a socially acceptable way). Hence, their willingness to express “understanding” of the sort of anger which drove the assassin, even while expressing deep disapproval of his act.
Frankensteinbeck
@cmorenc:
Seriously, guys, cognitive dissonance does not work like that. The idea that cognitive dissonance is powered by friction between incompatible beliefs is such a fringe theory that neither the psych student nor the psychiatrist in my family had ever heard of it, despite cognitive dissonance itself being a bedrock concept of their field.
Tokyokie
@cmorenc: I, for one, was quite shaken when Reagan was shot, and I hated the s.o.b. So I’m not sure your reasoning is valid.
cmorenc
@TAPX486:
Yes, this is a great example. However, no one in the progressive community was actively wishing for someone to try to assassinate Reagan before it happened, whereas there is a rumble of this among a perceptible fringe on the right wrt Obama.
TAPX486
@cmorenc: And one of the first public official’s to reach the hospital was that great liberal Tip O’Neil.
cmorenc
@Tokyokie:
Yes, but you’re a sample of one, and I’m quite sure there would be a substantial percentage among those on the hard-right who would be quite shaken if the same thing happened to Obama. The real distinction IMHO is that before it happened virtually no one within the progressive community wished for someone to attempt to take out Reagan, and even afterward, we’re talking about a very fleeting moment in a significant number of progressive-minded folk which they almost immediately sobered out of.
Steeplejack
@Southern Beale:
Also, no Internet to amplify and megaphone-ize everything.
elftx
I was in 6th grade and could not stop crying..even in class. I recall the teacher just telling me to put my head on my desk..but the sobs would not stop.
Part of it was understanding the biggest reason for my tears was my dad, a raging alcoholic Catholic had real pride in Kennedy being elected.
And NotMax is right, the wound will never heal.
PreservedKillick
Nope. It is abundantly clear that Boehner does not have the votes to get anything even slightly useful through congress, and it is also quite clear that Obama cannot act (not does not want to, cannot.) We will, almost certainly, default unless Boehner pushes through a clean CR – which will split his caucus in two. I expect this is what will happen. Boehner will put one up for vote, it will pass, the senate – seeing Boehner’s action – will either capitulate or Reid will go nuclear and it will pass there. Obama signs. Probably on the 18th or the 19th. How much damage will have been done by then is anybody’s guess.
What happens to the republican party after that remains to be seen. The Tea Party will likely survive, if not thrive. They want end times. This is as close as you can get without actual nuclear weapons exchanged.
The sane republicans will be completely burned – nobody will fund them as republicans and they will have no power. Who runs the house is anybody’s guess. I hope the sane republicans band with the democrats and it’s Pelosi, but who knows.
Wild card: the treasury started notifying seniors that social security checks will likely not arrive. I imagine that the phone lines going into DC will shortly melt.
I am willing to bet that just about every business person who backed a republican to save a few bucks on taxes is now thinking those few bucks were about the most expensive few bucks he or she has ever tried to avoid paying.
jon
@TAPX486: I was in the 4th or 5th Grade when Reagan was shot, and I remember the other students excited that we were going to watch television. Some students were a bit giddy about Reagan getting shot, but not in any reasonable way. I was worried the Soviets were behind it or something, and I was a Minnesota child of Democratic union teachers and my mom also being an elected city councilwoman. The politics of it were secondary to the fear, and I guess what’s different now is that the politics is the fear.
Bonnie
I was 17 when Kennedy was assassinated. Like most people, I still remember that day so very distinctly. I wish the thing that would be remembered of Kennedy was his ability to do press conferences without notes, talking points, etc. And, he was always funny. I wish history classes in high school would run videos of his press conferences so that the future Americans can see how terrific it is for a politician/President to be eloquent, knowledgeable, and funny–all at the same time. He was so spontaneous; it was delightful to see him on TV or read his comments/speeches in the newspaper.
TAPX486
@cmorenc: I’m sure the ‘sane’ establishment type republicans like good old John Boehner and Mitch McConnell would be horrified. The problem is they have stood by and let this crazy talk flourish. Roger Ailes might be horrified if something like that happened but he has allowed his network to egg on the crazies. Oh sure Hannity has never said ‘lets get a gun and shot Obama’ . But when there is a constant diet of winks and nods about birtherism, that the election was stolen or Obama is a secret Muslim terrorist, you run the risk that some one on the edge of reality will see it as his patriotic duty to save the country.
This isn’t even just a thought experiment. Several years ago a guy shot up a church in one of the southern states. He left a suicide note saying that he was influenced by Bernie Goldberg’s book ‘100 liberal traitors’ and since he could not get close to any of them he was doing the next best thing by killing these people in church. Presumably the church had a liberal bias
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@LAC: Hear hear.
Mike G
@trollhattan:
The rabies right don’t “learn lessons”. They just wait until a particular scam has been forgotten long enough that they can recycle it again.
leeleeFL
@efgoldman: I was stunned and disgusted when Reagan was shot and I couldn’t stand him. I find the idea of cheering at the murder of any US President appalling. We vote against them, we don’t kill them.
As far as Sherman goes, I wish he was still around. We could use someone as determined and dedicated about now.
Donut
@TAPX486:
I was just shy of 10 years old when Hinckley tried to kill Reagan. I was home sick from school that day, watching early afternoon TV, so I actually sat there and watched all of the news coverage. I was watching whatever was on the ABC affiliate…and in fact, watching that happen was probably even the start of my political-junkie-ness. Thanks a lot, Frank Reynolds! I found all of it completely engrossing.
Anyway, I was the kind of nine-year old who read the newspapers, and as far as what could be read in our local paper and the Chicago Tribune my parents also subscribed to, I don’t remember a single member of the Democratic Party expressing anything other than total shock and disgust about the event; but I do remember my buddy’s mom exclaiming a few days after it happened, “the only thing that was wrong with that guy {Hinckley} is his aim! He ought to get a medal!”
I remember thinking that was a really messed up thing to say and wondering why she would say it.
NotMax
@leeleeFL
What was truly disgusting was Alexander Haig at the microphone, announcing “I am in charge.”
PhilbertDesanex
My late sweetheart was from small oil-town Texas, who was in Dallas that day as a college freshman at SMU. Her church helped sneak an elementary teacher out of town back to her Daddy’s house (as they say) because of threats on her life for telling 3rd graders that it was a terrible thing. Her dad said of the murder, ‘just as well, he’s a Communist and a Catholic anyway’. I guess maybe Catholics are OK now unless Francis gets squishy.
On my last trip to Texas I had time to go to the 6th Floor Museum on Dealy Plaza. It is respectfully quiet. The whole floor is preserved and you walk thru it, to set the time before you get to The Window. Newspapers from that weekend with full page ads from ‘the Concerned Christians of Texas’ asking JFK why he is doing all this Communist stuff like desegregation.
Sad Sum: not much change
Kyle
@Gray Lensman:
And Texas is still a political shithole today.
Omnes Omnibus
@elftx: Assassination is a rejection of the standard political process. Modern democracies are based on the concept of a peaceful exchange of power after an electoral defeat. Anyone can’t accept that doesn’t really believe in democracy.
Ruckus
@LAC:
It’s racism.
It’s always been racism.
There are other layers involved, conservative policy, such as it is, unhinged idiots like the loons from MN or AK but racism has always been a part of it. For some assholes it is the majority part, for others not so much, but racism never, ever goes completely away.
TAPX486
@PreservedKillick:
I’m not so sure. I would guess that most business people would fall into that category. But for people like the Koch brothers and Adelson, the tea party is a feature not a bug. Sure for the Koch brothers the debt limit may be a bridge to far but they will continue to fund any group that aids in furthering government gridlock and dysfunction. Dysfunctional government and popular distrust in government makes it that much easier to further their economic interests without interference. A global depression doesn’t help their business interests but a defanged EPA does
Ruckus
I was 14 and in HS on that November day. I remember it well. We assembled in the auditorium to get the news from the principal. I didn’t hear anyone say anything positive. We were in shock that someone would shoot a president. But I lived in that liberal hot bed, CA. I also remember all the caterwauling about JFK and how his families money would ruin everything his being catholic hadn’t already ruined. Like he was the first wealthy person elected. It wasn’t as nasty as Obama’s candidacy, but I think that was because of the lack of immediate communications of the internet.
And no, the crazy is not new. True conservatives have always been crazy, hateful and selfish.
leeleeFL
@NotMax: if we knew about this at the time I don’t remember. I know it made me furious when I did learn of it. Haig was sixteen kinds of SOB.
I have been doing some retrospective crying the last few weeks. Fifty years gone and it seems like yesterday sometimes. I mourn the man, the President, the possibilities. What country might we live in now if he hadn’t died that day? Someone mentioned Boomers taking the assassination hard. At least half of us did. That explains so much about today’s political landscape. Half of us cried……
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
This.
Conservatives yell about the constitution but they really don’t believe in it. They only like the parts they can use, not the parts that keep them from being the assholes they want to be. No different than their bible really. If they don’t like something, it doesn’t exist.
TAPX486
@leeleeFL: I wasn’t a Kennedy fan at the time and truth be told I’m not sure that other than the missile crisis his legacy will be just the assassination. However the events of that day opened up some political space that resulted in the civil right laws passed under LBJ. I’m not sure that Kennedy could have gotten them enacted. As to the other trauma of the 60’s, Vietnam, I suspect it is a good deal of historical rewriting and wishful thinking to assume JFK would have done anything different than LBJ.
NotMax
@leeleeFL
Watched the Haig statement live on TV at work, and had to pick my jaw up from the carpeting.
Not a single commentator so much as mentioned it at the time, which made it all the more appalling.
chrome agnomen
damn but there are a lot of old fuckers on this blog! i was 13 at the time, living in that sinkhole of liberalism, massachusetts. most of the girls in my 9th grade english class started to cry, and the guys just sat in stunned silence. kennedy, to me, no matter how insignificant the accomplishments of his administration, was the first ‘hope and change’ president.
leeleeFL
@TAPX486:Dave Powers memoir lead me to believe Kennedy would not have escalated Vietnam. It made me angry that they decided to wait till afterthe 1964 election to pull back. I don’t know if the civil rights legislation or Medicare would have passed as early as they did, but Johnson used Kennedy’s death to strong-arm Congress to pass them. They were Kennedy’s bills. These bills were his legacy. What if scenarios are just that……..what might have been?
Omnes Omnibus
@TAPX486: Kennedy was moving forward on civil right legislation. Whether it would have passed if he hadn’t killed is another question.
Mike
I know it seems wierd, but knowing that the crazy has always been with us is somehow comforting… that we’re not alone in dealing with this crap right now.
jon
Reagan getting shot did give us one of the greatest punk band names in history. It’s more a statement about celebrity culture than politics, but that’s another discussion. (It would be beyond awesome if someone could trick Sarah Palin or a Palin daughter into wearing one of the band’s shirts.)
Tom Q
@TAPX486: Robert Caro’s most recent LBJ book made the (I thought pretty strong) argument that only Lyndon Johnson, because of his unique experience in moving legislation through the Senate, taking office in precisely that way (allowing for “do it in the name of our martyred president” emotional blackmail), could have got the Civil Rights Bill passed.
On the other hand, he cites instances during the Cuban missile crisis where LBJ displayed hawkishness well beyond any of the Kennedy crowd. So I don’t think it’s a gimme that Kennedy would have screwed up Vietnam the same way.
Another old-timer here: 11 years old sitting doing a school art project on Friday afternoon when the nun brought word in. We were sent home immediately. The whole weekend was surreal. Even my bigoted old grandfather, while allowing he didn’t like Kennedy politically, was shocked.
e.a.f.
Had almost forgotten about those looney bins, the john birchers. they were funny then and still are, except they are now teabaggers.
Not much changes in life, least of all the “crazies”. During these 50 years many countries have embraced government funded/controlled medical care, Japan, Canada, Europe, etc. You’d think the Americans would get it. No death panels, the economies are no worse off than the Americans.
It is hard to say why Americans can’t get past some things. Yes, they are a unique country, but gee, these is unique and then there is crazy
LBJ got the Civil Rights leg. through, along with some other leg. because he, having been around so long had the dirt on most of the other politicians. Lots of people didn’t like him, but he passed more social leg. than other presidents and did more to make people’s lives better than other presidents.
fuckwit
I find all this talk of assassinations REALLY FUCKING UNSETTLING.
Like, please don’t even think about it. Don’t invoke that ghost.
People, keep in mind that John Boehner is third in line for the Presidency right now.
This is an extremely tense, extremely dangerous time right now. We need to keep everyone alive and get through this shit, ASAP.
Then we need to bring back Speaker Pelosi in November 2014, if we can hold the country together until then.
Nora Carrington
Anne, our gracious hostess, is a few weeks older than I am. People only a very little bit younger have little or no memory of that time. I’ve always felt like the US population is divided into “do you remember?” and everyone else.
My memories are different from most American children, however, as I was living with my family in Frankfurt, Germany at the time. My father, an NCO with Counterintelligence, had been deployed when the Berlin Wall came down. We heard about it on the radio while we were eating dinner (time difference). The images in my brain aren’t from the weekend of TV coverage, all in black and white, but in color from Life and Look in the weeks, months and years after. We didn’t have a TV; the kids all gathered at a neighbor’s most nights to watch the 15 minutes of cartoon commercials (Uno Otto was the spokesperson for everything that was advertised). The news and the events — the swearing in, the funeral, etc. — were covered in the German media, of course, but I got nothing first hand except through my parents and the pictures that came later.
bjacques
I seem to recall that the real reason those elementary school kids in Dallas cheered JFK’s assassination was that the announcement also said kids were to be sent home for the day. I was not yet 6 months old, so not in a position to care one way or the other, but maybe some of you who were there then could say whether that was true.
Back in the present, the shutdown/debt ceiling stunt really does look like a bridge too far for the Tea Party. The plan was to get Obama to cave in late September and then wring new concessions this month. How it turned out instead is like the Allies failing to take Nijmegen (never mind Arnhem) and looking at having to give Eindhoven back to the Germans. Operation Free Market Garden!
Fred
@TAPX486: There is nothing new about the idea that a black man is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t.
Fred
@TAPX486: My dad once opined, “The problem with Republicans is that they don’t know what’s good for them.” It was true back then and even more true today.
Back when I ran a business my philosophy was: Work hard, pay my taxes and enjoy the benefits of living in a prosperous society. Right wingers expect a free ride and are killing that prosperous society. A fish didn’t know it was in the water until it’s flopping on the dock.
debbie
It’s also no different from the late 30s and early 40s. I just read “Those Angry Days” which is about the lead-up to WWII. Just as much anger and yelling as now, only they set up committees instead of 501c-4s.