Kennedy's Death

David Seaton's News Links

Writing up the 50th anniversary of Kennedy's assassination has become a momentary cottage industry and I have little that I wish to add and will spare my readers all my "where I was when I heard the news" drivel. However, I would only remark what I personally find the most important result of that magnicide: namely the sensation that Kennedy's death marks the moment when "everything began to go wrong".

I would even date the origins of the rancor and hostility surrounding the recent "shutdown", if not the issues themselves, to the breakdown of trust and national unity that resulted from the widespread and still prevalent suspicion of a coverup that followed the enormous catharsis of emotion and grief of the flight back from Dallas and the funeral: the blood spattered widow, the pathetically saluting baby son.  

All the unity of the shared experiences of the Great Depression, World War Two and the presidential funeral itself went up in smoke with the Warren Report... the fallout is too abundant and painful to enumerate here. DS