Soon, few will be left who remember where they were, what they felt on Nov. 22, 1963, the day President John F. Kennedy was murdered.
Sixty-one years and counting and the shocking events of that day continue to be fodder for conspiracy theories. The distrust and cynicism about our institutions that enveloped this country have never truly abated.
The events on and after Nov. 22 when JFK was assassinated in a hail of bullets from the rifle of Lee Oswald, an ex-Marine and Castro Cuba sympathizer, still evoke strong passions.
As Bob Dylan put it in “Murder Most Foul,” a recent incantation about the “dark day in Dallas”:
The day that they killed him, someone said to me, “Son, The age of the Antichrist has just only begun”
… It is what it is, and it’s murder most foul
Take that as you will but clearly a nation lost what was left of its innocence that day. The JFK era, for all the president’s failings, was and is remembered as a shining moment when all things seemed possible as a young president challenged a new generation to take up the mantle of freedom and service.
After he was cut down, the president’s brother, Robert F. (Bobby) Kennedy, became the next torch bearer for generational change. But Bobby Kennedy, seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, also was murdered, shot to death in June 1968 at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. His assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, is a Palestinian-Jordanian, and remains in prison. Decades later he said he killed Kennedy because of RFK’s support for Israel.
The family political mantle was passed along to the youngest Kennedy brother, Edward (Ted), who became embroiled in his own scandal regarding the mysterious death in 1969 of Mary Jo Kopechne, a former RFK campaign worker, who drowned when a car driven by the Massachusetts senator left a narrow road on Chappaquiddick Island and overturned into Poucha Pond after the pair had left a party. Kennedy neglected to inform authorities of the accident until the next day.
Ted Kennedy went on to serve in the U.S. Senate until his death in 2009.
Against that grim history of the Kennedy family, it has been jarring that the martyred president’s nephew, RFK’s son, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has become a staunch ally of the nation’s 47th president, joining the strange cast of characters Donald Trump is assembling for his next administration. RFK Jr. is Trump’s choice to be the next Health and Human Services secretary.
(There were audible sighs of relief from many Americans Thursday over the withdrawal of Matt Gaetz as nominee for attorney general. The next departure from the cast could, should, be Pete Hegseth, Trump’s misguided choice for secretary of defense, whose chances are quickly circling around the drain with the latest lurid revelations from a Monterey police report concerning an allegation of sexual assault in that city.)
In one sense, considering the serial philandering of the elder Kennedy brothers, the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree. RFK Jr.’s womanizing and infidelities are well documented.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s confirmation is not a sure thing, with some Republicans raising strong objections. Nikki Haley, Trump’s former Republican primary rival, said this week about RFK Jr., who for many years was known as a left-leaning environmental lawyer, that Kennedy is “not a health guy,” “not educated” or “trained” in health, and a “liberal Democrat” to boot.
Perhaps she also was referring to the viral photos of RFK Jr. apparently eating a McDonald’s hamburger while riding on Trump’s jet as the president-elect brought on his favorite fast foods. The photos added to the bizarre commingling of former Democrat Kennedy and his views on healthy foods (not to mention vaccines) with MAGA world.
Trump, for his part, has repeated pledges he made, and did not follow through on, to unseal remaining JFK assassination files.
Conspiracy theorists await – including RFK Jr. who has long claimed the CIA was involved in his uncle’s murder and a cover-up, claiming the killing stemmed from his uncle’s refusal to send U.S. forces to Vietnam.
