What if JFK had not been killed on this day 40 years ago?

[_Jumper_]

How would the course of history been different? What would have happened on the civil rights front? How would the Cold War have been waged differently? Would we be facing the threat of terrorism today? Would Reagan still have ushered in an era of Republican dominance? Would the South still have remained Democratic?

"They dared to dream."

[Piperay]

1. All I KNOW

is that it would be a much better World if Kennedy could have served the two full terms that he deserved to have, so sad. :cry:

[Bozita]

2. commentary from history prof at Princeton

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/21/opinion/21WILE.html

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

Another Master of the Senate
By SEAN WILENTZ

PRINCETON, N.J.

Some years after John F. Kennedy's assassination — 40 years ago tomorrow — a counter-Camelot myth took hold among historians and journalists. Supposedly, Kennedy was a reckless cold warrior, knee-deep in conspiracies against Fidel Castro. On domestic policy, he was timid and ineffective.

According to the myth, the only good that came from Kennedy's presidency, except for his handling of the Cuban missile crisis, was achieved by Lyndon B. Johnson. Amid a wave of sympathy after Kennedy's death, Johnson used his political savvy to pass the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965. Johnson, the master politician, really mattered. The feckless Kennedy did not — except as a romanticized martyr.

Those claims are false, as abundant historical evidence shows. Yet the counter-Camelot myth lives. Its distortions are particularly severe regarding race and civil rights.

By November 1963, Kennedy, displaying genuine political courage, had firmly committed his administration to the civil rights cause. This was a great shift from 1961 and the early months of 1962, when he regarded civil rights protesters with a mixture of skepticism and annoyance. A great deal had happened since then to change Kennedy's mind: the bloody battle over the desegregation of the University of Mississippi; violent official repression by white racists like Bull Connor, the public safety commissioner of Birmingham, Ala.; and the peaceful civil rights march on Washington in August 1963, followed days later by the deadly Ku Klux Klan bombing of a black church in Birmingham.

more...

[dbt]

3. INTERESTING questions, _Jumper_

Especially in light of the wealth of information presented this week alone, for example, on the History Channel. (Sadly, one must wonder how much disinformation was also presented!)

First, I think JFK's assassination was inevitable. There was simply too much money to be made by selling the Army the tools of the trade, as Country Joe put it. Billions would have been "lost" if JFK had pulled us out of Viet Nam.

In a similar vein, he was looking pretty good by the way he made Khrushchev (sp?) back down over the Cuban missiles. The Military Industrial Complex needed somebody a little less "strong" in the White House, so that more nuclear weapons could be built at a large profit. By escalating the US presence in Viet Nam, LBJ assured that China and the USSR would stay pissed off at the US, hence the need for more missiles.

There was (and there remains) big money and/or political reward in keeping black people down. However reluctant JFK might have been to go ahead with Civil Rights legislation, Attorney General Robert Kennedy seemed to have no such qualms. In his second stint as AG, minorities would probably have made more gains than they did under Johnson.

This last part would probably have pushed the South into Republican hands a few years earlier, though. JFK was already viewed with a great deal of contempt Down Here simply for being Catholic. Any action on his part to champion Civil Rights would have made him a "n***** lover," to use a phrase that is still alarmingly common here.

Too many people stood to gain too much by offing John Kennedy. He was toast from the moment he began trying to move this country forward.

And, speaking of History Channel programming this week, don't you find it horribly fascinating that Lee Harvey Oswald was allegedly in Mexico City to deliver a cancer-causing virus to a "Mr. B. of the CIA?" Now who the fuck might that have been?

:freak:
dbt

[SheilaT]

4. I think the first thing to remember

is that JFK was by no means universally beloved at the time of his death. A sizeable portion of the population really hated him. The entire Camelot myth is just that, a myth. It comes from something Jackie said to some reporter (I ought to be able to remember which one, but I can't) in an interview shortly after the assassination, in which she made up some nonsense about JFK's listening to the record of the play Camelot late at night. All reliable reports are that people who really knew him laughed out loud at that statement.

But the myth took hold.

Remember, it was LBJ who got the Civil Rights Act passed. I doubt Kennedy could have done that. And I don't think it's possible to figure out if he would have pulled out of Vietnam or escalated things thre, as did Johnson. Certainly one of the many conspiracy theories out there are that he was killed by the CIA or the Joint Chiefs of Staff or whoever it was who was very upset that he supposedly wanted to remover our troops from Vietnam.

I'm sure his womanizing would probably have remained a secret. But if not, if he'd been elected to a second term, and somehow it all came out, he would not have become the legend of St. John that he became.

In the end, I can't even begin to guess if things would be better, worse, or even substantially different some 40 years on.

[bloom]

5. There is no way to know

It seems possible that the 60's and 70's might have gone on more like the 50's.

Without Vietnam (assuming Kennedy got the US out) and all the anger that was generated in that time - would there have been NOW?, would Rock and Roll have been the same (maybe jazz would predominate more)?, drugs may not have permeated the society to the extent that they did....

Everything might have been more nicey nicey.

And in politics, Nixon may not have won. So Carter would not have won.

It's endless, really.