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JFK (who did some rather remarkable things as president, such as refusing to support the CIA invasion of Cuba, defusing a potential nuclear holocaust with Soviet Russia, and, finally, toward the end of his life, signing executive orders to start withdrawing U.S. military "advisers" from Vietnam). Bobby had been part of Joe McCarthy's red-baiting committee in his early career. But, after his brother was assassinated, Bobby changed--dramatically and genuinely. He turned against the Vietnam War (which Johnson had escalated into a full scale war by then). He became an advocate of the poor--not just here but also in South America. And he had been strongly committed to civil rights as JFK's Attorney General. He was a "Cold Warrior" on the way to becoming a true populist and a true peacemaker. And perhaps that is the key to Bobby--his ability to CHANGE, to grow, to learn, to be innovative, to be MOVED by those he met, from all classes, his intelligence, his open-heartedness, his desire for new information, and his ability to absorb it and to formulate new thoughts and goals.
His death was a blow like no other--because, only three months before, Martin Luther King had been assassinated, and it was only five years from the seering wound of his brother's assassination. This triple blow effectively beheaded the progressive movement in the U.S. It never recovered. About a million people had been slaughtered in the Vietnam War to that point. Another million more would be slaughtered by that lying bastard Nixon (who campaigned in 1968 promising "peace with honor" and claiming to have a "secret plan" to end the war, and, once elected, ESCALATED the war into Cambodia and Laos--for five more years of utter horror in Southeast Asia).
It is a judgment of character--with regard to RFK--that tells me, and all those who were politically awake on the progressive side at that time, that he would have ended the war. He was sincere. But even more than this, the horrid slaughters that were to come in South America would likely not have occurred either. He had genuinely connected with aspirations of the poor, there and here. Just like his brother, he had an aura that transcended politics. He spoke HONESTLY--something very rare in politics, and almost non-existent since the Reagan Era.
Had his brother lived, and had he lived, we would be a far, far, different country in every way. What was needed was a re-thinking of the "military-industrial complex"--as Dwight Eisenhower, rather amazingly saw, at the end of his presidency. The war industries that had sucked at the government tit in the post-WW II era needed to be demobilized. Swords into plowshares. That never occurred. And soon they were MANUFACTURING war--in Vietnam--to feed the beast. It needed a VISIONARY president--with the kind of high-minded, visionary capacity that both JFK and RFK possessed--combined with their practical political skills and great charisma, to start turning the U.S. economy toward peaceful ends. (JFK's space program was one such early effort.) Another need was curtailment of the CIA--which both JFK and RFK considered an enemy. That's who probably did them both in. If RFK had won the 1968 election--which he was well on his way to doing when he was cut down--and if he had been able to stay alive as president, I am certain that he would have fought an internal war with the CIA, and would have, at the very least, gained enough control over them to stop some of their nefarious activities (assassinating foreign leaders--often democratic leaders--installing horrible rightwing juntas, etc.). (And who knows? --maybe he would have been able to ferret out those who killed his brother.) In any case, U.S. policy would have been aimed at social justice and at WORLD PEACE.
What are now called Johnson policies--the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the so-called "War on Poverty" (Johnson's phrase)--were actually, one and all, Kennedy policies. Johnson pursued them (which is why he is not universally hated), but the horror and cost of the Vietnam War quite overwhelmed efforts at social justice. Look at the situation of most black citizens today, and you can see that already, in the Johnson era, the rich were plotting chronic poverty and disenfranchisement. If RFK had lived and become president, there would have been a much stronger progressive tide to make social justice goals REAL and PERMANENT, and the awful economic drain and demoralization of the Vietnam War would have been halted, and our resources put to positive use.
I don't want to make a "saint" out of RFK. I didn't even vote for him in the California primary in 1968. (I voted for Eugene McCarthy who STARTED the antiwar movement within the Democratic Party leadership--merely by doing well against LBJ in the New Hampshire primary. LBJ then quit the race for his reelection. I knew Bobby was going to win the Calif primary and the election. I voted to reinforce the antiwar message.) He wasn't a "saint"--but he did have SOMETHING. He roused people up. He attracted huge support. Young people rallied to his cause. It was a very inspiring campaign. He was a STRONG LEADER (which Eugene McCarthy was not).
I felt...numb...the night he was killed. I had worked on his brother's campaign for president, when I was 16. Bang-bang, shoot-shoot. I had been a civil rights worker in MLK's voting rights campaign in Alabama in 1965. Bang-bang, shoot-shoot. I had also suffered some shattering personal tragedies during those same years, one by gunshot. It was too much for me. And I'm probably pretty typical of my generation, in the cloud of grief that hung over us during the Nixon presidency, and that lingers to this day. We know in our hearts that things would have been different. Not just policies. But EVERYTHING. The mood and hopefulness of the country changed radically for the worse, as one popular leader after another was cut down. If Bobby had lived--even if he had lived and somehow lost that presidential race--not likely, but if..., the TENOR of the country would be different and much more progressive and hopeful. Even if he had lost, Bobby would have run again, and eventually won. He was the LEADER of the great progressive American majority, which is still with us, but so demoralized, now, and so disenfranchised. And that was the beginning of our demoralization and disenfranchisement--that third assassination. The first two broke our hearts. The third broke our movement.
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