Steven the Somnolent (15 posts)
52 Years Ago Today, Our Decline Began
We stopped trusting our government. The military-industrial complex seized its chance to sell Johnson on Vietnam, in the process selling the country to war profiteers. Nixon's racist Southern Strategy. The consolidation of cynicism. The self-indulgence of the 70s and 80s. Reagan. The certification of the American Empire with Bush I's oil war. Bill Clinton, "the best Republican president we've ever had." The incestuous merging of the news and entertainment media. FOX. A stolen election. Unnecessary wars. The bankrupting of the country. The supremacy of the super-wealthy. The rejuvenation and emboldening of the racism that had never really gone away. The glorification of stupidity and denial of science. And still the endless calls of the privileged for more war, more blood, more restrictions on the people.
Near the end of Testament, a movie about the aftermath of nuclear war, Jane Alexander's character screams, "Who did this??? ******* you!"
To Oswald or the CIA or the Cubans or the Mossad or the Mafia or the KGB or aliens from Alpha ****ing Centauri, I echo her condemnation: God damn you, indeed!
And now, if you'll excuse me, this tired old man is going back to bed.
Yeah yeah, JFK killed, blah blah...The usual horseshit ensues, and then, FINALLY, we learn how the event affected DFW.
Most people would say, "You know, that's interesting. Dallas/Fort Worth was changed quite a lot by this horrible event. It continues to be a blot on the Metroplex psyche. I'd like to learn more about that."
But then you realize that we aren't talking about something relevant, like the "Dallas/Fort Worth" DFW. Instead we are asked to endure the FAR more important DFW of Marc Emory, self-important peddler of tchotchkes to the rich:
DFW (19,781 posts)
6. I was only 11 on that day.
I couldn't quite grasp the enormity of what it all meant. I took a bus from my school downtown to my dad's office at the National Press Building at 14th and F. I saw headlines screaming "JFK SLAIN!" I was used to tabloid journalism, but found that one really over the top, even for them. When I got up to my dad's office, he had two phones in his hand and was really agitated. At that point, I started to get a bad feeling that the headlines I saw from the street vendor maybe weren't tabloid headlines after all. Between breaths, my dad confirmed it.
Still, far more shocking for me was when I got up to go to school on June 7, 1968 and my dad was nearly in tears, saying "Bobby has been shot." He knew RFK well, and was looking forward to his presidency (even though he knew Humphrey well, too). Bobby was the original "hope and chance" inspiration. I still have an RFK portrait with RFK's inscription made out to my dad, "with high regard." The feeling was mutual.
The I/me/my count approaches Pitt levels.
Marc: **** off. No one gives a shit.
