Romance, then Dallas...
The impending fiftieth anniversary of 'Jack' Kennedy's shooting has triggered the usual array of articles, second hand accounts and fading personal reflections in an attempt to shed some further light onto and into a very murky period of American History. For many the early 1960's represented an opportunity to move from the set piece conservatism that had been heavily laced in the cold war world of fixed assumptions and predetermined realism to a space that offered a chance for the younger generation not only to shine but have a genuine voice in the way US society was going. Whether the subject be sex, civil rights, war or want this youthful America now had a champion - Kennedy the boy wonder - embodied this idealistic but imaginative and innovative alternative.
So, what was cut short, what was turned off in Dallas on that November day was not just a man's life but an association of ideas that had inculcated themselves via the image, political rhetoric and timing of a political figure that had not been formed in the Victorian age but informed in the American Age. What makes this tragedy even more deplorable is that we still have little real idea as to who shot these ideas to pieces. Moreover, the political elite decided in their worldly wisdom that they would not subject their citizens to the truth or truths but to obfuscation and then institutional ennui. The official conclusion -the Warren Commission - that it was one man acting alone seems so unlikely that even the United States Select Committee concluded in 1978 that Kennedy was probably a victim of a conspiracy. Yet the truth or the most likely truth remains locked up inside the 1100 hundred odd CIA documents that are due to be released in 2017. But, do not hold your breath, these files are closed on national security grounds. In other words, the 'security services' will ultimately decide whether it is safe or not for us to know who really de-constructed Camelot. What this distrust and distaste of the people by the 'inner government' has helped produce over many years is that youth filled dreams have been replaced by a cynical and often corrosive view of government and power. In other words, this unwillingness to share this moment of despair with the rest of the nation instantly erased the very space where you could close one eye and briefly see a fairer and more equitable society.
Some will ask, does it really matter who killed JFK after all these years? Well the obvious first response is yes otherwise they would have let us see all the evidence and all the files. How can a man who died fifty years ago still carry a true threat to national security? There are largely two ways to keep the majority of people, the majority of time away from the truth, you either tell them nothing or tell them so much they cannot see the wood from the trees. In today's technological world it is the later, in the 1960's it was the former Moreover, if you also wish to shield the average citizen from the truths that lay behind the use and abuse of power what you can do in conjunction with telling too much or too little is make sure that period of time that elapses while your disclosing or not the 'facts' is sufficient for people to lose the will to care. Does anyone really care that Kennedy was removed because he spoke, he represented in his own very flawed human form an alternative to the cold, grey vista of realism, rationality and the national security state. Kennedy, Camelot emitted a fleeting romantic glimpse of how the world could be if only we could slay the dragons and not allow the dragons to slay us. Chillingly, as one Russian dissident recently observed having spent much of his younger life in a Siberian Gulag, 'In my country at least I know who my enemies are... you have no idea'. We still don't.
So, what was cut short, what was turned off in Dallas on that November day was not just a man's life but an association of ideas that had inculcated themselves via the image, political rhetoric and timing of a political figure that had not been formed in the Victorian age but informed in the American Age. What makes this tragedy even more deplorable is that we still have little real idea as to who shot these ideas to pieces. Moreover, the political elite decided in their worldly wisdom that they would not subject their citizens to the truth or truths but to obfuscation and then institutional ennui. The official conclusion -the Warren Commission - that it was one man acting alone seems so unlikely that even the United States Select Committee concluded in 1978 that Kennedy was probably a victim of a conspiracy. Yet the truth or the most likely truth remains locked up inside the 1100 hundred odd CIA documents that are due to be released in 2017. But, do not hold your breath, these files are closed on national security grounds. In other words, the 'security services' will ultimately decide whether it is safe or not for us to know who really de-constructed Camelot. What this distrust and distaste of the people by the 'inner government' has helped produce over many years is that youth filled dreams have been replaced by a cynical and often corrosive view of government and power. In other words, this unwillingness to share this moment of despair with the rest of the nation instantly erased the very space where you could close one eye and briefly see a fairer and more equitable society.
Some will ask, does it really matter who killed JFK after all these years? Well the obvious first response is yes otherwise they would have let us see all the evidence and all the files. How can a man who died fifty years ago still carry a true threat to national security? There are largely two ways to keep the majority of people, the majority of time away from the truth, you either tell them nothing or tell them so much they cannot see the wood from the trees. In today's technological world it is the later, in the 1960's it was the former Moreover, if you also wish to shield the average citizen from the truths that lay behind the use and abuse of power what you can do in conjunction with telling too much or too little is make sure that period of time that elapses while your disclosing or not the 'facts' is sufficient for people to lose the will to care. Does anyone really care that Kennedy was removed because he spoke, he represented in his own very flawed human form an alternative to the cold, grey vista of realism, rationality and the national security state. Kennedy, Camelot emitted a fleeting romantic glimpse of how the world could be if only we could slay the dragons and not allow the dragons to slay us. Chillingly, as one Russian dissident recently observed having spent much of his younger life in a Siberian Gulag, 'In my country at least I know who my enemies are... you have no idea'. We still don't.
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