Poll: Did the murder of RFK and MLK bring forth the America we know today?

[Selatius]

Would we be living in a different country altogether if Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King had lived long enough to accomplish their goals in life? Would there be poor urban neighborhoods to the extent there is now in such an alternate America? Would there still be campaigns of voter suppression in minority communities to try to influence voting results? Would America be locked in another senseless, stupid war for corporate profit and greed? Would America forget the poorest workers of society by letting them fall victim to inflation? Would America in such an alternate world allow 45,000,000 of its citizens to live without health care or 37,000,000 of them to live below the poverty line? Would America in such a different world allow its jobs to be sent away or allow education to decay to the extent it has? Would America spend itself into bankruptcy and ruin in such an alternate world?

"There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?"

-- Robert Francis Kennedy

How many of you, after looking at that quotation, realized that we would never live in the America post-Viet Nam that RFK and MLK had fought for? How many of you realized that, after witnessing their murders, we would not live in the world that could have been? That we would end up living in the world we know of today?

[autorank]

1. I'm in the lead...RFK & MLK were solid, 100%... n/t

[Wilms]

2. Hey, hey. No releasing of results until the polls are closed.

You know the rules. :spank:

:D

[autorank]

9. Hey Wilms...lets have a "Poster Controversy..."

We can accuse each other of bad posting and then claim that we're imitating each other to get
K&R's from other posters...big threads, visiting whatever, etc. Fun huh...maybe I'll take offense
at the spanking I'm getting...yeah, I'm mad :argh: and ready to controverse(sic) :grr:

So, watch for my poll..Does Wilms work for the Illuminati faction of the GOP? YES or YES

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

3. In a way it did. I think most visionaries got the message

Be too visionary and you'll be dead

[tirechewer]

4. I picked leaning toward yes....

Their assassinations played a large part in the slide toward where we are today, but there were other things that eroded what we could have been as well. I don't know what would have happened if JFK had not been murdered too, but he was certainly leaning in a different direction then Johnson was. Medgar Evers was another charismatic and idealistic leader whose death cost us all dearly, even if we didn't realize it at the time.

The war in Viet Nam was a big corrosive factor in idealism and the trust Americans used to have in the government. I think the shooting of the students at Kent State had a huge effect on the people who remember it. Reagan was the beginning of the age of selfishness and the nadir of idealism. Bush sprang fully formed from Reagan's head like some kind of Satanic nightmare trying to put across the same ideas and finishing what Reagan started so subtly and affably that a lot of people never knew what hit them.

[et in Arcadia ego]

5. The only hope

If this thing is ever going to be turned around the nearly fatal naivette of the average American and the fierce mantra of 'They'd never do something like that' must be shed. The biggest mistake this country has ever made is in it's own people consistently projecting their own decent and worthy moral code onto the 1% who have absolutely NOTHING in common with us aside from the fact that they require oxygen to breathe. Power has coallesced into far too few hands and due to it's corrosive touch these people are beyond redemption, shame, or ability to draw short of sacrificing any and all of us along with the rest of the world.

You have GOT to stop doing that, America..We're not talking about traitors to our country, we're talking about traitors to HUMANITY as well as the rest of the life on this planet trapped with us.

Say it after me:

TRAITORS TO LIFE...

[tirechewer]

7. Great post.....

Excellent post. I saw it right after I put up mine. It is very thought provoking and I agree with you. Oh, and welcome to DU. ;) I should have said that first.

[Le Taz Hot]

15. Outstanding post

and welcome to DU! :hi:

[jschurchin]

6. The downfall started when............

they whacked JFK. He wanted to take away the oil depletion allowance, now we can't have that. It would have cost the Hunt, Murchison's and Getty's of the world Billions. Guess what? It still hasn't happened.

November 22nd 1963 was the day the Presidency became irrelevant.

[leveymg]

14. I'd go back earlier to early 1900s "original sin" of corporatist takeover

Will America be forgiven after Bush? Ask the Germans about that.
Posted by leveymg in General Discussion

Fri Jun 23rd 2006, 05:27 PM

Response to question: What I want to know is by January 2009 will this administration have ruined so much about this country and our relationship throughout the world that the damage can never be rectified??

I can forgive Germany, at least the German people. It's the American Fifth Columnists the Nazi sympathizers and crypto-fascist dynasties -- the Bushes, Walkers, Fords, DuPonts, Mellons, Morgans, and Harrimans-- who still piss me off. They got away with their crimes of an attempted coup against FDR, facilitating the rise of the European extreme Right in the 1930s, profiting from World War, and maintaining their power by poisoning the politics of the post-War world.

These wealthy Rightwingers financed the GOP and the instruments of McCarthyism and then the "War on Terror". They merrily destroyed the Constitution and subverted progressive institutions in order to sustain their own excessive priviledge and power.

They are modern history's greatest villains. Hopefully, the American people will finally see them for what they are -- traitors and war criminals -- and bring them to justice.

[Erika]

8. America was at one time a dream of promise and hope

With opportunities for all and a committment to raise all our citizens up, including immigrants.

That dream has turned into a nightmare with the rich ruling, the middle class disappearing, and a third world status for all others.

W's America.

[adwon]

10. No

The later MLK is forgotten. It's more convenient to remember the March on Washington and Rosa Parks than it is to remember his work on economic issues. It's quite amazing to realize just how little he is quoted after "I have a dream."

RFK would have been a disastrous president. The centerpiece of his 68 campaign, in foreign policy, was a call for a 'coalition government' in South Vietnam. This was either cynical or naive. Coalition governments in the developing world were nothing but a sham; a temporary truce while the players reorganized their forces and jockeyed for position. A coalition government would have proved to be equally devastating to American morale and prestige as what actually occurred. Further, this Kennedy in particular would have been dogged on Vietnam by catcalls of his and his brother's acquiescence in the murder of Diem. He would have found himself in the same position as Johnson: the left revolting over Vietnam (while being defended by the right) and the right attacking his domestic policies (while the left mutely supported them). Add in the fact that he worked for McCarthy and it gets even more interesting. Johnson, the most liberal president ever, was continually called a fascist by the New Left. Imagine what RFK, lacking Johnson's credentials, would have been called for helping the witchhunt in the early 50s.

What would have truly doomed RFK was his failure to recognize a historical trend. His call for expansion of the Great Society would have fallen on deaf ears in Congress. The Congresses elected in 66 and 68, while overwhelmingly Democratic, were also quite conservative. It was from these Congresses that today's current ridiculously draconian penal system sprung. With riots across the country, fervor for civil rights had been sapped. There was great concern that LBJ was spending too much on the Great Society and that it was both inflationary and hurting the war effort. Witness the fact that a Democratic Congress went along with Nixon's destruction of LBJ's dream. Hell, Johnson, the great Congressional manipulator, was continually overwhelmed when dealing with Congress his last two years. What hope would RFK have in the same situation?

Closing: I've see a lot of posting on RFK lately. In my opinion, too many are focused on his words and not his actions, as well as the historical scene at the time. I find it amazing that people can believe a man identified with the liberal mainstream, one of the original cold war liberals, could have found common ground with the increasingly radicalized left of that period. Humphrey, one of the great liberal lions of the 20th century, was vilified as a fascist. I find it hard to believe that RFK wouldn't have been called the same.

In my opinion, too many look for heroes to magically fix this mess. This is the work of many over a generation, not some super-FDR.

[SoCalDem]

12. People cut down in their prime have a msyticism about them

They did not live long enough to screw up, and live in memory as young, vital, and full of promise..

All the killed heroes were just men..with flaws as well as their promise..
RFK would have been forever compared to his martyred brother, and Vietnam was out of control by then. I doubt he could have/would have done much different..

The message of the assassination era was that "ideas can get you killed", and the loss of hope and promise started there..

Young people just starting to get interested in change for the better, had their hearts ripped out, and lots became cynical . It's no wonder that we have progressed to the point we find ourselves now..

Millions of people saw their hopes dashed, and saw themselves as inconsequential and afraid to dream big.. The higher you go the harder/futher you fall..

[rucky]

11. K & R & YES n/t

[Totally Committed]

13. There's no way America would be the America we see today

if even ONE of them had survived. The world, because of that, would be a different place, as well. I believe each of them was killed precisely BECAUSE of the change they would have brought.

TC

[Skarbrowe]

16. My mind wondered the other day to Eisenhower's last speech, JFK killed

then RFK and MLK. I just got this strange feeling that Eisenhower may have been the first to actually see what was happening and/or coming and that the speech he gave as he left office about the threat of the Military Industrial Complex all seemed to follow a certain path. I'm beginning to believe there was much more to that speech that we ever realized. JFK might have shown signs of not following this corporate, military control of the world began by the power of the United States after the devastation of most of Europe and the East after World War 2.

It's all just a feeling I have and I admit I don't have the historical knowledge to back up anything. But, I do think that if RFK had become President and MLK had been able to continue with his work, that the direction of the U.S. would have been different in many ways and that it would have at the very least, taken the military industrial complex and rampant corporatism several more years if not decades to get where they obviously are right now. That's why those three men had to be killed.

How many high ranking right wing leaders in this country have been killed? Reagan would have just put Bush1 in faster. The attempt on Ford was ridiculous. Ah, just makes you think strange things.

[jimshoes]

17. The Kennedy's believed in

empowering the common folks to do things they might not have otherwise. JFK introduced a President's Phisical Fitness program for all school age children back in the early 60's. His forward looking ideas put the USA on the moon. He brought hope and enthusiasm to America. He asked us what "WE" can do for our country. The powers that be today look at us common folk as so much cannon fodder and chumps to be fleeced.

[alcibiades_mystery]

18. Unfortunately, history's much more comlicated than all that

But fetishizing individuals helps people conceptualize these complex forces, so I won't stand in the way.