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11/22/63

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by Chef, Nov 22, 2006.

  1. LiveStrong

    LiveStrong Active Member

    As someone who wasn't born until 17 years later, I just want to thank you guys for sharing. It's been interesting reading. Tomorrow (today :-\ )I'll be asking my parents what they remember from that day.
     
  2. Yeah, and the part about "abortion on demand," like it's what we have now, and like either Kennedy could have done anything about Roe v. Wade. There's no way Bobby succeeds Jack in '64 either. Half the country thought he was a ruthless, cutthroat charmless bastard, beause that's what he was. He became "Bobby" because of the trauma of his brother's death. No shooting, no personal transformation. And JFK's record in Vietnam doesn't completely support the view that he would have walkd away in '65 or before the '66 midterms.
     
  3. oldhack

    oldhack Member

    You meant '68, but I think you're right. Public didn't like the idea of a dynasty, Jack naming Bobby his AG, and they were even more nervous about Teddy. I think that was a bigger factor than Bobby's obvious ruthlessness. The JFK assassination began his transformation, but he locked on to rising anti-Vietnam sentiment late in the day, after Gene McCarthy did the heavy lifting and demonstrated that there was a lot of opposition to the war and to LBJ. Still, Bobby's emotions, and his attachment to King and more particularly Chavez, were genuine. As to JFK and Vietnam, there were some Kennedy people who believed JFK would have pulled the plug after the '64 election, but I have never seen that their evidence is much more than a wink and a nod. Most likely he would not have gotten so deep in the Big Muddy. We would have been there a longer time, maybe with "advisers," but not with 540,000 troops or whatever it was that drew the NVA into the south.
     
  4. I was unclear. I meant 1968. You are correct.
    Without the trauma of 11/22/63, however, I don't believe RFK does any of the things that drew him into the race in '68. I don't even think he runs for the Senate.
     
  5. oldhack

    oldhack Member

    Probably true. Certainly there would have been a different set of circumstances. Question: What would RFK's role have been in Jack's second term?
     
  6. AG for a couple of years, and then doing anything to keep Lyndon from winning in 68.
     
  7. oldhack

    oldhack Member

    Would Lyndon have been kept on the ticket in '64?
     
  8. FileNotFound

    FileNotFound Well-Known Member

    One of the joys of being a child of teenage parents is watching co-workers' faces when I tell them they're older than my parents. My parents are both younger than JR and Spnited ... and I'm 38.
     
  9. No question about that. In fact, it was to solidify his place there that JFK went to Dallas at all, to heal a breach in the Texas Democratic party.
     
  10. Smasher_Sloan

    Smasher_Sloan Active Member

    Has to be 9/11, and I was around for both. As overwhelmingly tragic as the weekend of 11/22/63 was (there was nothing else on radio and TV, no possible escape), the fact is less than 90 days later we were all excited about watching the Beatles on Ed Sullivan.

    9/11 changed so many things about the way we live. With JFK, you understood that someone who sought power could be targeted and eliminated. With 9/11, you realized that people who simply went to work or boarded an airplane could be killed in the name of insanity. Five years later, who isn't still touched by or reminded of what happened on 9/11?
     
  11. buckweaver

    buckweaver Active Member

    Forty-three years later, who still doesn't remember where they were when they heard about JFK?

    And for the previous generation, 65 years later, who can ever forget Pearl Harbor?

    9/11, for my generation: this is our JFK, this is our Pearl Harbor.
     
  12. JR

    JR Well-Known Member

    I think, the question is more accurately, which event had the most traumatic effect on its generation? You have to look at the context.

    It's like asking a Canadian, what was more traumatic, Vimy Ridge of the Quebec Crisis?

    Each affected the national psyche in a different way but at the time they happened, the impact was devastating and changed the way we looked at ourselves as a nation.

    Same goes with Pearl Harbor, 11/22 and 9/11.
     
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