Tomorrow, it will have been 50 years since the assassination of John F. Kennedy and, the 50th anniversary of the conspiracy theories surrounding that event.
There is no end to the man on the grassy knoll, shooter on another roof, mob, Russian, Cuban, conspiracies.
There is even the line of thought that Kennedy was ACCIDENTALLY killed by a SECRET SERVICE newbie in the car BEHIND the presidential limo.
The idea that a little worm like Oswald did it on his own just doesn’t sit well with some people and, many people are 100% sure THEY know who “REALLY” killed Kennedy even though they have no real evidence or proof.
At this point, 50 years down range, we may never know for certain whether it was or wasn’t Oswald and the fact that HE was killed before any trial or answers came about only adds to the conspiracies.
So be it.
This isn’t about who delivered the bullet.
This is about who TOOK it that day, November 22, 1963 on a street in Dallas.
More to the point…
This is about what the nation lost that day.
You can watch as many specials regarding that fateful day as you can find and record. Pay more attention to the documentaries than the dramatizations because that’s where you’ll find the answers to the questions regarding the magnitude of the loss.
Trust me…Over the years, I’ve seen them all but, to start getting to the TRUTH of that loss, allow me to digress to my own childhood for a moment.
To be sure, I was barely just a kid on November 22nd, 1963. I had, just a couple weeks prior, turned 3 years old but, that even is the first NEWS event in my memory.
Details? No…I don’t remember details but, I do remember my father, having been home for lunch, had just walked out the door when the flash came over the TV. My mother ran out and brought my father back in the house and we all sat there, watching the TV, for the rest of the day and into the night.
It was very unusual and I remember asking what we were watching.
I was told that the president had been killed or that he was dead.
I had to ask what a president was.
Someone important, I was told. It was so sad, I was told.
The first breaking news I can remember and that’s about ALL I remember of that event but, it speaks volumes when put into context with all the documentaries I have watched over those last 50 years.
Today, Kennedy is revered.
From that day in 1963 to this…JFK has existed on a pedestal.
Each person, man or woman, that appears in countless documentaries regarding their remembrances of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, tell a similar tale.
“Kennedy was a great man.”
“He looked so handsome.”
“Jackie was beautiful.”
“He always seemed so kind…He was a star…He seemed like royalty…So sad for the children…So sad…”
“It was the end of Camelot.”
None of them…Not one…Ever talks about his policies.
None of them speak of his successes…domestically or on the world stage.
They don’t speak of what he DID…They speak of what he MAY have done had he lived long enough to DO it.
Ask anyone old enough to actually remember the Kennedy presidency why he was such a great president and, some may tell you that he backed down the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis but, they conveniently forget to mention that JFK brought us to the very brink of nuclear war on a bluff, to do it.
Any success he had in THAT crisis only offset his failure in the Bay of Pigs.
Others might say he was no fan of the police action in Vietnam but, while he didn’t escalate it, he never did anything to DE-ESCALATE it either…Did he?
There will be those who say Kennedy stood for civil rights but…It wasn’t JFK who signed Eisenhower’s Civil Rights Act into law…THAT was the SOB LBJ and most, intimately involved in THAT movement, simply decline to admit the TRUTH that the only reason LBJ blocked the Civil Rights Act when he was a senator then SIGNED it when he became the president was for purely political gain and, his own racist ideology never enters the picture.
Kennedy was a war hero having served in WWII on PT109 but…Would THAT have been as recognized had he not gone on to become the president?
Perhaps but, not as publicly as many served with distinction and we never heard of but a few.
He was tough on organized crime?
No.
That was Bobby…Not Jack.
When people recall the successes of JFK…There are always 3 standard quotes…
“Ich bin ein Berliner!”
“Ask NOT what your country can do for you, ask what YOU can do for your COUNTRY,” and…
“By the end of this decade, we shall send a man to the moon and return him safely to the earth.”
Kennedy inspired the space program?
I’ll give you that. He did but…
That raises another question.
Would the space program have had the same drive to make the prediction a reality had Kennedy LIVED?
Whether or not, with a living JFK, we would have made that famous prediction regarding putting a man on the moon a reality BY the end of that 
turbulent decade is open to debate and, that, like who really shot him, will always remain a mystery.
From the standpoint of political ideology, the Kennedy of 1963 would be a Republican in 2013. Kennedy made perhaps THE most persuasive argument EVER for cutting taxes so, in that light, Kennedy would be on the opposite side of the fence from Obama.
So…Let’s look again at that other quote: “Ask NOT what your country can do for you, ask what YOU can do for your COUNTRY.”
Obama vowed to “fundamentally transform America” and that is diametrically opposed to the words and vision of Kennedy.
Obama steadfastly believes that the people should crawl to the government asking for entitlements while Kennedy believed, clearly, they should not.
Kennedy was a rock star.
Obama is a rockstar.
Kennedy was a globetrotter.
So is Obama.
People hung on Kennedy’s every word.
Obama’s devotees do also.
The mere sight of JFK elicited fawning gasps…Women routinely fainted, on cue, at Obama’s appearances.
Ironically, both Kennedy and Obama went to Harvard and while we know full well who paid for Kennedy’s higher education and, we can read his thesis, “Appeasement in Munich”
we have no records of who funded Obama’s college education and HIS thesis has been sealed away from public view.
Both the JFK and Obama presidencies are examples of style above and beyond substance.
Maybe the biggest DIFFERENCE between Obama and Kennedy is the fact that the former had the mantle of greatness bestowed upon him BEFORE he did anything to earn it while the latter, well…
What OF the greatness ascribed to John F. Kennedy’s presidency?
Did JFK actually, as the president, EARN the pedestal?
In those short white house years, did JFK REALLY, by his actions, DESERVE the accolades he’s been handed over the last 50 years?
We will never know what his presidency would have become had he lived. What the remainder of that 1st term would have brought or what the possibility of a 2nd term would have meant…For him OR for the country.
When you examine the JFK presidency, not through the rose colored glasses of the Kennedy mistique and the ivory tower of Camelot, but through the lens of honesty, John Kennedy, as a president, wasn’t all that much.
The day Kennedy was killed, he woke up in Ft. Worth and FLEW, in the newly designed by Jackie Kennedy, Air Force One, to Dallas. It was but a 15 minute flight.
Why?
Because, in the glitz and glamour of Camelot, known as the Kennedy presidency, he wanted to put on a show. He wanted to make a visual statement and allow the people of Dallas to be blessed by his charisma…To know, before he set foot on the dirt of Dallas, that they were about to be visited by importance.
The drive through Dallas took longer that it would have taken to drive from Ft. Worth TO Dallas but, that would not have been a fitting arrival for America’s King of Camelot.
So…Here we are…50 years later and, aside from the glaring persona of the namesake…What is it really, that has led the general public to regard the PRESIDENCY of JFK to have been…GREAT?
Sadly…
A singular moment in time, captured on a piece of 8mm film…A bullet from an assassin’s gun and…
50 years worth of embellishments.
There is exactly as much verifiable evidence to suggest someone other than Oswald pulled the trigger and acted alone as there is to suggest that, had he lived, JFK would have been a great president.
In either case, all we have are theories…Conspiracy or otherwise.
It will always be the day when the hope of an eternal spring in Camelot was transformed into the reality of an eternal flame at Arlington.
As a nation, on Friday, November 22, 1963, we lost a bit of national innocence, our feeling of invincibility and, a Kennedy.
thank you for this post- i can be sad today for many reasons, including what politics has become and what is being done to subvert the constitution and the original intent of our founders. I keep my faith in God and in the Lord Jesus, the Christ. He is my rock.