Remembering Robert Kennedy

“How long shall they kill our prophets, while we stand aside and look?”
-- Bob Marley, “Redemption Song”

Robert Kennedy was lost to us 39 years ago today. Given the political tumult in American Life over the last four decades, it seems so very long ago. Maybe he was the last politician who had the gift of mobilizing young people to participate in the Democratic process. He had ideas that many embraced and represented a threat to others. Was he a polarizing figure? Yes, though surely not to the degree of the “junior” Senator from New York who presently occupies the seat in Congress he once held in the mid ‘60’s. Anyone alive at that time could tell you how brutal 1968 was; from the Tet Offensive to the murders of King and Kennedy to the riots in Chicago during the Democratic Convention. Who among us could ever forget the mournful train procession from New York to Washington where Americans of every stripe solemnly stood as he passed by? It was an awful time, even if you were a kid more concerned with the Red Sox and the latest hits on Top-40 AM radio.

Today, most kids don’t give a rat’s ass about the democratic process. To them, it holds about as much meaning as turning off a light switch. Can you really blame them? How can rational people find hope in the future when the candidates who propose beneficial change are cut down and the faces currently vying for office are no more than puppets beholden to the bagmen who put them there?

Some day (hopefully many, many generations from now), when this current form of government ceases to exist, historians will have a field day analyzing the reasons why the last and best hope for freedom collapsed. It certainly won’t occur due to a lack of ambition. They may likely conclude that America died because of the lack of sincere, intelligent people who were entrusted with the responsibility of making and executing the law.

They may also contend that it didn’t have to be that way, claiming that the political murders of the 1960’s set America on the eventual path to its own demise. When the powerful forces who only serve the interests of wealth conspired to eliminate any threat posed by those who sought to serve the interests of the People, then those elected constitutionally to serve do so at the behest of the former at the expense of the latter.

Could Robert Kennedy been a Lincoln-esque President? We’ll never know, will we? Just peruse the list of names who’ve passed through the Oval Office since then and you can tell me. June 5th is a sad day for America, and the years that have passed since Kennedy’s murder have made most Americans long for what could’ve been.

Rest In Peace.