I was six years old when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. I’m not sure how much I remember of the television coverage versus what I saw later on successive anniversaries. What I do remember is the way my parents reacted. The shock and pain was on their faces and in the low timbre of their whispered conversations around the home. Without needing to be told, I understood that this was a momentous and tragic event in our history.
At twelve years old, my parents allowed me to stay up late to watch the Apollo 11 moon landing huddled on the floor with my brothers. It was a surreal experience to be sitting in my pajamas on our living room floor watching a man – an American- step from the landing vehicle onto the surface of the moon. From that point onward, I had the feeling that there was nothing that America could not accomplish.
When I was fourteen, I convinced the local volunteer ambulance corps to accept girls into their youth program. They were a bit puzzled that I declined to apply, telling them that I didn’t like the sight of blood, but it was the principle of the thing to me. Around the same time period our middle school allowed girls to wear pants for the first time to school. This was a great relief to those of us who suffered from cold drafts up our skirts in the winter.
My childhood combined the best and worst of the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. I saw women make great strides toward equality and witnessed the racial tensions and the positive changes over the long fight for civil rights. I saw Americans as representing all that was good and the bearers of all that was possible. I was too young to fully understand Vietnam, although I remember the nightly news reports of death reported in black and white (without snazzy graphics) by the always professional and never breathless Walter Cronkite.
My Republican parents instilled in me the values I have today that led me to register as a Democrat at 18 years old. I had become a believer. Watergate was my first brush with political awareness and I remember carting my 12" TV to work in the 80’s during the Congressional hearings on the whole Iran-Contra affair to watch Ollie North’s smirking testimony. I am amazed when I remember that the hearings were thought newsworthy enough to show live on broadcast television.
In 1992 I had stood at the polls holding a "Clinton for President" sign. I was thrilled when Clinton won and sure that he would help dispel the evil trance of complacency in which America had been placed. In retrospect, he wasn’t the man or the President I thought he would be or could be. By 1996, I half-heartedly cast my vote for a second term, and hoped for the best. After 2000, things just kept getting worse and I felt my country was slipping away into an abyss of amoral and delusional governance. The America from my childhood that put a man on the moon didn’t exist anymore.
I began to yearn for the next coming of F.D.R. or J.F.K. Surely there had to be a person out there intelligent enough, savvy enough and committed enough who could overcome the Right Wing nut jobs and their sick rhetoric and snap America out of its delusions that "trickle-down" economics and small-corrupt government was better than the "big government" a la New Deal. I wasn’t quite prepared for 9/11 (was anyone?) or for the neo-conservatives who pounced on the tragedy as an opportunity to promote their power-hungry, profit-centric, war-mongering agendas. My yearning for a Democratic Presidential nominee in shining armor grew into desperation.
So having come through this long, strange journey I have concluded that I need to let go of the image of J.F.K’s Camelot from my childhood. There will be no shining knight on a horse, white or black. I want a President who will protect the Constitution, restore sanity to American foreign policy, take the lead on environmental policies,lift up the poor and provide a future for American workers. Preferably all within the first 100 days.
I can only choose the person who comes closest to my ideal. I feel fortunate in this election that there were so many quality democratic candidates. I so wanted one of them to be that once-in-a-lifetime President, but it is really naïve and well, frankly delusional, to think that any one person would be the answer. We are supposed to be electing a human as President, not a supernatural being.
Democrats need to let go of the mythology surrounding F.D.R. and J.F.K. Their time was then and will not come again. We must realize that the application of democratic ideals and values can never occur again in exactly the same forms that provided the foundation for who we have become. Who we can and will be can only be implemented through building from the same ideals a new foundation for the future.
From school boards, to local commissions, to state legislators, to district judges, to Congress, and then, if we are fortunate, to a President who can define these democratic values in the context of the now and the future. Unless we are interested in returning this nation to a monarchy, there is no President that can overcome all that has gone before without support throughout our governments, local, state and federal. Democrats need to let Camelot go and start coming together to build a foundation for their future and that of succeeding generations. Our time is now.
Monday, Jul 25, 2016 · 9:30:02 PM +00:00
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liberal ocean
I am a Bernie supporter and have never been a Hillary fan. However, I am disappointed (and anxious) to hear that there are those at the DNC Convention who are so eager to be “right” that they do not care if they damage Hillary’s chances in November. Perhaps they are young and do not understand the imminent danger that Donald J Trump presents. This does remind me of the devisiveness amongst some Dems in early 2008.
Hence I thought my first and only post at Daily Kos might be relevant at the opening of the 2016 DNC Convention today. It still rings true for me.