50 years after his execution -- decades of domestic and foreign calamities, dominated by aggressive war and horrific economic choices, leading to the collapse of the political system -- the nation would be unrecognizable to the man who fought every day for the weak against the strong. Robert Francis Kennedy did not have to face the heartbreak of the country he loved so much and worked so hard to humanize being turned into a snake-pit of psychopathic ambition, grimness, self-delusion, historical ignorance, and endless lies. For what is left on a popular or establishment level of the idea that society and government must be judged by the way the most vulnerable among us are taken care of?
Nothing. There is nothing left of that. Which is why the sense of doom and sorrow one takes from Bobby Kennedy for President will be long lasting. The worst of our history murdered the best and got away with it. Scott free. Not only did they get away with it, but they've created the sort of society diametrically opposed to everything RFK (and JFK) stood for: a country where the least human and most nakedly aggressive dominate everything. This was the newer world others sought. Born from the gore of the Ambassador Hotel kitchen pantry (and Dealey Plaza), they've achieved it.
Part One of Dawn Porter's Bobby Kennedy for President, "A New Generation"
