Today in History, June 5 1968
Robert F. Kennedy Assassinated
Robert F. Kennedy Assassinated
After winning the California Democratic Primary that day, RFK became the frontrunner for the nomination and would have been the nominee instead of VP Hubert H. Humphrey, the former Senator from Minnesota.
It's worth reflecting for a moment on the significance of his death from the standpoint of "what if", rather than speculate on the "whodoneits" of his murder. Nixon would have never defeated RFK in a General Election. Nixon won because LBJ was reviled over the Vietnam War, and Humphrey ran as his VP.
RFK would have de-escalated the Vietnam War immediately, as both he and his brother intended to do that in JFK's 2nd term, had there been one. There would have been no "Secret Wars" in Laos or Cambodia. There would have been no covert operations to coverup the failures of the military leadership. There is a long list of evil policies associated with J. Edgar Hoover and Nixon that would have never been. Nixon's destructive decision to take the dollar off the Gold Standard in 71 would not have occurred, and the Monetarist lunatics that took over US Economic Policy from the "Chicago School", such as Milton Friedman, George Shultz, and others would have never been brought in to begin the wrecking job on the World Monetary System.
There is the issue of Watergate and the first Presidential resignation, and the Kent State shooting, which shattered the faith of many Americans in our institutions. That's one side of it.
RFK would have de-escalated the Vietnam War immediately, as both he and his brother intended to do that in JFK's 2nd term, had there been one. There would have been no "Secret Wars" in Laos or Cambodia. There would have been no covert operations to coverup the failures of the military leadership. There is a long list of evil policies associated with J. Edgar Hoover and Nixon that would have never been. Nixon's destructive decision to take the dollar off the Gold Standard in 71 would not have occurred, and the Monetarist lunatics that took over US Economic Policy from the "Chicago School", such as Milton Friedman, George Shultz, and others would have never been brought in to begin the wrecking job on the World Monetary System.
There is the issue of Watergate and the first Presidential resignation, and the Kent State shooting, which shattered the faith of many Americans in our institutions. That's one side of it.
Then, there is the question of what RFK would have done as President had he lived. We would never have suffered the catastrophic failures of the 1970's that cascaded under Nixon and what came after. We would have carried out JFK's plans for his 2nd term. Modernizing industry, expanding Steel and machine tools, a US Capital goods export driven pathway toward 3rd World development, especially Latin America and African Countries. A Mars program, with a Science driver component that would have solved our energy crisis by now. Civil Rights and Social Justice in the tradition of his brother and MLK. And so on. It would be a different World.
Two points of relevance for today. First, is that we currently have something worse than Nixon many times over with Trump. You can lay this at the doorstep of Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and the Democratic National Committee in 2016, and their spectacular failure which allowed this mentally ill fool to become President. They were worse than Hubert Humphrey in their failure as a Party and candidates to give Americans the leadership they needed. The proof of that is that Trump is President. We cannot afford such a failure again, because you can see clearly with these examples the negative consequences of doing so.
Second, is that the American people themselves have gone way downhill intellectually and morally since 1968. If you ask a young person today to tell you what they know about RFK, it's likely they will say, "he was JFK''s Brother, and they both screwed Marilyn Monroe". We have a nearly braindead political culture in which History is 20 years old. It is rooted in the celebrity/ tabloid/entertainment/sports popular culture of the 2000's, and for the most part, younger people don't know very much of anything about History, because it's irrelevant to their lifestyle. This is not across the board, but it predominates. We hope in current circumstances this can change. But when you bring up Bobby Kennedy today, he unfortunately gets mashed up into people's Brain salad as yet just another sexist rich dead white Male from a different era, who "doesn't get me". This, I'm afraid, is a greater tragedy than even his assassination, 52 years ago today.
