If JFK had lived, a liberal utopia?...

[mother earth]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/22/what-if-jfk-lived-alternate-history_n_4325831.html

Half a century after John F. Kennedy's assassination, history lovers are still debating what the world would look like if those fateful shots in Dallas had not taken the president's life.

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I don't need an expert to tell me that things would have been VERY different...I know it in my heart...and I'll carry it further, if JFK, RFK & MLK had lived, the world would indeed be a very different place...of that there is NO DOUBT...the same factions and the same hate is alive and well in TPTB today. This is why we are in turmoil....this is why we struggle.

I hope their legacy lives on in all of us who remember the dream, and we have it within us to reawaken that light...it's what keeps me going, the hope they left behind burns brightly.

[NoOneMan]

1. I doubt it

[zappaman]

2. We would all be riding unicorns.

And it would rain chocolate sprinkles!

[treestar]

3. I was thinking that today

I don't think one particular man, even if President, is going to make some major difference in the way the world is. Kennedy was inspiring apparently. There may have been some differences, definitely no LBJ first term; IMO JFK was likely to be re-elected. Civil Rights Act, etc., would still have happened. Vietnam could have been different. We'd have a lot less cynicism.

[mother earth]

5. Three major men were cut down in their youth, hadn't even reached the totality of their vision...we

were robbed, completely robbed.

[HughBeaumont]

4. We WOULDN'T . . .

. . . . be the "USA USA USA"-chanting, jingo-drugged, fearful, completely-corporate-dependent, easily swayed, accepting of lower and lower standards, obedient nation that we are today.

Maybe a nation that helped each other and took it's present and future seriously, which is something we really, REALLY don't do now. All we care about is kicking someone's ass, suppressing those who have less, worshiping those who have way too damned much and buying shit.

Is it an accident that we've had three Democratic presidents since 1968 (all of them centrists)? Is it an accident that the absolute WORST of the corporate-purchased right wing has predominantly been governing us for the past 45 years?

[mother earth]

6. Hell no, Hugh, you are correct, absolutely. It gave us a completely different direction & we've

never recovered since then. It's no accident.

[haele]

7. Not a utopia, but we might have some better options than we do now.

And who knows how the politics in the Middle East would be now?

A lot of the political shenanigans from "small group of Texas Oilmen" and the Kochs would have been delayed, along with the rise of the criminally corrupt Lee Atwater and Dick Cheney, to name a few. Would Kennedy been able to take the brunt of the Southern Democratic anger over civil rights, allowing LBJ a little more leverage to keep them in the party (after all, Eisenhower had betrayed them also - so there wasn't a lot more the Republicans could have promised them) while we continued in a more liberal direction without the specter of what Viet Nam became?

Would we have gotten Nixon? Or would Goldwater? Or perhaps the moderate Mid-Western Republicans would have been able to get better control of their party and steered the direction in a more progressive direction instead of falling back on the fearful religionists.

Would we already be well-ensconced into alternative energies? Would our infrastructure and space program have advanced sufficiently so that we would be mining in space, energy sufficient, and broadband available everywhere?

One can only speculate. A lot depends on where the momentum Kennedy was directing the country to would have led us.

Haele

[Warpy]

8. I don't know how much different it would have been had our liberal leaders not been assassinated

Somehow I think it might have been different in one way: there wouldn't be as big a reluctance on the part of those of us who were alive and adult them to stick our necks out and/or our heads up.

Now there's a whole new generation out there and they don't remember the horrible chill we went through for so many years, seeing the country dismantled but being paralyzed with fear about speaking out too loudly.

I wish them well. I wish the opposition would feel what we felt, although I wish no one dead. I just want them out of power, domonized and humiliated

[mother earth]

10. We will never forget...these men were icons and inspirational...

We need men who are at that level of forward and progressive ideals, no easy task going forward.