Reply #8: Good points about the human capacity for change, [View All]

[Ken Burch]

A capacity the future of Democratic politics depends on heavily.

I think Robert Kennedy represents an example of a person being changed greatly by a personal trauma(JFK's assassaination). Before November 22, 1963, Bobby was an orthodox conservative cold warrior, although he was slowly improving on the subject of human rights. After that, he became aware of the sorrows, injustices and absurdities of the world, and cast aside his past rigidity and
narrow-mindedness. It was because of JFK's death, and the hard look it forced Bobby to take at himself) that Bobby marched with the farmworkers, went to South Africa to denounce apartheid(at the sametime LBJ and DLC guru Ben Wattenberg were defending the Afrikaner regime as a bulwark against Communism)and devoted himself to getting the U.S. out of the nightmare of Vietnam(a nightmare he felt personally ashamed of helping get the U.S. into)

In my view, it was Bobby's combination of increasing progressive openness and increasing electability that led the Establishment in the U.S. to order his killing.

(The "Sirhan acted alone because Bobby was pro-Israel" explanation is obviously bogus, IMHO. By that logic, Sirhan would have had to kill every candidate but George Wallace and Eldridge Cleaver.)