Missing JFK

[ramapo]

Here are some thoughts from James Kunstler, author of Geography of Nowhere and much more, on the 41st anniversary of JFK's assassination.
I was in third grade and remember the day as vividly (maybe more so) as yesterday. Kunstler summarizes what we've lost.

"...My generation never got over the death of President Kennedy. It changed everything. It knocked the legs out of our very steady world. Everything that came after it was an anticlimax, even the fantastic carnage of 9/11. Every president since then has been something of a disappointment, including JFK's most self-conscious protege, Bill Clinton...."

"What we lost in Kennedy was someone who could intelligently express a national sense of purpose unburdened by the sordid desire of individuals to have more ..."

"The sad and startling truth is that Kennedy's time really was Camelot for the United States. Unlike Ronald Reagan's completely phony Morning in America, Kennedy's abbreviated term was the last time we were lean, hopeful, and confident as a nation. Everything since then has been a spree of one kind or another... I miss John F. Kennedy more than I can say."

I couldn't agree more. It's been downhill ever since Nov. 22 1963.

Here's a link to the rest of today's entry in Kunstler's "Clusterfuck
Nation Chronicles". I recommend reading his commentary and his books on the suburban/urban crisis facing us today.

http://www.kunstler.com/mags_diary12.html

[PROGRESSIVE1]

1. True.

Had JFK lived, we would have a much better country right now!

[cosmicdot]

2. I couldn't agree more, too

the 11/15/2004 commentary re the economy, below the JFK one, is worth a read as well

[ramapo]

4. Keep reading!

Go to his archives...Then get his books from the library...maybe even buy them.

For many years I had a sense that something was very wrong with the way our suburban society has evolved. The feelings of isolation, the frustration of endless traffic, the ugliness of sprawl and strip malls.
The absolute insanity of the personal automobile as the default mode of transportation in our urban areas. Children and their parents utterly dependant on the car, not to travel miles but to travel blocks.

Kunstler details what we've lost over the past 50-60 years and how most of our society is living in absolute delusion that the current state of affairs can be sustained. We've built an infrastructure that basically holds in disdain the most basic human needs and capabilities; social contact and walking.

[Historic NY]

3. I often wonder how life would have been had our innocence ...

not been taken from us on that fateful day. JFK truly inspired others to think not of themselves but for the good of all mankind. I sometimes visit his grave and all the raw emotions of that day come back to me as clear as they were then. I may have become jaded over the many years since his passing, but to give up hope for a better world condition is like saying f--k them.