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It's a trope of more than the last half-century that the remark:
You see things; and you say, "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and "I say, Why Not?"
is--with minor variations--a quote from Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
Actually, it comes--as Kennedy himself acknowledged--from George Bernard Shaw.
Shaw himself was thoroughly untoward, utterly unconservative, and not-all-that-much, from a political perspective, worth remembering.
Sure, a couple of his plays made it--in one form or another--into popular culture, but I don't know how much of that had to do with him, versus how much of it has to do with us.
When it comes to RFK Sr, there is much to argue about, and whether or not this is the place to do so is also up for debate.
What's not up for challenge though is that June 5, 2024 is the fifty-sixth anniversary of the date that Robert F. Kennedy, Sr. was shot and died. At the time, he was merely a candidate for president on the Democrat ticket.
It happened. All those years ago. RFK was the victim of a bullet from a Palestinian-Jordanian's gun. As of June 5, 2024, fifty-six years later, his assassin still lives, the original death sentence having been commuted to life imprisonment, and all the perpetrator's subsequent appeals for parole having been denied. (Full disclosure, he's had to rely upon—of all people—Gavin Newsom for this most recent happy verdict, since Soros-friendly LA District Attorney, George Gascón, had, in the past, declined to oppose Sirhan's parole requests.)
I do remember how shattering the events of June 1968, following so closely upon those of April 1968, were upon the general populace at the time.
And I do remember where I was (the last couple of days of eighth-grade science class) when RFK's death was announced.
Where were you?
PS: Photo accompanying the post is asserted as "Public Domain" on the basis that it was taken and filed as part of the "Congressional Quarterly" Report.
Discussion (23)
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Shaw's problem was that he was too clever by half and thought he was too clever by whole.
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I do not remember where I was when RFK was killed. I remember it was at an event in Los Angeles. I do remember where I was when JFK was killed. I was in high school, probably a sophomore, in 10th grade, and when it was announced many of the children cheered. I didn't understand why they were cheering.
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RFK Jr says that Sirhan Sirhan did not kill his father. Sirhan was a patsy, according to RFK Jr, and the real killer was Eugene Thane Cesar, a CIA operative who led RFK unexpectedly into the kitchen where Sirhan was waiting. To be clear, RFK Jr says that Sirhan’s shots did not hit his father, and that the fatal shots were fired by Cesar.
RFK was killed on the one year anniversary of Israel’s launch of the Six Day War, in which Israel conquered the Palestinian-Jordanian West Bank. Pure coincidence, doubtless.
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It was the end of my junior year of Catholic high school. IIRC, unlike JFK he didn't die immediately. By the time I took the city bus to school, he was dead. It was a grim time.
RFK was sort-of "our guy" because of religion, but he didn't get the nearly unanimous support from Catholics that his brother had; for one thing, although RFK is said to have had appeal to blue collar Americans, I didn't see much of it, because unlike JFK he was felt to be much more liberal.
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4 days from graduating from high school. Yes - very grim. Not my guy, but my date for the graduation party at Nan’s house was devastated.
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