The Death of Camelot

On Nov. 22, 60 years ago, John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was assassinated while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. Anyone old enough to remember knows where they were that day and for everybody else born after, it seems like some distant history. It was a national tragedy and mourned by the nation as much as Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s death or perhaps even Abraham Lincoln’s. However, the distinction of the death of this young president and the image of his grieving widow and the picture of his son saluting the coffin remain in the national consciousness like an indelible print. Many have called it the “end of innocence.”

The decade that followed brought even greater tragedies with civil rights, the Vietnam War, anti-war demonstrations and riots; then the assassinations of Kennedy’s brother Robert, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and several Black Panthers. I remember all of these events and I was even involved in some of the anti-war demonstrations. I was actually in Washington, D.C. on the night MLK was killed. I watched as the city surrounding the National Mall burned and the National Guard mounted machine guns on the steps of the Supreme Court building. The images of that night are etched on my soul like a tattoo or a scar on my chest.

The 1960s seemed less a loss of innocence than an explosive awakening of political thought and the birth of rock ‘n’ roll. In the background of all of this was that first assassination and the questions that surrounded it still, such as who exactly was Lee Harvey Oswald — a patsy or the lone gunman? And why did a shady nightclub owner like Jack Ruby, who had mafia connections, shoot and kill him while in police custody?

The Warren Commission report on the assassination was not widely trusted at first, but was officially defended. Conspiracy theories filled the void created by this distrust with every book, documentary, article and Hollywood film regarding the assassination since. Which one do you ascribe to? For those of you who wish to commemorate the past, here’s a list of films to watch after you’ve eaten your turkey. https://tinyurl.com/JFKmovies

I’m sure there will be much debate at the dinner table over which theory your relatives believe in or not. It’s sort of like the X-Files — the truth is out there!

However, as our senior editor Paul Rosenberg points out in this issue, JFK’s Assassination — A Pandora’s Box of Conspiracy Theories?, there are 42 groups, 82 assassins and 214 people who have been accused of being involved in the assassination. For those who may dismiss conspiracy theories you should read Rosenberg’s section on Making Sense of Conspiracism. We are now a society in which conspiracy theories spread like wildfire over social media before the truth puts its pants on in the morning. The latest of which is the “deep state” conspiracy promoted by the biggest liar who has ever been on the national stage — the twice impeached, four-time indicted leader of the GOP. I don’t even want to use his name in print anymore.

If there’s one conspiracy that we can all be convinced of, it was the one in which he tried to stay in office after he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden and attempted to overthrow our democracy. The one we all watched on TV. The evidence is right now being heard and adjudicated in the Georgia and federal prosecutions. That there are so many deniers of that conspiracy; that so many members of his own party continue to cover and protect him and recast the events of Jan. 6, 2020 through a revisionist lens, how clueless and how disinformation-filled some people can be. It’s downright delusional! That the majority of Republican voters still poll over 59% in favor of this blowhard is actually quite telling about a certain segment of our population. It says that they can be led like lemmings off a cliff.

The power of the right-wing conservative media in America has been growing ever since Fox News entered the marketplace and started stealing the ratings. Now that influence has pushed the mainstream media to engage in more both-sideism reporting even when the facts don’t support it.

Finally, the corporate media is beginning to wake up. Tom Nichols in the Atlantic wrote recently, “I want to caution my fellow citizens. [DJT], whether from intention or stupidity or fear, has identified himself as a fascist under almost any reasonable definition of the word. But although he leads the angry and resentful GOP, he has not created a coherent, disciplined, and effective movement.”

While folks are out there carving the turkey this holiday and debating all of the conspiracies that have emerged since Kennedy’s assassination, be certain there’ll be at least one person at your table who doesn’t believe the twice impeached ex-president, who has been indicted on 93 charges across four cases, is the leader of the American fascist movement and that on Jan. 6 he actually did attempt a coup d’état.

If you are sitting at a table listening to some denier droll on a lengthy defense of the wannabe dictator, just remember that the truth is still out there. You’re just not going to find it on Fox News or a GOP presidential debate! We’ve come a long way since America believed it was living in Camelot.