Yesterday, I substituted as a World History teacher at a local high school. On the wall, the teacher (who from his wedding photo and what I hear, is an older Millennial) had a photograph of JFK. In three classes, I asked, Does anyone know the historical significance of today's date of November 22?
In all three classes where I asked this, I had to literally point to JFK's photo before anyone could guess, and most had no idea.
Now, we may throw up our hands and say, Oh, this is terrible. This generation is so ignorant of history! However, I never knew anyone from the misnamed Greatest Generation or especially the Silent Generation who knew the day William McKinley was shot. Let's remember, these high schoolers were born after 9/11/2001. That is nearly forty years after 1963. The Greatest Generation people were born only twenty or so years after McKinley was shot on September 6, 1901, with the Silent Generation born in the late 1920s through early 1940s, so that they, too, should know the day McKinley was shot--if we think students today should know November 22 is the day JFK was shot.
I know what Boomers and addled Oldsters are thinking, though: "JFK's murder was far more important than McKinley's!" Sorry, fellow Boomers and Oldsters. You are wrong; arrogantly, ignorantly, and selfishly wrong. The change from McKinley to Theodore Roosevelt was at least as, if not more, momentous as the change from JFK to LBJ. McKinley was a man of the late 19th Century Gilded Age. McKinley was none too bright, and largely a pol who followed the new corporate plutocrats. McKinley was so simplistic he had to pray on his knees to get God's guidance before deciding to go into the war the jingos (including, especially, his Vice President, Teddy Roosevelt) wanted against the Spanish and the Spanish colonies in 1898, and, at the time of McKinley's assassination, our nation had embarked on a program of mass murder and "pacification" in the Philippines. TR wanted that war so bad he could taste blood, and TR, after assuming office, solidified America Pax Americana in a way McKinley may well not have been as effective in doing--oh, that is an irony for the anarchist who shot McKinley, though at least the assassin understood the war crimes the US was perpetrating in the Philippines (Mark Twain knew it, too, but was afraid to publish his parody in real time). However, on matters of domestic policy, TR represented everything McKinley had no clue about, and TR's important break with McKinley in this regard cannot be overstated. TR saw corporate trusts as a problem to be overcome and solved. TR saw the importance of protecting forests and natural wonders. TR saw the importance of regulating products businesses sold nationally and even within states. And in each of these areas, he worked with Congress to enact legislation in these matters, and, when the legislature did not act, he often acted through executive order. TR was active in a way that would have bewildered, if not shocked, McKinley. TR changed our culture, how we saw presidents, and was the first president to recognize how mass media worked. It was a phenomenal change, when we look at the change from various perspectives.
As for JFK, I would posit JFK died for our nation's sins prevalent in his and our time. JFK had no luck and no skill in getting Congress to pass civil rights legislation, Medicare, or any assistance to the poor. The Goldwater-Kennedy election of 1964 was going to be a nail-biter, because there was already a white backlash brewing. It is so easy to forget how many white folks hated or feared Martin Luther King, Jr., or how "respectable" white opinion saw King as "divisive." Malcolm X was off the charts scary to those people. And let's remember, this is the misnamed Greatest Generation and the aptly named Silent Generation we are talking about as the ones in prime time charge of America's power centers. As Robert Dallek initially recognized in the early 1990s, and now Robert Caro (finally!) recognizes, LBJ cannily used the nation's grief over the dead JFK, and LBJ's own understanding of how the Congress worked at the time, to push through the legislation which improved the lives of many Americans who had been left out of the so-called American dream.
For those who think JFK would have pulled troops out of Vietnam, Chomsky's analysis refutes the John Newman, and later, Oliver Stone and James Galbraith thesis in a way which reveals the childishness behind that thesis. The November 1963 memorandum on Vietnam, which JFK received shortly before his death in Dallas on November 22, 1963, was naively hopeful that the coup against Diem was going to stabilize the government in South Vietnam, and we could pull out safely by mid 1965, meaning after the 1964 election. See Chomsky's response to James Galbraith (and Galbraith's lame reply) in the letters section of the Boston Review. Well, we know how that optimism worked out, and, at the time, JFK, and most US national security state policy-makers really believed we could replicate what the US had done in Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Lebanon in 1958, the Congo in 1961, and the Dominican Republic in 1963, which was overthrow governments and replace them with military juntas we liked, train the juntas to prey ("control" or "pacify" were the usual terms used in internal documentation and sometimes in newspaper op-eds) on the people there, and keep from using US troops while the local military leaders in those nations "stabilized" their nations for our corporations to exploit. We have to also recognize JFK, LBJ, and Nixon all politically came of age when the right-wing led "Who Lost China?" political debate reigned in 1949 through 1953 in the power corridors of the United States. None of them wanted to be blamed for "losing" Vietnam to the Communists. I find it almost preposterous to think JFK was going to pull out troops or seek a negotiated settlement with Ho Chi Minh's forces in 1965, 1966, or 1967.
Anyway, what I did find yesterday, at least in the first period, where the students started asking political-historical questions, is the Kids are much more knowledgeable about substantive issues than people my age were back in the early 1970s. However, they don't know who their local or state representatives are. As I said to them, knowing about substantive issues is an improvement over their grandparents and probably some of their parents. However, I said, if they expect to effectuate change, they must register to vote, and further, they must learn precisely who their area representatives and senators are. They nodded with appreciation, from what I noticed, but, as a mere sub, I don't know how much sticks.
I admit I winced when I saw none of the students could readily recall November 22 as the day JFK was assassinated. However, after I immediately stepped back, did some mathematical birth year calculations, went back in some relatively recent US history (120 years or so), and realized something: These young people in that classroom were not only born forty odd years after JFK's assassination date. They have lived in the shadow or through major historical events, starting with Al Queda attacks in September 2001--and we know how our corporate media culture has reacted to that. The Kids have also lived through the Great Recession of 2008 and the greatest economic inequality in the US since Mark Twain described the Gilded Age of 1870-1900 (and beyond Twain's death in 1910). They have lived through the non-transformational, often reactive Obama presidency and now the fascistic-racist transformational presidency of Trump. They have seen how climate change has become a national security issue, and intuitively know water and food are, above all, political issues. And, yet, we Boomers and addled Oldsters think they should know something about the murder of a then-mainstream Cold War politician 56 years ago--largely because we can personally remember where we were when we heard the news of that single event?*
I have long laughed at Billy Joel's insipid song, "We Didn't Start the Fire." The lyrics are simply a list of names and references without any showing of or explanation of any how's or why's (compare and contrast Phil Ochs' songs on generational topics). And when Joel, says, "JFK blown away: What more do I have to say?" I would scream at the radio, "You fucking moron. You haven't said a goddamned thing!" And, Billy, don't fool yourself. Our generation started a whole bunch of fires, in tandem with The Greatest Generation and the Silent Generation. It is why I wrote "Boomerang." And, this morning, on the Web, I was glad to see an amusing comedy skit, "Do We Really Need Boomers?" from College Humor, as it shows others in the Generation Z and Millennial generations are starting to understand people over fifty are political arsonists.
If I could say something to the Kids, it would be this: You need to come out and vote, and start with registering as Democrats to vote for a guy from the Silent Generation, Bernie Sanders (Birth month and year, December 1941). Sanders stands apart from most his age, and from a majority of Baby Boomers, both in physical strength and historical-political perspective. Bernie is a Popular Front New Dealer, who understands and works from a strategic perspective that involves mobilization, coalitions, and elevating people who were previously at the margins. It is a very different approach from technocratic, post-WWII approaches from liberals and even some lefties (cough, cough, Elizabeth Warren, who is still miles ahead of most of the other corporate media named candidates). Sanders' approach harkens back to labor union organizing, at a time when "One Big Union"--the cry of the Industrial Workers of the World--gains more currency in a globalized, technologically connected economy. And, as a big by-the-way, find out who is a Bernie type running in Democratic Party primaries in state and local offices, and support and vote for them, too. He can't do it alone, and neither can we.
And I say to those around 50 and up: Let's not rip into the Kids, shall we? How about we act like good parents, and embrace the youngs, and give them some respect for their youthful idealism, hopes, and concerns. When a young person demands great change from the horrible things today, instead of saying, "Don't be naive," or some such thing, we should be embarrassed these things exist, and we should ask them, "What do you think we should do?" and talk about various solutions where we don't fall into the "what is" of accepting excessive political power from an economic royalty or elite. In short, we should stand with our Kids, for they are all our kids--and they are the ones we are asking to support us in our old age.
*I know it may seem strange for me to speak of JFK in this way since I wrote "the" book about RFK surviving 1968, and becoming a transformative president (albeit due to the circumstances at the time, and personal charisma more than leadership skills) who helps lead us close to a completion of the New Deal. However, RFK believed in the Camelot Myth more than most, and he thought he was completing his brother's visions. RFK, more than his brother, also realized their father's isolationist streak had some merit in not trying to overthrow governments or prop up unpopular governments abroad (Nasaw's biography of Joe Kennedy, Sr. is quite good on the topic of Joe Kennedy's paleo-conservative skepticism of the Cold War international project). RFK sat with Cesar Chavez, saw merit in environmental policy ideas, wanting to rebuild cities on behalf of those living in them, particularly African-Americans, Mexican-Americans, and Puerto Ricans, as well as rural areas where whites and African-Americans were living side by side in poverty, and beginning to take a crack at the military-industrial complex which his brother Jack had little understanding about.
