American Camelot: Was America Really Great Back Then?

The best thing about Donald Trump’s endless legal problems is that we don't have to listen to him and the rest of his gang of fascist wannabes bombard us with their delusion of the American Dream to “Make America Great Again.”

You know what they’re talking about, don't you? It’s the time when they rule with a “fair and even hand” and the rest of us blindly struggle along to feed our families and the insatiable need of these people to line their pockets with gelt.

Trump is older than I am. But he was young around the same time I was. He should know better. I hate to burst everyone’s bubble, but America never really was great.

On Friday, November 22nd, 1963, I was a 10-year-old third grader at the Ginther School in the little canal town of Brockport, just west of Rochester, New York. Sometime after 12:30 p.m., I was walking with the rest of the students through the halls toward our homerooms for an unexpected recess that had everyone buzzing and wondering what it was all about. Alan Gardner, a kid in my class, came up to me and put his finger to his temple, his fist mimicking a gun.

“They shot the President and a Governor, too! Right in the head!” he shouted, and he pulled his middle finger on the trigger of his imaginary weapon.

John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was assassinated while in a parade in Dallas, Texas.

I didn’t know it then, but that was the end of my generation’s delusion of America’s greatness.

That was the final moment of this country’s “Camelot,” a mythical time in the United States when all things seemed possible. We were the most powerful, prosperous nation in the world. The Soviets had pulled their missiles out of Cuba. The future looked bright, and we were going to the moon for God’s sake.

For those historically challenged, Camelot referenced a 12th-century English Castle where King Arthur and his court lived in an idyllic bliss of truth, honor, and justice.

America’s Camelot was the name the media had labeled John F. Kennedy’s election as the youngest President in our history. He and his administration had been lauded for bringing with it a new Camelot that came to define an era of youth, vitality, and integrity.

I’ve come to realize, it was just that … a mythical time.

In a gunflash, life for my generation was never to be the same.

It signaled the beginning of an era of violence heretofore not experienced in America since almost 100 years before when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.

Now, much to my chagrin, very few people remember the importance of this day.

The decades to come were disastrous. Within days, JFK’s assassin was gunned down while on a perp walk from a Dallas jail.

Within a few short years, our cities were aflame in riots … Harlem, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago. For me, even the nearby City of Rochester exploded in racial unrest. My father, a World War II vet and member of the New York National Guard, was on full alert and bivouacked with his unit in a downtown city park in order to keep the peace. On the highway we lived on, cars streamed past all through the next week headed into Rochester to be part of the action.

My mother slept on the couch in the living room with my father’s .380 caliber Remington automatic under her pillow like a Momma Bear armed to the teeth, while my brother and I slept safely upstairs.

Just a few, (too) short years later JFK’s brother, Robert Kennedy, was assassinated in Los Angeles while running for President. Soon after Martin Luther King was killed on a motel balcony and Malcolm X was dead in Manhattan of several bullet wounds.

Meanwhile, 55,000 Americans were giving their lives in a far-off war in the jungles of Vietnam that was supposed to stop the onslaught of communism from sweeping Southeast Asia.

And then four college students were killed at an Ohio university as they protested the war, shot dead by the National Guard

That terrible war led to yet another disaster in 1974, when another President, Richard Millhouse Nixon, resigned from office in disgrace because of his lust for power.

Is this the Great America Trump has us longing for?

In my youth prior to November 1963, in many ways, I suppose, it seemed like America really was great.

Politicians worked together to compromise for the good of their constituencies. Philandering by elected officials was off-limits to most professional news organizations. New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller expanded the state university system with the slogan, “Let each become all he is capable of being.”

My Mother, a half-American Japanese war bride, told me that even I could be President of the United States.

I wanted to join the Peace Corps.

But things were not what they seemed. Minorities were still being lynched. Drugs were beginning to over-run our communities. Our rivers and lakes were polluted and getting worse. Women had no rights and were dying in backyard abortion clinics. Hell, they couldn't even have a credit card in their name until 1973.

What the fuck is wrong with everyone.

In my estimation, America never was great. I may still think that it is the finest country in the world to live in, but reality tells me that it has been and will continue to be a great experiment in Democracy that will be changing and forming and evolving and ever moving toward a goal of equality where people are treated equal, peace reigns, the environment is safe, and no-one is left behind. And, when that happens, we will be able to call ourselves great.

Frankly, these days are barely better than the world I grew up in. Instead of killing our leaders, we’ve moved on to assassinating our children. And, what it means to “Make America Great Again” depends on how low on the shitpile you happen to be.

Now, a whole generation behind doesn’t know much about the assassination in Dallas. Their lives in America changed with 9/11, another one of America’s saddest days. And for them, there’s not much great about America anymore, nor was there ever. The baby boomers, they say, lied to them.

People struggle to get by on two incomes. College debt weighs them down. Our health care is a shambles. Congress argues on who’s in charge of the executive washroom, and a fascist is on the brink of becoming President once again.

All I know is, that as I reflect upon the anniversary of this tragic day in our history and look around at the world I see, I’ve come to realize that if this is what making America great again is all about, I want no part of it.