My husband is not altogether comfortable with the modern "computer information age" and it shows in his abilities (or, more to the point, the lack of them) to swiftly manipulate the remote control, cell phones and computers...
Most times, my husband (who is usually the one in control of the remote control in the evenings) has this habit of just changing the channels on the TV -- one at a time -- without going to the "guide" which shows the offerings of many channels at once and also has the advantage of giving a very brief synopsis of the plots of these offerings...
Many is the time that I have turned away from my nearly constant work on my computer to ask him "What movie is this?" only to have him answer "I have no idea."
It is this nebulous, half trans-like state and lack of alacrity in comprehension that tends to drive me up a wall but, every once in a great while, he will stumble (and I do mean "by accident") upon some worthwhile offering on the "idiot tube".
Such an occasion was last evening when he landed upon the movie "Bobby" -- a portrait of the evening of Robert Kennedy's assassination...
I have this "talent" -- if one could use that term -- which usually enables me to "pick-up" the plot amazingly quickly of a movie or TV show even when it is initially accessed in the middle and even when I have absolutely no inkling whatsoever of the nightly TV offerings...
So it was, after only about 30 seconds or so, when I realized that this movie was about the assassination of RFK -- even though I'd never seen or heard anything about the movie before to my conscious knowledge.
The subject of Bobby Kennedy is one that can, like absolutely no other, immediately move me to tears... Bobby Kennedy was my hero -- in my heart and my soul -- and still is... I remember well his term as Attorney General, his presence next to his brother during the Cuban Missile Crisis, his eulogy of his brother and his subsequent campaign for the Democratic nomination...
Above: Robert (left) and John Kennedy at the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
When the words, "And now it's on to Chicago..." emitted from the TV, I could hold back the tears no longer. Fortunately, I was facing the computer screen at the time which, in my house, means that my back was toward my husband (who was, as usual, sitting in his favorite chair) because it upsets him to see me cry no matter what the cause but these last words spoken publicly by RFK always take me right back to that night -- the night I call "the worst night of my life".
I was 15 and it was the first time I'd felt so passionate about any presidential candidate... Martin Luther King had been assassinated only two months before and many credit the fact that Indianapolis escaped the rioting that gripped many other major cities in the U.S. on the speech that Bobby Kennedy gave there that night in which he said:
For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed . . . by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States -- we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times.
What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.
So I shall ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, that's true, but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love -- a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke...
62 days later, Bobby was also dead...
I don't think that those of you who are too young to remember that time can possibly understand the enormity of the impact that Bobby Kennedy's death had on so many of us. I'm not the only Boomer who still mourns over what a different -- kinder -- place the world would be now had he lived and gone on to become President... I have no compunction referring to Bobby Kennedy's death as "The Death of Our Last Greatest Hope as a Nation".
A great deal of the cynicism and disgust that Americans now feel about their government, politics and politicians in general began with the impeachment of Richard Nixon because of his appalling and criminal behavior while holding our nation's highest office. That horrible, debilitating event would never have happened had Bobby Kennedy gone on to the White House.
I have read many blog and editorial comments in which those (who were not there) attempt to minimize the greatness of Robert Francis Kennedy. I shake my head, my eyes brim with tears and I think to myself: Forgive them, Lord, they know not whereof they speak.
Perhaps, if I bring to your eyes some of his words, his thoughts, on some of the most profound problems that plagued -- and continue to plague -- both our nation and the world, an inkling of comprehension may just begin to surface in your minds...
Hopefully, you not too young to remember the awful struggle of the South African people in their quest to rid their country of its apartheid form of government. Hopefully, you have some comprehension of the extent of the suffering and sacrifice of the people of color there and the extent of the tyranny of the system that oppressed them.
Robert Kennedy was already championing their cause in 1966 -- fully two years before he ever announced his candidacy for President and TWENTY-SIX years before that system was finally abolished.
Concerning his trip to South Africa and his controversial address to the graduating class of University of Natal in Durban in that year, RFK told Look Magazine:
...I was told the church to which most of the white population belongs teaches apartheid as a moral necessity. A questioner declared that few churches allow black Africans to pray with the white because the Bible says that is the way it should be, because God created Negroes to serve. 'But suppose God is black', I replied. 'What if we go to Heaven and we, all our lives, have treated the Negro as an inferior, and God is there, and we look up and He is not white? What then is our response?' There was no answer. Only silence...
Robert Kennedy's words in his address to the University of Natal would be quoted Edward Kennedy during his eulogy of his brother:
There is discrimination in this world and slavery and slaughter and starvation. Governments repress their people; millions are trapped in poverty while the nation grows rich and wealth is lavished on armaments everywhere. These are differing evils, but they are the common works of man. They reflect the imperfection of human justice, the inadequacy of human compassion, our lack of sensibility towards the suffering of our fellows. But we can perhaps remember -- even if only for a time -- that those who live with us are our brothers; that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek -- as we do -- nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can. Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men. And surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again. The answer is to rely on youth -- not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. The cruelties and obstacles of this swiftly changing planet will not yield to the obsolete dogmas and outworn slogans. They cannot be moved by those who cling to a present that is already dying, who prefer the illusion of security to the excitement and danger that come with even the most peaceful progress.
It is a revolutionary world we live in, and this generation at home and around the world has had thrust upon it a greater burden of responsibility than any generation that has ever lived. Some believe there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills. Yet many of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant reformation; a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth; a young woman reclaimed the territory of France; and it was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and the 32 year-old Thomas Jefferson who [pro]claimed that "all men are created equal."
Do you begin to understand, now, the enormity of his loss to the world?
No?
Allow me to offer you more proof, then...
By early 1968, RFK was serving on one of the least "glamorous" Senate sub-committees in existence at the time: The Senate Sub-Committee on Migrant Labor.
Due to their grave concern over the health of Migrant Union Labor Leader Cesar Chavez during his 25-day fast in protest of the deplorable working conditions and pay scale of Latino migrant farm-workers in February 1968, the doctors in California who were attending him phoned Bobby Kennedy to plead with him to speak to Cesar and beg him to end it.
The piece of bread that ended that fast was passed from Bobby Kennedy's own hand to Chavez and Bobby's words later that evening to the Sheriff of Kern County are forever etched in my mind as those of a hero doing what it is that heroes are supposed to do: Defend the weak and the oppressed...
Sheriff, Kern County, California: If I have reason believe that there's going to be a riot started and somebody tells me that, "There's going to be trouble if you don't stop 'em," then it's my duty to stop 'em and I --
Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY): And then, you go out an arrest them?
Sheriff: Well, absolutely.
Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY): And charge them?
Sheriff: And charge them.
Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY): What do you charge them with?
Sheriff: Well, violating unlawful assembly.
Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY): Now, this is the most interesting concept I think, that you suddenly hear talk about the fact that somebody makes a report about somebody's going to get out of order, perhaps violate the law, and you go in and arrest them and they haven't done anything wrong. How can you go arrest somebody if they haven't violated the law?
Sheriff: They're ready to violate the law. In other words -- [laughter, jeers from audience]
Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY): Could I suggest --
Sheriff: Just like these labor people out here. They ask their attorneys, "What shall we do?"
Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY): Could I suggest, in the interim of time, in the luncheon period of time, that the Sheriff and the District Attorney [of Kern County] read the Constitution of the United States?
In my opinion, more than any of his speeches, this exchange between himself and the Kern County Sheriff shows what kind of man Bobby Kennedy was... Go get'em, Bobby... My HERO.
Bobby Kennedy handing the piece of bread to Cesar Chavez that broke Chavez' fast.
Later on that February, Bobby made one of the most stirring speeches I have ever heard at the University of Kansas...
Speaking of the climate of civil unrest of young people at the time, his words regarding "the spirit of confrontation" could be applied to the present time so easily:
I'm glad to come here to the home of the man who publicly wrote: "If our colleges and universities do not breed men who riot, who rebel, who attack life with all the youthful vision and vigor, then there is something wrong with our colleges. The more riots that come out of our college campuses, the better the world for tomorrow." And despite all the accusations against me, those words were not written by me, they were written by that notorious seditionist, William Allen White . . . when he lived and wrote, he was reviled as an extremist and worse. For he spoke, he spoke as he believed.
He did not conceal his concern in comforting words. He did not delude his readers or himself with false hopes and with illusions. This spirit of honest confrontation is what America needs today. It has been missing all too often in the recent years and it is one of the reasons that I run for President of the United States.
In that same speech, RFK expressed his deep commitment to championing the causes of those Americans who were -- and still remain -- the most downtrodden:
Demonstrators shout down government officials and the government answers by drafting demonstrators. Anarchists threaten to burn the country down and some have begun to try, while tanks have patrolled American streets and machine guns have fired at American children. I don't think this a satisfying situation for the United States of America.
And if we seem powerless to stop this growing division between Americans, who at least confront one another, there are millions more living in the hidden places, whose names and faces are completely unknown - but I have seen these other Americans - I have seen children in Mississippi starving, their bodies so crippled from hunger and their minds have been so destroyed for their whole life that they will have no future. I have seen children in Mississippi - here in the United States - with a gross national product of $800 billion dollars - I have seen children in the Delta area of Mississippi with distended stomachs, whose faces are covered with sores from starvation, and we haven't developed a policy so we can get enough food so that they can live, so that their children, so that their lives are not destroyed, I don't think that's acceptable in the United States of America and I think we need a change.
I have seen Indians living on their bare and meager reservations, with no jobs, with an unemployment rate of 80 percent, and with so little hope for the future, so little hope for the future that for young people, for young men and women in their teens, the greatest cause of death amongst them is suicide.
I run for the presidency because I have seen proud men in the hills of Appalachia, who wish only to work in dignity, but they cannot, for the mines are closed and their jobs are gone and no one - neither industry, nor labor, nor government - has cared enough to help.
I have seen the people of the black ghetto, listening to ever greater promises of equality and of justice, as they sit in the same decaying schools and huddled in the same filthy rooms - without heat - warding off the cold and warding off the rats.
If we believe that we, as Americans, are bound together by a common concern for each other, then an urgent national priority is upon us. We must begin to end the disgrace of this other America.
Least you believe that the championing of the health of our ecology and the environment began at some later time, allow me to enlighten you with words of Robert Kennedy during that same speech:
Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product - if we judge the United States of America by that - that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.
Bobby's opposition to the war in the Viet Nam was well-known. It was for the purpose of ending the war and that purpose alone that he chose to seek the candidacy against the incumbent Democrat and his brother's choice of a vice-president, Lyndon Johnson and, if one substitutes "Iraq" for "Viet Nam", his words concerning that action apply perfectly to the situation that we find ourselves in today:
I am concerned-as I believe most Americans are concerned-that the course we are following at the present time is deeply wrong.... I am concerned-as I believe most Americans are concerned-that we are acting as if no other nation existed, against the judgment and desires of neutrals and our historic allies alike...
I want to have an explanation as to why American boys killed, two weeks ago, in South Vietnam, were three times as many - more than three times as many -- as the soldiers of South Vietnam. I want to understand why the casualties and the deaths, over the period of the last two weeks, at the height of the fighting, should be so heavily American casualties, as compared to the South Vietnamese. This is their war. I think we have to make the effort to help them, I think that we have to make the effort to fight, but I don't think that we should have to carry the whole burden of that war, I think the South Vietnamese should.
I don't think it's up to us here in the United States, I don't think it's up to us here in the United States, to say that we're going to destroy all of South Vietnam because we have a commitment there. The commander of the American forces at Ben Tre said we had to destroy that city in order to save it. So 38,000 people were wiped out or made refugees. We here in the United States - not just the United States government, not just the commanders of and forces in South Vietnam, the United States government and every human being that's in this room - we are part of that decision and I don't think that we need do that any longer and I think we should change our policy.
I don't want to be part of a government, I don't want to be part of the United States, I don't want to be part of the American people, and have them write of us as they wrote of Rome: "They made a desert and they called it peace."
Of much concern today is how the rest of the world perceives America and Americans and how, of late, because of our aggressive military stance, we seem to have lost the respect we once had as the "light of liberty" in the world. Robert Kennedy was also concerned about this as evidenced by his words in that same University of Kansas speech:
We can do better in our relationships to other countries around the rest of the globe. President Kennedy, when he campaigned in 1960, he talked about the loss of prestige that the United States had suffered around the rest of the globe, but look at what our condition is at the present time. The President of the United States [Lyndon Johnson] goes to a meeting of the OAS at Montevideo- can he go into the city of Montevideo? Or can he travel through the cities of Latin America where there was such deep love and deep respect? He has to stay in a military base at Montevideo, with American ships out at sea and American helicopters overhead in order to ensure that he's protected, I don't think that that's acceptable.
I think that we should have conditions here in the United States, and support enough for our policies, so that the President of the United States can travel freely and clearly across all the cities of this country, and not just to military bases.
During the time of his Senate service, his appointment as Attorney General and his campaign for the Democratic nomination for President, Bobby Kennedy visited and spoke at places where no candidate has ever spoken before or since -- migrant farm worker camps, prisons, ghettos -- places devoid of $1,000 per plate supporters... Places where throngs of people pressed just for the chance of being able to touch his hand -- so much so that he jokingly lamented to his family concerning the rate of loss of his cufflinks.
Above: Everywhere he went, throngs of people struggled just to touch "The Last Greatest Hope of our Nation".
He went to these places because he CARED about the people who were in them... In my humble opinion, no politician of today can even come close to claiming his integrity, his appeal and his true commitment to "the moral course" of this nation... not one...
The following simple words, so eloquently expressed by the emotionally cracking tones of his brother Edward at his funeral say so much about the man I call "The Last Greatest Hope of our Nation":
My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.
Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
http://www.rememberingrobertkennedy.com
recommend this
email
print
link to this page
Comments: 38
He WAS "conservative" -- given the present definition of the word, Nippy... In that time, however, and those places, nothing else would have been acceptable and, ergo, his hopes and plans for a better future for ALL OF US could NEVER have BEGUN to be realized... Thank-you for your compliment...
I'm weeping and weeping.
We can try all we want to Jean, but to try and convey the emotions and the foundations of our personal political stands seems insurmountable to me.
The attachment that we had to our heroes and the substance of their character are not replicated very often, in our society.
I think maybe the one nearest that comes to mind is Nelson Mandela, but he's also fading in many minds.
That was all before my time. The earliest "big" memory I have is the Challenger explosion.
Of course I am an idealist and feel that had Robert F. Kennedy not been killed on that fateful day he would indeed have changed the footprints of history in our lifetimes.
KUDOS!
It's good to have heroes, Heather... They teach us to remember the things that are really important in life on this earth... Hold onto that love and try to replicate it everywhere you go... Blessings...
Thank-you, my friend Esther... It WAS a horrible time... The elation we were all feeling at the fact that Bobby had won the nomination in California was dashed to pieces only moments after it had begun and we were devastated... I agree completely, oh, how different everything would be now had that madman not ended our "Last Greatest Hope"... how very, very different...
Excellent job.
Thanks (turning away from the computer so your husband won't see me crying)
I'll have to look up the CIA and see if Bush #1 was there for these 3 assassinations.......
Thanks so much, Shelbia...
You are most entirely welcome, my friend Alison... most welcome...
I remember.
Come visit me sometime at my blog, okay? Tell Plunkett about Cat Saturdays there.
Layla: I have been meaning and MEANING to get to your new blogsite but things have just been SO CRAZY here with a BILLION things going on on ALL SIDES of me that I haven't even hardly been able to catch my BREATH! But I PROMISE that I will get over there SOON!
Rose: VERY well put, my friend: "TRUE HUMANITY"... VERY well put...
Thank you for inviting me to read this. I'm just speechless. Speechless. I'm just speechless, about the brilliant job you did on this article, and the brilliant man -- Robert Kennedy. You said YOU would be honoured? I'm honoured, and I'll add my two cents, of what I believe is inevitable, what America loses each time we lose a Robert Kennedy.
With the loss of Robert Kennedy, America lost a chance for redemption once. Have things gotten better since the death of Robert Kennedy? They should be much better, shouldn't they?
With each generation, by learning from our mistakes, aren't we supposed to grow and progress? Isn't that how it is supposed to be?
Or, has "progress" or any semblance of it simply been swept under the rug?
Jean, I was blessed to know a lady who foresaw historical events, long before they happened. Her success rate in foresight was 100%, or put another way, up to this day, she has never been wrong in the things that she saw. I speak of her in the past tense now, for she is gone, died. Yet, the things she foresaw are continuing to occur, long after her death, just as she said they would.
I don't usually like to speak about doom and gloom, but she also foresaw the future of America, and its future was not a promising one. Would you like to know why?
It was because of the lack of Bobbie Kennedys in it; that's right.
I want to say it the way that she said it. She spoke about this at a time when America was trembling about the U.S.S.R., and Communism, the Cold War, and those things.
She said that America need never fear destruction from . . .
an outside force
America would destroy itself.
How?
Division.
Hatred.
Those who were being hated who rise up, and launch an internal war -- something akin to terrorism; the way it was described, I believe it was terrorism from within,
attacking from within this country,
but not from without or outside of this country. There would be no need for outside attacks. The most effective attacks would be those from within, and they would be based on racial hatreds -- the racial hatreds of Whites against other peoples.
I do want to stress the word "peoples", lest anyone think it is Blacks launching the attacks. I get the impression -- nope, I won't name names. Suffice to say that people are going to get tired of being targeted and picked on for who they are, and they are going to retaliate from within this country.
If she is wrong, this shall be the first time in her 70+ years of living that she got it wrong, and she foresaw some very major -- as well as minor -- events in her lifetime.
The saddest thing is that she did not leave room for "if", for the conditional.
That disturbs me.
That is the reason I am so affected by all of the hatemongering that is being waged against Obama. No, it is not okay. The world is watching -- the African world, the Muslim world, the Communist/Socialist world -- as this man is being buffooned, lampooned, lambasted, lied on, and demonized for his colour, his paternal background, and even political/religious associations that aren't true.
What the world, and what Muslim Americans, naturalized African citizens, people who areCommunists or Socialists -- since it is not illegal to be that in this country -- see, is that they, more than Senator Obama are being made fun of, are the butts of the joke, and of the contempt. Please do not believe for one moment that they poo- pooing it, or merely shrugging it off. Would you?
Atheists also feel alienated. So do Gays, and Lesbians. It has reached a point where the "Christian Right" is all WRONG, and alienating so many Americans that do not belong to their cult. Again, further division. My mother was ordained by the Assemblies of God people, and therein would be your so-called "Christian Right". I tell you now that she would want nothing to do with those identified as "Christian Right". Where did the name come from anyway? I never heard the Apostle Paul, or any of the Catholic Councils mention it. I never heard Martin Luther mention it, either. Who coined this term,
"Christian Right"? I think I need to learn that.
So then, as the self-proclaimed, "Christian Right" go around alienating so many Americans, the tension builds -- a quiet storm. So far, not much has been said openly. But, they watch, and they see, and the tension builds, as more and more see their belief system -- be it religious, political, nonreligious, or apolitical -- or their heritage is ridiculed by people who are showing no regard or respect for them, while believing they have every right to do this. Right? It's all wrong. And where is Bobby Kennedy? He is gone. He has been assassinated; his mouth has been shut, so he no longer speaks . . .
Jean,
I'm a firm believer in paying to the piper, and this country, in all of its arrogance, and with its lack of regard for many of its own Citizenry, as well as for the rest of the world has much to answer for. As Bobby stated, we don't even provide for our own. What does it say when a country won't even provide for its own? Doesn't that speak volumes?
Again, your article is truly an article, and in no way might be deemed a mere post. It is brilliant.
I'm sorry if my comment is negative. I wish I were my usual silly, goofy self. But sometimes sobering words call for sobering responses.
In keeping with my gloomy feelings, I say
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair;
we had everything before us, we had nothing before us,
we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way
-- in short, the period was so far lik the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."
I wish the best for this country, while concerned that this country has yet to pay for what begin a long time ago, and has yet to repent for.
Again, thank you for this.
I am "digesting"...
I, too, have been feeling the "divisions" here (and by that I mean "media" and "social climate" in general) become more become more intrusive of late... yes... that's a good word for it... "Intrusive"...
It's almost as if some unseen call has recently gone out to all the "sleepers" who have been biding their time and staying in the background -- low profile -- to "step up" the frequency of their acts of emphasizing the divisions between certain factions in this country... Even so much as a reference to or approval of a certain kind of literature, music or art can bring on their expressed distain as not "Bibical", somehow...
I don't know but, one thing's for sure, the sheer amount of hatred going out there is just, plain SCARY.
I'm wont to say it but one of the possible explanations that comes to mind is that those on the VERY far "right" -- who believe that an "Armageddon", "Rapture" or "Reckoning" may be at hand -- are consciously or UNconsciously creating a climate of divisions and hatred in order to HASTEN that belief into being...
Another explanation that seems to me like it COULD be a contributor to this enormous amount of hatred is the decline of the family and the possibility that many people now in their adulthood might still be carrying around a lot of emotional baggage as the result of a fractured family structure in their youth...
Then, too, when financial times get hard for people, they tend to have -- an almost xenophobic -- emotional way of relating to others... I suppose it has something to do with the "this is MY stuff, not YOURS!" mentality that people react with during times when commodities and resources are scarce...
Or, it could be as you say -- a question of "destiny" or something...
All I know is that a LOT of people are angry and they're getting angrier... and if you even TRY to step in and be a voice of calm and reason, they turn around and vent their anger on YOU...
The "peacemakers" are certainly NOT "blessed" right now... They are scorned and ridiculed and told they're "bleeding heart liberals" or worse.
It is this arrogance of rhetoric and demeanor that I find so absolutely uncalled for... And people only act like that when they get it into their heads that somehow "God wants it that way..." (as if ANYONE could EVER know what God, if there is one, wants... "Hubris" I call that... Just plain "hubris"...)
Dylan expressed it best in one of his songs when he talked about various atrocities in history and capped each instance with "...and they had God on their side...".
Indeed, it is very sad. What I find saddest, and most embarrassing, is that those who call themself, "Christian" appear to be the most visible offenders, and haters. But, as Jesus stated about himself, it has to be this way for fulfillment of prophecy.
It really doesn't matter a bit to me whether a person believes in prophecy or not, just as theymay not believe they have a nose on their face; it is.
Truth is truth.
Newton was fascinated with it as well, and I've learned from his method of looking at him from an historical and mathematical perspective.
Still, I am such an extreme skeptic that I have put it to the test too many times and found the accuracy of it too mindboggling to NOT believe it, so . . .
Yes, all of these hatreds are leading up to some THING, and the focus shall not be on Christians, or on America -- no!
That person that I referred to in my previous comment was speaking about the coming events . . .without getting into too much, I shall just say that -- I shall email you, Jean.
I would rather not do this for public consumption, however I shall say that the Presidency of Obama, how to say this . . . there is a difference between predestination and foresight.
Just because G-d may know what shall happen doesn't mean that He MAKES it happen, meaning just because He has the ability to see the future does not mean He causes it.
Then some ask,
"If He sees it, and it is horrible, why doesn't He prevent it?"
That is such a simple question to answer as well.
It is not His TO prevent; it's humanity's. If they shall not, He cannot. He has given them dominion and authority, and He is not one to susequently take it back, just because (to use my words) humanity is such a bunch of idiots who cannot properly manage their own affairs. He gave them a manual, and if they shan't study to understand and follow it -- hey! THEIR CHOICE. From what I've seen lately, even those who claim to be Believers are not even following it. Yet humanity -- the gods of earth -- make a mess of things, then many of them cry,
"Why did G-d do this?"
So here we are, to-day. The "mess" being blamed on Jehovah.
Here we are, always looking for someone else to blame, for what we have done . . .who was it, was it Solomon who said, "there is nothing new under the sun".
I say, "The more things change, the more they stay the same."
Thank you for your response, and I'll be back at ya!
Again, a touching, poignant, brilliant article. I wanted to feature this, but found no group in which to DO IT, Girlfriend!!!
Who is to blame for the Wall Street fiasco?
Who is to blame for G. W. Bush's presidency?
Who is to blame for this economy?
Who is to blame for Iraq?
Jehovah God?
or if we are really honest with ourselves, were we asleep on our watch?
Who is to blame for slavery in this Country?
Some might say that had the Northern colonies never acquiesced, the Constitution may have never been ratified, and therefore it was expedient to agree to it in order to pacify the Southern colonies -- a compromise, allowing human beings to be demeaned into being classified as 3/5 a person. However, if you don't immediately cut the head off the serpent, what happens? Abraham Lincoln learned about 100 years later, although the emancipation of slaves -- in my opinion -- was more a convenient, political excuse.
Still the damage of permitting it for all those decades had been done; the Country had been poisoned with it, and you still see the remnants of it yet, especially South of the Mason Dixon line.
Is G-d to blame for that as well, or is humanity? Ben Franklin -- an abolitionist, and someone I believe to have been a very wise man -- certainly should have known better.
Do you see where I am coming from?
You plant seeds, and in this case the seeds are the birth of a great new nation. Meanwhile, you allow weeds to grow, and you also nourish the weeds along with your new growth. What else would you expect, as the weeds get so deeply rooted until it becomes nearly impossible to get rid of them.
This is why we have -- some . . .what, 190 years later -- tragedies, such as Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy. The weeds (known as hatred) were not seen to; they weren't destroyed, and now they are so deeply rooted within the soil of American society it is going to be nearly impossible to destroy them.
What does G-d have to do with any of this, this hatred? Absolutely nothing.
Jean, Neetah, I just found this - yes, when RFK was killed, a large measure of hope was buried. I remember it very vividly.
At the same time: he (and others, who also lost their lives) showed us ways to overcome the hatred, the destruction, the weeds, if you will...
We need to continue the work, not despair!
I am in tears here, what a beautiful piece of work this is Jean. The way you weave the facts, the history, the compassion of the man with your own thoughts about the time...brilliant. This is truly a labor of love, I can feel that in my heart.
Once again, my friend Nee, you have hit the proverbial nail upon the head... Hatred and the supreme being (if there is one) don't even belong in the same sentence -- let alone, the same philosophy...
Amen, Cristina! Amen!
It really WAS, Rose... What prompted it was a by-change happening upon a blog entry by someone I don't even know on another site altogether. I was appalled to read this person's "take" on RFK -- dissmissive, brusque, synical... Then I glanced over his profile -- born in the mid-70s... That totally explained it for me. And, thus fueled by righteous indignation, I simply HAD to set (at least my own personal) record straight so there could be no misinterpretation... He and Cesar Chavez cut from the same cloth and yet so very, very distant in place and culture. I had the distinct pleasure of actually attending an intimate talk by Cesar once at my college. His presence filled the room -- flooding it with peace and humility... I was INCREDIBLE. I kept thinking: "This must be what it was like to be in the presence of Ghandi."