What if?

Kennedy sworn in as president: In his inaugural speech, Kennedy said, "Ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country." (Photo Credit: Bettmann/CORBIS)
What if?

See my post dated Thursday February 21, 2013: Killing Kennedy, http://www.being50.com/2013/02/killing-kennedy.html 

This month marks the 50^th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.  A young and very popular not just president but world leader.  There have only been 9 presidents since President John F. Kennedy.  The question might be, how many of those presidents might not have been, if he had lived to a nice old age.

Consider for a minute that I am not at all making reference to Democrat or Republican.  We all need to see the event for what it was.  Besides being a horrible act of terrorism, it altered everyone’s life for evermore.  As horrific as the act of terrorism was on 9/11, the assassination woke us up from a level of innocence.  Even as difficult as the times were with the Vietnam War, and the peace demonstrations, the Cold War and the threat of a nuclear war with Russia.

Maybe its ignorance on my part, and it can all be attributed to the fact that to a very large degree we were sheltered from evil, and bad news.  World News and news in general didn’t travel all that fast.  We still depended on the three major television networks for our information source.  And approximately one and a half hours of news coverage per day per network, and much less on the weekends.

In today’s age of the internet and cell telephones, if soldiers die somewhere around the world we are all made aware within minutes.  If an act of violence takes place at LAX as an example we have immediate coverage, even if incomplete information, we are still made aware of the event.  I know that acts of violence were more common than we were made aware of back in the early 1960’s, but I have a feeling that the limited amount of exposure kept many copy cats and criminals from jumping in the middle of it and making their event (act) bigger (worst).  I am convinced that many acts of violence take place because the perpetrators will get on the spot light (the news/internet/Facebook/twitter).

Back to what might have been:  had John F. Kennedy lived, his presidential influence would have affected our time and into the future. Lyndon B Johnson wouldn’t have taken over the presidency by default, he might have or not ever been president.  The chain of events that would have fallen in line are very unpredictable, but with different outcomes to be sure.  What if Nixon had not been president, or even Gerald Ford, how might that have changed our politics today, who might be today’s influential legacies.

What might our economy be like today? Would Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King have lived to a nice old age to drastically change the world we live in?  What might our influence in the world be today if our progression through time had not been so drastically changed?  I know that I was deeply affected by the loss of President Kennedy, as much for the loss of the leadership and influence as for the shock to the system that I receive on that eventful day some 50 years ago.

What if, is a lot to ponder, I know that things could always have turned out better or worst.  Being the individual that I am, I prefer to think that a continuance of innocence in our country back then, couldn’t possibly have led to a worst future.  The best is yet to come…