ASSASSINATION IS A FEARFUL WORD. Our world is filled with so much hatred and anger that it’s not a giant leap for an unbalanced person to reach for murder as their brand of politics. If you disagree with the politics of an individual and you are not in your right mind, killing that person might actually make sense to you. It really doesn’t matter that your actions will pretty much end your own life as you know it.

The assassination of a country’s leader can have a profound effect on virtually everything within the scope of that political subdivision. The two most significant assassinations in this country, to be sure, were those of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. If asked to prioritize, the death of Lincoln would probably come first because of the Civil War. That murder is fascinating for many reasons, not the least of which is that Booth, like so many other assassins, thought that he could get away with his crime.

Booth was clearly responsible for Lincoln’s death. People saw him do it. In the case of Kennedy, however, there has been seemingly endless debate about who committed that terrible deed. I’ve always believed that the great debate came about because the event was so cataclysmic, there had to be more to it than Oswald and Ruby. This was not just one deranged guy with a gun. The JFK assassination has always been perplexing. We have heard theories that the Mafia and a particular union did it. I had a union leader tell me that they killed JFK and that they would kill his brother. Maybe, but we’ll probably never know for sure. Read more…

THIS COUNTRY IS LEANING more and more to the right of the political spectrum. Don’t you agree? On the one hand, we can elect a Donald Trump president and, in fact, consider doing that a second time. On the other, we embrace certain liberal thought through our contemporary Democrats. Right now, it looks like the Democrats are in firm control in New York, but don’t bet the ranch on things staying that way.

We know that there was a time when the USA was considered a liberal democracy. We boasted the likes of Hubert Humphrey and, at least for a while, Adlai Stevenson who never really caught on. The truth is, socialists we ain’t. I have always believed that much of what this country has become derives directly from the great Civil War between the North and South. If you want to understand the difference between Republicans and Democrats, you might read up on the end of the Civil War, fought in large part over the institution of slavery in the United States. Interestingly, of course, it was the southern Democrats who defended the tradition of slavery and the Lincoln Republicans who were the anti-slavery people.

Of course, things changed down the road. While the southern Democrats remained more conservative than their northern brothers for many years, the party eventually turned around and became the liberal wing of the contemporary political party structure. When Lyndon Johnson was president, we witnessed a sea change in the party. In addition to the War on Poverty, Johnson will be remembered for signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Civil Rights Act of 1968 while the Republican Party morphed into the conservative wing of our politics—that was quite a fall! Today, while neither contemporary party believes in slavery, a good part of this country remains, well, reactionary and it seems the Republican party would put many Americans into economic slavery of a sort. Read more…