Khrushchev also was reported to say that the peace options with America had ended with that assassination and that he now needed to worry about an American first strike again.
That assassination changed the direction of history and took us back into the Cold War once again. The CIA could reestablish its power again, the military could reassert its power and did so with Johnson and the re-escalation of the Vietnam War.
Democracy was thwarted, peace was prevented, and the ruling power elite was back in the driver's seat.
Although LBJ continued and perhaps improved on the direction of some of Kennedy's policies such as civil rights, the Vietnam War was his undoing, and we can assume, for better or worse, that the direction of that war would have been different under JFK. It also created an opportunity to reinsert the power of the established economic elites, keeping them in control of some major economic directions of the nation.
It was a moment of great distress and discouragement, eventually leading to the dismantling of the democratizing movements of the time and democracy itself.
The next two bullets killed the other two national leaders who were actively seeking to move the nation in a democratizing direction. First, Martin Luther King Jr., in April of 1968, who had been leading the nation toward a more inclusive stance concerning African-Americans, and in fact all under-represented communities. Next in June of that same year, Robert Kennedy, who also represented the hopes of a new surge of democracy in the nation, was also assassinated.
Those who supported the renewal of that democratizing energy were in shock and disarray having a hard time believing in the coincidence of all three democratizing leaders being assassinated within five years.
By August of that year, the Democratic National Convention was the scene of national anguish over the loss of leadership and was concerned about the direction of the nation.
Kissinger was busy diverting the Vietnam peace talks to thwart a Humphrey victory, and the press was pushing "law and order", Nixon's calling card.
Now, with the opposition in disarray, the economic elite could establish themselves firmly back in the seat of power, moving toward their earlier dominance before FDR and the New Deal. They were about to assure their continued dominance with the Powell Memorandum to the national Chamber of Commerce, directing business to get involved in politics to prevent those democratizing influences from reemerging. (Just a side-note--Powell was later nominated to a Supreme Court seat by Nixon.)
The result of those three bullets was to hijack American democracy, switching the narrative to fit the needs of an economic elite and finally delivering us to rule by an economic elite within a system that is designed to prevent any change that might weaken their power, influence or control.
The JFK assassination, those 56 years ago, began a series of events that have replaced our democratizing narrative, killed the American Dream, and delivered us into an alien ideology that serves only an economic elite.
The ultimate question is how do we reestablish that democratizing dream without waiting for our present, entrenched system to provide any leadership?
The answer is a grassroots citizens' movement that represents the unity and will of the huge majority of American citizens to take back our nation.
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