Camelot and the development of the bureaucratic state

While all of America was shocked, saddened, and dismayed by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, it was not the death of hope, as some may present it. For me and for many others, the assassination of JFK was an assault on America, and tragic as it was, recovery from that assault began the moment Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as the next Commander in Chief.

But to those caught up in the Camelot fantasy accompanying his administration, a dream and a vision for the future was shattered. And like the loss we all feel when a loved one is gone, they moved on from the trauma of that shattered dream recovering from their grief, but with the pain of that loss remaining the rest of their lives. Explaining in her article on November 16, "Why we still talk about JFK," Peggy Noonan said, "But Camelot isn't JFK. Camelot is the way we remember America before JFK died....a placid-seeming, even predictable place that we have not seen since."

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While it would appear that major changes in our society began and were even caused by the killing of Kennedy, a look at the larger picture would indicate otherwise. In the U.S., the chaos of the 1960s included a new level of domestic violence, the counterculture, a widespread anti-war movement, and the formation of various revolutionary organizations. These and other events were not the beginning of something, but as the result of the fundamental transformation (to use current terminology) of our nation due to the Great Depression, World War II, and our response to those events. The 19th century ended with the United States having taken its place as a world power to be reckoned with and a national government powerful enough to subdue the railroad and oil barons. The end of World War II represented the next step, as the United States took its place internationally as the number one world power. Internally, things had changed as well. The national government had become a bureaucratic apparatus upon which a growing number of people and industries were dependent. And Karl Marx was proving to have quite a profound influence upon the nation and the world, even as his theories on capitalism and the “working class” were proving more and more to be unworkable unless maintained by tyrannical regimes. While Soviet Russia and Mao’s China were stirring up war with the U.S. and its allies, within our country, proponents of Marxist socialism began the process that would lead to a Marxist president being elected in 2008. Though I was only 9 when Kennedy was President, I can attest that Camelot was a fantasy that only part of America believed in. While respecting the office of President, we were skeptical of any Arthurian-type legend arising from that office, content to let history determine how good his presidency would be for our country. Neither do we remember America as ever having been Camelot. While Franklin D. Roosevelt helped establish the President as a father figurehead to some, it took the development of the liberal establishment media into a Soviet-style propaganda machine to elevate the presidency further. Now millions of Americans think that a Marxist President with monarchical powers is OK in a nation that is now just a shell of a representative republic.