THE UNIVERSE DOESN'T COME WITH A REWIND BUTTON

To Vivek Ramaswamy who has stated that if he is elected he would ask Elon Musk to be in his administration because "he laid off three quarters of the Twitter work force." Ol' buddy, ol' pal just how long would you last if three fourths of the peons who make you life so comfortable decided not to show up for a a month or so. Ever get the feeling some of these wanna be politicians would put most of us in stasis and only wake us up to vote? Of course at that point they wouldn't neeD us anymore.

Caught a film titled Parkland this weekend. Movie is based on Four Weeks in November by Vincent Bugliosi. A minute by minute, hour by hour history of the murder of JFK. Parkland is the name of the hospital where Kennedy was taken after the shooting.

Which sent me back to a morning in eigth grade home room when Jack Carter, the vice principle, came in without a word, gave a note to Mrs Redmond. That's how the kids in a a logging town in the Cascade foothills of Oregon learned that the president was dead. For four days the country almost ground to a halt. There was literally nothing else on the tube. Sunday his assassin was murdered on live TV. 

Civil rights entered a new era, Politics entered a new era. Over the next five years Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and Bob Kennedy. Damn. Viet Nam heated up.Johnson had to choose between  guns and butter and chose guns. He didn't resig but he did choose to step aside. Took almost as much courage ias marching in that walk from the Capital to the church where the funeral mass was celebrated. Johnson told the secret service agants that "he didn't deserve to be president if he was afraid to go out where the American people could see him."

 Southern Democrats became Rebulicans. Watergate, innder cites on fire, riots on e campuses, Kent State. Nixon. Oh Lord, Tricky Dick. First president to resign from office for lying about the attempt to steal an election he was going to win anyway. 

Jump ahead to the Reagan years when the US chose to support tin pot dictators who were murdering their eir own people/ The excuse. The fight against communist subversion. And that hoary old accusation just won't go away even though the talking heads hurling the insult probably couldn't define communism if you asked them to.

Heck no generation has avoided the bad going on terrible times. But, it wasn't until the fifties and sixties that using police dogs on kids demonstrating for civil rights, jungle wars and murdered presidents, cvil rights leaders and senators were on on national television. Revolution, the decades leading up to the civil war, the civil war, bank failures, three presidentiala assassintaed, First world war, farmers losing their farms, the crash, depression, the dust bowl. another war. And. So. On. Heck reading this litany you'd find yourself believing that was all that was going on. There were a lot of good times. The country got through it and probably will again. 

One really big difference. Now the nut jobs that never got past the end of the bar or the low power local FM stations have a world wide audience. And the semi not crazy rest of us are still trying to catch up. 

Well this grew like Topsy. Sort of went all over the place. Got some some stuff I'd been thinking about for a long time off my chest. For what all that's worth. Sometimes I find myself believing that the day in Dallas was where step by step is how we ended up here looking backat all those forks in the road knowing that there are no do overs in this universe. Or crystal balls.