Don’t know why I do this to myself.

 

Every few years I get nostalgic and start looking for RFK books that I don’t already have, as if buying more of them will bring him back to us.

 

It won’t.

 

But it will keep him forever in my heart, as he deserves to be.

I need to see the images, read the speeches, hear from people who knew, respected and loved him. 

I need to resurrect him every so often, even though it means losing him all over again.

But not the dream of what could, and should, have been. Never that!

 

THE TRUTH HURTS

 

The truth is that I was mad at RFK for a while, for months, right up until he was shot. I thought he waited too long to run for President and that his entry into the race was doomed to failure against the rising popularity of his Democratic rival for the job, Senator Eugene McCarthy, because his volunteers had already committed to backing McCarthy after they couldn’t convince Bobby to run. I thought his candidacy would split the vote via write-in diehards and that doing so would doom the country to having a Republican president, namely Richard Nixon, or LBJ (who I half-suspected of having JFK killed to become President), two men I didn’t trust as far as I could throw them. (Boy, howdy, did my intuitions about Nixon ever turn out to be prescient! As we all know, he ended up resigning in disgrace for the Watergate fiasco. And the presidential tapes only confirmed our worst suspicions about the man, even though 18 minutes of them was erased under suspicious circumstances.)

 

So, after RFK was killed, I went into a tailspin, feeling that I had betrayed him by not jumping onto his bandwagon the moment he decided to throw his hat into the ring. (Being petty creates immediate regret after the object of one’s pettiness dies.)

 

Not that my supporting him would have saved him from what happened, but it half-killed me that I was pissed at him when he died, but not for a millisecond after he was shot…  I was brought up short, reeling. NOT AGAIN!

 

JFK murdered.

MLK Jr. murdered.

And then Bobby, just two months after MLK Jr.

It was just too, too much to wrap my idealistic head around!

 

There was a cartoon that came out at that time.  It showed a grieving male campaigner responding to an alien who was standing in front of his UFO. “I don’t have a leader,” the campaigner was saying to the alien. “They shot all my leaders.”

 

One of RFK’s favorite poets was Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

I can hear Bobby in one of his poems.

(It may, in fact, have been published in  his book TO SEEK A NEWER WORLD and/or recited by him during a speech, in fact.)

 

Come, my friends,
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order, smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will:
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

(Public Domain)

 

I think America would be completely different, and far better along the way toward living out its creed had RFK lived to become President of the United States. I’m glad to see a bust of RFK in President Biden’s office, along with Cesar Chavez. It gives me hope that he is doing what he can to truly reclaim the soul of this nation and redirect us toward liberty and justice for all. We are supposed to have a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”  It’s high time we demanded one with our voices and our votes. The other side that wants autocracy, racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia and continuing white male supremacy is certainly using theirs (and a lot of underhanded tactics, to boot) to keep things the way were before the Civil Rights and Human Rights Acts were codified, with everyone else getting the short end of the stick!

 

I’m glad Bobby isn’t here to see what has become of us. Insurrectionists attacking the Capitol, with co-conspirators’  inside cheering them on, voting against approving the Electoral College votes,  and having the back the chief backer of the uprising, the out-going miscreant in the White House. Lies and liars creating ignorant, cult-like monsters, with their blinders on, to do the out-going office holder’s bidding. (Not that I think this would have been inevitable anyway had RFK ever been President, but we will never know, will we?)

 

Some things are just too sad to wish on anyone as dedicated to justice and equity as RFK became during his evolution from a rich man’s high castle ignorance to savant-like understanding, and defense of, “the least of these.”

 

There are still portraits of RFK on Indian reservations, in the homes of Hispanic people, and in countless homes, including mine.

We haven’t forgotten.

We will never forget.

Bobby Kennedy was our champion!!!

WE MISS YOU!!!