Reply to Vonnegut

In an essay titled "Cold Turkey" and written for In These Times, Kurt Vonnegut, one of the heros with whom we share this space-time, wrote that America failed to become the "humane and reasonable" society dreamed of by his generation because of being "crazy drunk on power." I humbly disagree with Mr. Vonnegut on this point. I think the failure of America to achieve a more just and humane society came, in part, because of a series of murders. In particular, I believe this country would have had a much brighter future had Bobby Kennedy not been assasinated in Los Angeles June 4, 1968. Kennedy was moving inexorably to a landslide victory and a mandate for an American version of capitalism with a human face (the sort of capitalism that is sometimes called "the Third Way" or "the Swedish model"). The insane war on the Vietnamese people would have ended sooner. Countless human beings who died because the war continued would be alive today as a result (as well as their descendents). Many others would have remained whole, who were maimed during the long war and had very different lives because of it. The damage done to Viet Nam by the use of chemical warfare and carpet bombing after Nixon's election and then reelection would not have happened. Cambodian society would, no doubt, not have been driven insane by Nixon's bombings and assaults and Pol Pot would never have come to power. The Johnson-era war on poverty, which saved so many lives and enhanced so many more, would not have been perverted and then maligned by an ill-meaning GOP administration. Wage led growth (another Swedish example) would have raised incomes and employment prospects. Everyone would have been better off.

Some will say I'm being overly optimistic and that's possible: when Bobby Kennedy was shot I was at an age when most kids were only interested in cartoons and comic books. Nevertheless, I was oddly interested enough in politics to take advantage of my great aunt's habit of letting me do whatever I wanted and stayed up late to see the results of the California primary. I saw the assasination on television (at least it was in black and white) while my great aunt slept peacefully in a nearby bedroom. I believe looking back that there was something about the times, the movement of ideas and people, and Kennedy's place in it all that bode well for the future. In any event, we will never know. This movement was terminated by violence. April's murder of Martin Luther King. June's murder of Bobby Kennedy. The murder three years earlier of Malcolm X. The murders of Black Panther leaders. The official attack on all manner of leftist organizations in the United States by the domestic intelligence bureaucracy. It was a time of possibilities terminated. Instead, the country ended up with Richard M. Nixon. And then the 1980s Ronald Reagan. And now G. W. Bush. I don't think we had to end up here. We need to keep this in mind if we are to try to push the society in a more "humane and reasonable" direction in future.