From Camelot to Dracula

The Passing of a Burnt-Out Torch

What a strange trip it has been. I was two years old when John F. Kennedy placed his hand upon the Bible and swore the presidential oath of office, which in that era was something of a solemn obligation, while in our own it’s merely a suggestion. On that cold January day JFK spoke movingly about the torch being passed to a new generation of Americans.

The torch flamed out many years ago, at My Lai in Vietnam, at Kent State, on a hotel balcony in Memphis and in the Ambassador hotel in Los Angeles, in the colossal failure of George W. Bush’s absurd war on a tactic and his callous response to Hurricane Katrina.

Sixty-three years to dim the lights in the shining city on the hill, a city built by the labor of the enslaved.

Darkness gathers now. Those sanctified few who possess wealth beyond comprehension are poised to gain even more, for this is the Time of the Oligarchs. Meanwhile, their Christian warrior allies prepare to storm the thin wall separating Church & State. Anyone who disagrees with them must be brought to heel.

A convicted felon and adjudicated rapist will soon regain the office he left in disgrace and failure, and this time he will have even more power — and immunity from prosecution, a gift from a corrupt Supreme Court.

The America of JFK’s time was optimistic, confident, sure of itself and what it represented to the world. America still had a post-WWII glow, some credibility among the nations. Perhaps JFK was more style than substance, the handsome face of American imperial ambition, but at least he was educated, literate, a reader who appreciated history, art and science. He proposed that the United States set its sights on the heavens, send a man to the moon and bring him safely home.

Donald Trump has no grand vision other than his own power and self-enrichment. Trump is illiterate and proud of the fact. JFK read, Trump watches TV. Where JFK looked to science, technology and the sky, Trump demands the nation turn inward and purge itself of suspected enemies, seal the border to keep out the world’s dark-skinned hordes, and believe in him alone. JFK navigated a Cold War with the Soviet Union; Trump wages a rhetorical war, for now, against transgender people, against women, against truth and decency.

JFK served in the Navy; Donald Trump dodged the Vietnam draft, claiming bone spurs. JFK wrote a book, Profiles in Courage; Trump slapped his name on the Art of the Deal. One of the ironic subplots of Camelot was the American Mafia’s hatred of JFK and his brother, Robert. And now comes Trump, who has fantasized for decades of becoming a respected and feared Mafia Boss, a true Don, and with the cowardly acquiescence of the Supreme Court and a timid Department of Justice, he’s well on his way.

Trump’s mentor, the Mafia boss of Russia, must be very pleased.

While our idea of ourselves as the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave has never been accurate, it had some purchase in JFK’s time. No longer. In 2024 America is hollowed-out and petrified of its own shadow; we are the Land of the Eternally Aggrieved and Home of the Craven and Credulous.

The New Frontier was aspirational, a reach for the heights of possibility. MAGA is a self-inflicted wound, an own goal, a blind embrace of cruelty and stupidity. Sixty-three years to plummet from the stars to the mud. I saw it happen.