Memories of an assassination

It has been my experience that whenever something terrible happens such as the sudden death of a close friend or family member, that your pscyhic suddenly goes into denial mode in order to protect you from the enormity of a situation. Its seems like your subconscious spoon feeds you a little at a time until the reality of the situation sinks in.

Suddenly, the whole world stopped. I walked to the Illini Student Union to watch the events unfold on television. Many people, both men and women were crying. Most people, however, just stared at the television with a blank look like they couldn't believe what had happened.

For the next 5 days, everything shut down in the country. Only basic services were open such as grocery stores and gas stations. Radio stations played funeral dirges. The whole country plunged into mourning. It was an experience that will live with me forever. When Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvy Oswald, the suspected assassin, on live televsion it seemed like this was a bad movie being played out on television. This can't be for real, can it? This episode turned our mourning into a surrealistic dream. Were we losing our minds? Are we becoming pyschotic from the unreal events that are happening?

I had no idea that I would react like I did during the Kennedy assassination. I was not much interested in politics back then and patriotism was something you never had to exercise very much coming out of the placid 50's. However, I feel it shows how important my country is to me. My generation was raised during the Cold War and we were terrified that the Soviet Union may someday attack us. I remember as a little boy lying in bed at night listening to the low flying airplanes overhead wondering if it were the Russians attacking us. Our fears were real and when our president was killed we all felt vulnerable.

Kennedy's assassination was the beginning of a turbulent time in American history. The assassination of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, the race riots, and the Vietnam war almost brought this country to its knees. That time period seemed much scarier than our current state of affairs. For some reason, the World Trade Center attacks didn't have as much of an impact on me as Kennedy's assassination. It may be due to the fact that the innocence of my youth was shattered by Kennedy's assassination.

Today we are fighting a new kind of war and our President is taking a lot of heat for invading Iraq because they were thought to harbor weapons of mass destruction. I have to admit that I am disturbed that we are fighting the war in Iraq on what appears to be a false premise. If we are to remain the beacon of democracy and truth, it is imperative that we are honest in our dealings with the rest of the world. Whatever your feelings might be about our leaders and our politicians, I hope no one ever has to experience a presidential assassination to realize how much our great country means to us.