1960. John F. Kennedy is President. I am 13; quiet, skinny, shy kid who loves basketball. Conscientious altar boy. Son of union organizer. Interested in the world.
JFK exudes virile confidence, charm, vigor, generosity, purpose, liberality, energy. Everyone knows he is Catholic but he doesn't wear it on his slieve.
The USA is the good Sheriff. Strong, protective, prudent, just. Combating the evil, imperialistic, tyrannical, totalitarian USSR.
We had, in recent memory, defeated two similar evil empires; restored Europe in the Marshall Plan; rebuilt our own economy into the most prosperous in human history.
While containing the aggressive Soviets, we were sending aid to the underdeveloped world of hunger and suffering: USAID, Peace Corps, Catholic Missionaries, international organizations like the UN, and such.
The Civil Rights Movement is gaining momentum and engaging all our moral elites, outside of the segregated South, including Church, university, unions, entertainment, athletics, media, law, politics.
There is a good deal of migration: blacks and Puerto Ricans moving into the northern cities for work and better living conditions. No great panic of anxiety as the cities absorb the new migrations as they had previous one.
An ecumenical, religious revival...Protestant, Catholic, Jewish...has lifted spirits across the country under inspired leaders like Billy Graham, Bishop Fulton Sheen, Abraham Heschel, Thomas Merton.
Fluidly if inarticulately, our entire country is Pro-Life, Pro-Family, Pro-Maternity-Paternity, Pro-Chastity/Fidelity, Pro-Religion, Pro-Capital, Pro-Labor, Pro-Country, Pro-Freedom...if imperfectly in practice.
Large, wholesome families...especially among Catholics and Afro-Americans...thrive in a spirit of hope and optimism as the anxious WASP elite have not yet engineered their dsytopian campaign of contraception, sterilization, abortion and genocide against the poor and powerless.
Working class is flourishing: forcefully represented by the Church in the cultural, the unions in the economic, and the Democratic Party in the political.
Competition...labor vs. capital, Democrats vs. Republicans, South vs. North, Religious vs. Secular...is conducted in a spirit of civility, respect, cooperation. There is a lessening of resentment, polarization, demonization. There is a sense of national unity. And so, for example, Richard Nixon, who most probably lost the election due to election fraud in Chicago and Texas, gracefully conceded the victory for the peace of the nation.
If a single word were to describe USA 1960, it would be: Generosity. JFK embodied it. Graciousness, abundance, hope, confidence. He famously expressed it: "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." He lived it, fluently, spontaneously, passionately. He was to Nikita Khrushchev what Davey Crockett was to Big Mike Fink, what John Wayne's Tom Doniphon was to Lee Marvin's Liberty Valence.
Our new MAGA America of DJT is morally the polar opposite of the USA of JFK. It is ungenerous, resentful, anxious, bitter, polarized, isolationist, insecure, vindictive, xenophobic, selfish and lacking in dignity, courtesy, magnanimity, humility, and basic decency. If JFK inspired us, DJT degrades us.
I voted in this recent election, without reservation, AGAINST the deeper depravity of the DNC of Biden and Harris. The Trump victory may prove to be a move towards Franco/Mussolini/Salazar (the last is the best case scenario as he was the competent, devoutly Catholic, longtime dictator of Portugal). But it is a move away from a progressive totalitarianism I compare to Mao/Stalin/Hitler.
I hope and pray that all the good, and none of the bad, possibilities of this new regime be accomplished. If Trump represents much of the ugliest side of America, he is also a fierce ally of the Church in so many of her concerns. Such irony that such a flawed person become in many ways our best friend.
We now know that the heroes of the early 1960s, JFK and MLK, who so edified us, carried private, moral cancers. They probably exceeded Clinton and Trump in promiscuity, marital infidelity, and abuse of young women. This malignancy exploded across our society in the late 1960s and has given us the contrasting (but not morally equivalent) perversities of today's DNC and RNC.
Is this essay a useless exercise in sentimental nostalgia? I think not. With this recall I remind myself, but especially our young (my grandchildren), that America is not a choice between DJT and Biden/Harris. Just one lifetime ago (65 years ago) the USA was magnanimous, confident, vigorous, procreative; not enslaved to jealousy, anxiety, resentment; and radiant with dignity, grace, charm, nobility.
Indeed, in that manner may we "make America Great!"
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