Today, we Americans are faced with a frightful vision: The “Better Angels of Our Nature,” with clipped wings, tentatively clinging to a wobbly, “Arc of the Moral Universe,” whilst weakly accompanied by the discordant strains of the, “Mystic Chords of Memory.”
The idea of, “Race,” in one form or another, underlies the full course of this society’s development. Race was not always a separator based on color. And, too, the idea of supremacy or superiority based on race – with no skin color involved – did not begin upon the shores of the newly discovered continent.
As the immensely talented and successful sire of the Kennedy Clan, Joseph Kennedy, with all of his accomplishments – crowned by having been the Ambassador to the Court of St. James – never was able psychologically to overcome the real social and other disadvantages against which he had to struggle throughout his life, because of what he called his, “Raced.” That sounds strange in these times, but, “Irish Need Not Apply” was a real sign. That may explain Old Joe’s naive attraction to the demonstrative, “Kampf” (struggle) of the nascent German leader of his times. After that faux pas, Joe Kennedy put aside his personal ambitions and pushed them upon his war-doomed namesake, and ultimately found dramatic success with Jack
Distinct from its feudal system of, “Class,” the British invented, “Race” to distinguish themselves from the captured Irish, Scots-Irish and others they considered sub-human.
As Britain struggled to establish itself upon the northern shores of the new continent, sub-class Brits were recruited as bonded servants at Jamestown. When the first enslaved Africans were brought to Jamestown in 1619, they were immersed in that miserable, manual toil alongside the bonded slaves. When that mixture exploded in revolution against the ruling class, the Brits went themselves one step further and invented race by color. With progressive legislation intended to widen the color gulf, Jamestown thus established the pattern of color distinction that bugs us even to this day!
With his bottomless, filthy American lucre, Joe Kennedy, through the JFK miracle, was able not only to retrieve the Irish Soul from the Americans, but also broke a big Catholic Church bugaboo in American politics. In the meantime, the Ulster Irish were still decades away from retrieving their own souls from the British, through the dint of armed struggle. Lower class Brits, including now many of color, are in a constant fight to overcome class barriers.
JFK discovered there was one American problem that could not be relegated to his, “Ask not…” admonition. Although his pop was able to retrieve the Irish soul and respectability for the Catholic Church, there was yet an unanswered soul out there in the wilderness, and it would not be stilled. Thus, JFK and Bobby were drawn into the struggle with Martin L. King for the progressive retrieval of that last soul in the wilderness, which would last long after each member of this martyred trio had been assassinated.
There are voices today attempting to devalue that progress and drag us all back into some presumed greatness of the past. This brief resume of how we got this way should serve also as a cautionary dissuasion against reversal to the discredited phases of our past experiences.
***** ***** *****
Hail, America of my soul!
Thee and thy great might makes me whole.
Discarding, “Without”,
“Within” makes me doubt.
Could we be tunneled by a mole?
Comments