Fifty-three years ago today John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.
It's hard to fully express the jolting tangible change of catastrophe engulfing those of us who lived in that moment, death of course the capital catastrophe, with its irremediable denial of what we are allowed to believe about the world. The rest of the future may be arguable, but the future may not include the dead. The dead are gone and not to return. Kennedy took a bullet to the head as he travelled in a motorcade through Dealy Plaza. He died soon after.
The jolt shook everyone who lived in that moment, shook hard. Kennedy's assassination knocked American culture, all of its political, social and religious institutions, completely off-kilter, and the people living through it felt and remarked on the lasting nature of the change. It was an epoch-making event, and for years newspapers noted the anniversary of his assassination right there on the front page.
But history, bearing a succession of catastrophes of equal or greater weight down the intervening decades, marches on. Kennedy's murder has long since ceded its place on the front page to other fresher woes.
Rest in peace, you shiny man.
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