JUNE 6, 1968
It has been said that outstanding individuals die but mankind,
civilization, the nation, all go on. Yet the assassination of Robert F.
Kennedy is frightening in its implications about the state of the
country.
Robert F. Kennedy was not a political saint, nor did he embody
the more radical ideas of the future that sustain so many people–
like myself. (Neither does Senator McCarthy.) But in a sense larger
than the specific records and personalities of these two men, together
they offered some hope of a new politics, perhaps of a new national
style, by galvanizing those Americans, especially among the young,
who are tired of the old crap. Senator Kennedy particularly seemed
to supply the power we ourselves lacked.
There are many stirring movements of dissent and of intellectual
renewal here and abroad. But there is none strong or intelligent
enough to become more than an expression of protest, none one
could support all the way. In this situation, Senator Kennedy
- and Senator McCarthy - may
be
said to have represented a heroic
effort to work for a new world within the confines of the old one.
Thus he became a symbol of the legitimacy of dissent.
" There are too many facile generalizations about the spread of
violence, which do not say anything about specific questions, and
hence are easily absorbed into an empty and dangerous rhetoric
about law and order, mouthed by people who would do little or
nothing about the problems tearing the country apart. As usual, this
plays into the hands of the more backward, the more repressive, the
more demagogic currents and figures.
