The day the earth changed

For centuries, parents raised their children essentially the same way. This was accomplished because change in society occurred so slowly. Parents knew their children were going to grow up and experience the same kind of world the parents had so it was easy to give instruction on how to do that. That’s why there wasn’t much change in behavior on the part of children from the time America was discovered and inhabited until the middle of the 20th century. But something happened then that changed young people’s lives and, consequently, the lives of everyone living in our society.

It was a normal Friday afternoon at the University of Arkansas. The clock was coming up on one pm and I was preparing to attend my last class of the week, French I, when a friend of mine came running down the hall screaming at the top of his lungs that something had happened that shocked everyone. It was November 22nd, 1963 and John F. Kennedy, the President of the United States, had been fatally wounded by gunfire as he drove through the streets of Dallas, Texas. For some reason, I went ahead to French class only to find our French instructor, a native of France, with the radio on detailing the tragedy while he wept openly. The next day the Arkansas Razorback football team played the strangest football game I’ve ever seen with no cheering and no band playing. In fact, they played almost in silence.

After the game, I drove the two hours home, still in a state of shock as was everyone else and on Sunday, my family and I gathered around the television to watch the suspected killer of the President, Lee Harvey Oswald, transferred from one jail in Dallas to another. And then something happened even greater than the President being shot because it was on national television and was being watched by millions around the world. Jack Ruby appeared out of a crowd of reporters and shot Lee Harvey Oswald in the stomach, inflicting fatal wounds on him as Oswald had allegedly inflicted on the President.

I write that Ruby shooting Oswald was even greater than Oswald shooting the President because until the McGruder film showing the assassination became public, no one outside the motorcade had actually seen the killing of the President and millions had watched in horror as Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald in the basement of the police station.

That’s the day that changed America forever. My generation had grown up in the50’s without troubles or conflicts. Even Blacks, who were still segregated from Whites, lived in their separate communities and enjoyed communal life in similar ways to how the rest of America was enjoying them. This was after the Korean War and just in the beginning stages of the Cold War with Russia and we had faith in President Kennedy to solve whatever problems we were having with them.

There had been a tremendous rise in the family income that had propelled the middle class into a life of luxury and choice and now those things were threatened. Young people who saw Ruby kill Oswald knew the idyllic world they had been living in was nothing more than a mirage because there were still evil people living in the world who were perfectly willing to violate any law in order to satisfy a misguided craving that had developed in them.

Because of that, young people became both naïve and cynical. They lost faith in the adults of the world to solve the important issues facing them and instead turned to each other. For a while this worked until they realized that their vision of Nirvana could never be accomplished without the advice and consent of a majority of Americans and that was never going to happen.

So here we are some 55 years after those two dreadful acts changed the world and we have to realize the world is still changed, perhaps forever. We have gone from a society always willing to lend their neighbor a helping hand to a society driven by greed. We have gone from a handshake sealing a million dollar deal to background checks so invasive that you have to prove you don’t need any extra money to get a loan. We have gone from compromise to my way or the highway, not even listening anymore to what the other side has to say.

But perhaps the most fatal flaw of our society today is the absolute neglect of truth. People tell stories today to make themselves look important without ever checking the veracity of the story they’re telling. And so instead of getting factual information, we get news we have to check and re-check to make sure it’s true before we share it with anyone else.

There was a popular rock song back in the 60’s titled “Eve of Destruction” and we’re closer to realizing the words to that song than we’ve ever been unless we can find a way to change ourselves before we run out of time.