A letter to President John F. Kennedy

 

Dear Mr. President,

You are so omnipresent, fifty years after Dallas, so vividly alive for those of us who have any memory of you while you were here with us, that it doesn’t seem all that preposterous to send you a letter on this implausible anniversary day—who can absolutely foreswear that you are unable to receive a note via some cyber-prayer wave?

Thought I’d share with you, in “plain speak” (to borrow from your predecessor, Harry S. Truman) about some of the changes that have occurred for us boys and girls who have grown older—or just plain old—since you were taken from us fifty years ago.

First off, our own children and grandchildren have more information available, on demand, at their personal computers, laptops, cell phones, or these things called “tablets” than you, sir, had when you were outfoxing the Russians during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

You would have loved the Internet and all its attendant access, data, and cross-referencing. You’d probably know enough to sense that it’s overrated, however: we have all this information and all these files, but we still have no real knowledge of what happened to you that day in Dealey Plaza.

This thing called Facebook has given us all these endless factoids for which we really have no use but not much in the category of what we actually need to know. You’d probably not opt for a Profile or a Timeline; you are well-known for your impatience with tedium and opaque activity.

In the spirit of candor, people in America (which has 120 million people more living in it than when you left) really aren’t that sure about how we feel about your short life and brief presidency. Being a realist, you’ll probably understand that we think about how you died a lot more than how you lived.

“Negroes,” the term you and they themselves used in your time, are now known as “African Americans.” I’ll skip the part when they transitioned as “blacks.” There’s something else that’s happened that hits pretty close to home with your experience that involves African Americans but, frankly, you wouldn’t likely even believe it if I told you.

We haven’t actually won a war, clear and outright, since the time of your own Navy service during the Second World War. Presidents aren’t military veterans anymore, either.

Gay people can get married or have civil unions in more states than you carried in that razor-thin victory you had over Richard Nixon in 1960.

We did go to the moon and the Soviets never did. We’ve got some frozen flags up there and a bunch of lunar rocks down here but it’s hard to say if you’d be thrilled about the either the moon situation or what’s really happened with the Russians. We were talking about traveling to Mars for a while but now nobody even gets excited about getting on a regular airplane.

I think the hardest thing to tell you is that, well, there just aren’t any secrets anymore—and therefore not a lot of excitement to go along with the lack of mystery.

Maybe that’s the reason we miss you more than ever; you were as elusive as you were witty, smooth, and smart.

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Rabbi Kamin is a freelance writer based in Encinitas, California.  He may be contacted via ben.kamin@sdjewishworld.com