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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsKennedy Family Writes Anti-Trump Op-Ed In Washington Post That EVERYONE Should Read
http://bipartisanreport.com/2016/11/17/kennedy-family-writes-anti-trump-op-ed-in-washington-post-that-everyone-should-read/Kennedy Family Writes Anti-Trump Op-Ed In Washington Post That EVERYONE Should Read
By Sampson -
November 17, 2016
If there is one family in America that is qualified to speak on the issue of hatred and violence, it is the Kennedys. John F. Kennedy was shot and killed in 1963 followed by Robert F. Kennedy in 1968.
The remaining Kennedy members were so disturbed by Donald Trump that they wrote the following op-ed for The Washington Post.
Written by William Kennedy Smith and Jean Kennedy Smith
That speech has crystallized into the single most enduring portrait of Bobbys candidacy. Because it was extemporaneous, it conveyed directly, and with raw emotion, his own vulnerability, his aspirations for his country, and a deep compassion for the suffering of others. Bobby concluded his remarks that night by urging those listening to return home and say a prayer for our country and for our people. Those words mattered. While there were riots in cities across the nation that night, Indianapolis did not burn.
Today, almost 50 years later, words still matter. They shape who we are as a people and who we wish to be as a nation. In the white-hot cauldron of a presidential campaign, it is still the words delivered extemporaneously, off the cuff, in the raw pressure of the moment that matter most. They say most directly what is in a candidates heart. So it was with a real sense of sadness and revulsion that we listened to Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, as he referred to the options available to Second Amendment people, a remark widely, and we believe correctly, interpreted as a thinly veiled reference or joke about the possibility of political assassination.
Political violence is a terrible inherent risk to any free society. Dictators and strongmen like Vladimir Putin have an answer. They are surrounded and shielded by force at all times. They do not brook dissent. In democracies, we expect our leaders to be accessible and, by and large, they want to be. Inevitably, that makes them vulnerable and the loss of a leader at a crucial time impacts family, country, and even the world, for generations. Anyone who loves politics, the open competition of ideas and public participation in a free society, knows that political violence is the greatest of all civic sins. It is not to be encouraged. It is not funny. It is not a joke.
By now, we have heard enough dark and offensive rhetoric from Trump to know that it reflects something fundamentally troubled, and troubling, about his candidacy. Trumps remarks frequently, if not inevitably, spark outrage, which is followed by a clarification that, in lieu of an apology, seeks to attribute the dark undertones of his words to the listeners twisted psyche. This fools no one. Whether you like what he is saying or, like a growing segment of the electorate, you reject it, it is easy to grasp Trumps meaning from his words. But what to make of a candidate who directly appeals to violence, smears his opponents and publicly bullies a Gold Star family, a decorated prisoner of war, and a reporter with a disability, among others? To borrow the words of Army Counsel Joseph Welch, directed at another dangerous demagogue: Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?
The truth remains that words do matter, especially when it comes to presidential candidates. On that basis alone, Donald Trump is not qualified to be president of the United States.
spanone
(135,873 posts)lunasun
(21,646 posts)this family and brought back the pain
dhol82
(9,353 posts)It was nice but obviously got no traction.
Sad.
CousinIT
(9,257 posts)world wide wally
(21,754 posts)This is the America we have come to be.
It is self abuse to pretend otherwise.
If this is "great again", I prefer to be shitty.
narnian60
(3,510 posts)heaven05
(18,124 posts)by the Kennedy's. But too late. Nothing fundamentally troubling about white supremacy and nationalism. This ideology has ALWAYS bubbled beneath the thin veneer of civility and manners that thee world had seen. Now the world has seen how an election can be steered, by the media mainly, toward a demagogue who appealed to the baser nature that inhabits all human beings. Most of us have proper impulse control over this nature. Donald Trump, the members of the New Nazi Party of America, both leadership and brownshirts cadre do not. We will watch, in horror and disgust, as this plays out in the next few years. I am glad I am along in years.
HAB911
(8,912 posts)big yuuuuuge words like "extemporaneously"?
HAB911
(8,912 posts)sometimes I just kill myself, LOL
Mc Mike
(9,115 posts)Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin
(108,192 posts)lonestarnot
(77,097 posts)Omaha Steve
(99,708 posts)K&R!
OS
lostnfound
(16,189 posts)I was only 6.. but had just started watching the news. He was a hero as was MLK in those very early years.