Welcome to Monday. In doing research for a post on GDP, I stumbled on this speech at the University of Kansas by Robert F. Kennedy in March, 1968 while he was running for president. There is a surprising parallel between events then and now. Consider his joke about the polarization in the Senate:
I think of the warmth that exists in the Senate of the United States – I don’t know why you’re laughing – I was sick last year and I received a message from the Senate of the United States which said: ‘We hope you recover,’ and the vote was 42 to 40.
Or, his thoughts about the (then) current state of the nation that mirrors today: (edits and brackets by the Wrongologist)
There is much more to this critical election year than the war in Vietnam…at…the root of all of it, [is] the national soul of the United States. The President calls it “restlessness.” Our cabinet officers…and others tell us that America is deep in a malaise of spirit: discouraging initiative, paralyzing will and action, and dividing Americans from one another, by their age, their views and by the color of their skin and I don’t think we have to accept that here in the United States of America.
Or, his thoughts about income inequality that are still relevant today:
I have seen children in Mississippi…with distended stomachs, whose faces are covered with sores from starvation, and we haven’t developed a policy so we can get enough food so that they can live…so that their lives are not destroyed, I don’t think that’s acceptable in the United States of America and I think we need a change.
Or, his thoughts about race in America:
I have seen the people of the black ghetto, listening to ever greater promises of equality and of justice, as they sit in the same decaying schools and huddled in the same filthy rooms…warding off the cold and warding off the rats. If we believe that we, as Americans, are bound together by a common concern for each other, then an urgent national priority is upon us. We must begin to end the disgrace of this other America.
We tend to remember RFK as the anti-Vietnam candidate in 1968. But he was very concerned about political polarization, income inequality and the great stain of racism in America. His comments on those issues could be made today. The oligarchs are still at work, attempting to politically isolate the progressive candidates. Income inequality has gotten substantially worse, and race relations have not improved, as the “Black Lives Matter” movement shows.
RFK’s passion to end the Vietnam War led him to say:
It was said, a number of years ago that this is ‘their war’…’this is the war of the South Vietnamese’ that ‘we can help them, but we can’t win it for them’ but over the period of the last three years we have made the war and the struggle in South Vietnam our war, and I think that’s unacceptable.
Does that sound like the Middle East today? He goes on to say:
I think it’s a question of the people of South Vietnam feeling it’s worth their efforts – that they’re going to make the sacrifice – that they feel that their country and their government is worth fighting for and…the last several years have shown…that the people of South Vietnam feel no association and no affiliation for the government of Saigon and I don’t think it’s up to us here in the United States…
Bobby closed with:
So I come here to Kansas to ask for your help…If you believe that the United States can do better. If you believe that we should change our course of action. If you believe that the United States stands for something here internally as well as elsewhere around the globe, I ask for your help and your assistance and your hand over the period of the next five months.
We really need an RFK in our politics today. Let’s hope that his plain-speaking idealism is not lost forever. For your wake-up, listen to his comments on GDP in the KU speech:
He is challenging the basic way we measure economic progress and well-being. RFK said the Gross Domestic Product counts “everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.”
For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can listen to the video here.
