The betrayal by media and government in a position of trust has haunted the US and continues to poison us today. I can speak from my experience; you have to do you. I graduated high school in 1965, the main thing we were talking about on the school bus (yes, seniors still rode the bus, no beemers for us) was the draft and what was going to happen in Viet Nam. I guess about half our class either enlisted or reported, I joined the navy to get some schooling, which would give me a trade. I went into the nuclear power program an age 17, way too young to handle the pressure, and got a dui and lost my security clearance and then sent to the fleet but served out my term. My ships stopped at Rio, Capetown, Panama, Mexico, and in the Med, and everywhere you went you would see JFK's portrait in the restaurants and bars and people still loved and had hope for America. There was no reason not to, we had done some good things and were still good at hiding the bad things. The crews were divided about the war and what it was about but there was still room for discussion and the other person's view was more or less respected. It was like the don't ask don't tell policy later, I guess. I got out in 1970 and went to work in DC rebuilding the damage from the riots in 1968 from MLK's murder. I found out pretty quickly that the locals there didn't share the vision for the future that the DC city council did; they would rip out all the copper wire we pulled that day and the copper plumbing right out of the walls right after we went home. Sometimes it was the same local people we had to hire in order to get the contract, and the cops could care less. Then I went to work doing electrical construction building the Metro subway system like every other electrician in 5 states. The work was hard and dangerous, but with a family you do what you have to do. Me and a friend were remodeling the low rise part of Columbia Plaza on VA Avenue next to the Watergate I think in 1974 when we talked to a guy who had been a security guard when the break in happened, and he said that was a crock of shit, they wanted to be caught. Anyway, that's when I started researching the burglars who were on trial and how I started to take the assassination in a different light. That's another story. If you are old enough to remember the summer of 1976 you will remember that was the bicentennial year, every thing was upbeat, lots of fireworks, red white and blue, then the gasoline 'crisis' put it all on hold. It seems to have gone steadily downhill from then on, finger pointing. blame shifting, and a loss of any sense of personal responsibility, a feeling of helplessness. We are at the point where we almost expect the government to fail, we have had it for so long I don't know how we would react to something positive. Like I said, this is the window I am looking out, yours may be different.
