We had a president who served the nation in war and peace.
JFK was ready to give his life to save the lives of his men on PT-109. As Lt. John F. Kennedy, USN, he lost two who were trapped in the engine room when a Japanese destroyer in the black of a moonless night sliced the boat in two, and he never forgot them as president. Several sailors were critically wounded, some burned in the water when fuel ignited. He helped get those to safety the next day, leading the swim to an enemy occupied tropical island about two miles away, gripping the lead chord from the most seriously injured man's life jacket with his teeth.
As president, JFK kept the peace when the generals and admirals counseled all out war over the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis and later in Vietnam, a French colony of no military threat to the mainland United States, about 8,000 miles from surfin' Malibu. The Military Industrial Complex said that we can't have a healthy economy and peace -- we need to make the machine hum through war.
Like FDR and the New Deal, JFK thought the economy should be geared to helping all Americans. Instead of colonizing planet earth like the French, etc, Kennedy thought the New Frontier could develop outer space as a way of expanding our horizons to new shores. When he wanted civilian cooperation in space with Russia, as a way of preventing WWIII, he proposed going to the moon, a feat considered impossible for almost all human history. Thanks to PAPERCLIP and harnessing the Peenemunde crowd, we accomplished that. Imagine what we could do if he had lived? Full employment? Fair and affordable housing? Equal rights for all Americans?
Yeah, a man who would be a role model to the nation's youth. Instead, we've had generation after generation raised on the "Money trumps peace" philosophy. Bush begat Nixon begat Bush begat Reagan begat Bush begat Bush begat Trump and look around for proof.
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