WPCNR OLD NEWS NOBODY REMEMBERS AND COMMENT By John F. Bailey. (Reprinted from WPCNR ARCHIVES) UPDATED WITH REVERENCE. November 22, 2025:
IT IS ONLY HOURS AWAY IN DALLAS TEXAS THE HOUR WHEN THE PRESIDENT WAS ASSASSINATED.
Someone made a big mistake again this year.
How quickly memories fade.
The Times today November 22, 2025 had no reference to the day President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed.
Today.
Three rifle shots by a hired killer on November 22 1963 at 1 in the afternoon in Dallas murdered President John F. Kennedy.
Today is the day in Dallas 62 years ago on a Friday afternoon when President John F. Kennedy was shot riding in his motorcade open convertible in front of the Texas Book Depository Building.
November 22, 1963. A most unfortunate coincidence that someone should have noticed.
Appropriately it is raining today.
When I heard the news,62 years ago I was ascending the steps of Gray Chapel at Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio. It was sobering news. Then within the hour it was reported by Walter Cronkite that the President was dead.
The search was on for potential suspects.
It was the first time in my life a national event had ever affected me.
Persons in their mid-70s can probably remember exactly what they were doing when they heard that electrifying news.
Disbelief. Concern. Sadness. Grief. Nothing you could do about it.
Who would shoot the President? How could they? The President no matter who he was was revered and respected at that time — not ridiculed, mocked, vilified, and criticized for his every move as President Biden is today.
President Kennedy’s popularity was ebbing at that time in 1963.
The public was initially inspired by the vision of Camelot and the likable, energetic young president.
However, by the time he was assassinated, President Kennedy was coming under harsh criticism for his foreign policy and his inability to move an agenda through congress. (Sound familiar?)
He was pushed around by congressional heavyweights — eerily not too much different from our President today, who today is supported by congress members in his efforts by congress members who know better.
When Kennedy was shot, the American public, even those who disagreed with his politics and considered him in over his head in the presidency, were stunned by grief and horror.
Nothing had happened like that in America since 1901 when President William McKinley was assassinated.
An entire nation reflected in guilt for a week as three television networks showed 24 hours a day assassination and funeral coverage. Walter Cronkite shed a tear on camera when he reported Kennedy was dead. No commentator would think about reacting in glee on the air as they do now at opposition victories.
No congressional personality would ever show video of himself cutting the throat of a fellow member of congress.
Does this mean in today’s law, threatening the life of a member of congress is not a crime or at least a menacing charge?
Until the Trade Center Horror in 2001, this nation had not experienced anything on that national scale of reaction to an event.(With the exceptions of the Detroit riots in 1967 and anti-Vietnam War protests.)
Were we a more sensitive nation then? More sensitive to what killing actually is? I no longer wonder. We arn’t we sling guns like the gun slingers of the wild west.
In the fast-moving sensationalism of news ambulance and shootings chasers today, would the same sensitivity of us in 1963 be there today? No. And it’s not!
We have been hardened to violence.
Do we now see violence as more of an acceptable solution to problems than to be avoided at all costs? Yes, we do.
We have an an ex-“president” who came out supporting a vigilante teen with an AK-47 who gunned down unarmed people in Kenosha Wisconsin as protecting himself. That takes my breath away. Whose Ak-47 was it? His? His parents? Very key question.
It seems so. With disgruntled, overly sensitive misfits just taking guns and shooting innocent people and children and their wives or husbands and they get acquitted on self-defense?
When persons take out a gun and shoot a “neighbor” over a property line. Hey. It’s the Wild West out there.
Time to check your guns at the door. Don’t bring your guns to town, Billy.
I remember how Americans sat mesmerized in front of their televisions as the Kennedy goodbye played out.
I remember, too how Kennedy’s death swiftly paved the way for the landmark Civil Rights act of 1965, legislated by Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson.
That legislation, without Kennedy’s assassination, would probably never have been passed. I believe it passed because of collective guilt over Kennedy’s murder.
For 62 years, politicians, when their charisma is measured, have always been compared to Mr. Kennedy.
However, charisma does not get things done any more and it has lost its lustre as being a good thing.
Charisma and popularity does not make for change by itself.
The last four years we have seen the downside of charisma without compassion and thought, instead charisma is cloaked upon persons calling for violence, indictments, and hatred.
The new violent charisma cloak achieves nothing unless you have some good solid ideas, management skills, and are willing to work hard for it. And compromise for the greater good.
There are not people in congress both houses, who do that today. They are derelict in support of what they know to be right and wrong. They love only what is good for them, their states, their reelection and their continued empowerment.
Even, then, as a recent Kennedyesque President, with a license to use charisma, Barack Obama found out, it may not happen.
However, the political rancor and hysterical hatred of our President Obama that was expressed in the Republican debates, on talk radio and by candidates who should know better back in 2016, created an atmosphere of disrespect for then President Obama and the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton exceeded even that aimed at George W. Bush.
The lack of respect for President Biden the last four years and hatred of Democrats has created an atmosphere that is far more dangerous for the President and the country than we can ever tell.
But we’re about to find out. And we did: two assassination attempts on President Trump.
Mr. Trump, the former “president” polarized the nation into two warring camps with unprecedented name-calling, purely nasty, hurtful policies towards minorities and immigrants, bragging about the right to molest women, and supporting womanizers in his administration, and planned takeaways of health care, and blatant giveaways to robber barons on poshly appointed carpetted crags in concrete canyons reminiscent of the cruel British aristocracies.
The toxicity against the Presidents, both Obama, President Trump has grown to be an unholy witches’ brew of vile commentary and threats.
Mr. Trump’s whining about the election being rigged is reckless and immature. Poor Little Rich Boy’s whining. No presidential candidate has ever acted this way before. But people bought it.
They stormed the capitol with Mr. Trump’s “Stop the Steal” campaign in the last 14 days of the worst American Presidency ever.
Mr. Trump is a winner in only one field: He has a solid grip on the title of “Worst American President” from Richard Nixon, Andrew Johnson, both George Bushes, and Bill Clinton.
Daily, Americans are assailed by website propaganda that tell them the economy is terrible.Social Security is going to be taken away. The Trump economy was better. They are believing that, forgetting the slow-to-act on covid situation.
Truth is what you say it is today. And that is not good.
The job of the nation now is to make sure the America that once was the hope of the world not vanish from the face of this Earth.
In another time of great divide, the middle of the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln gave We the People our mission at his Gettysburg Address memorializing the dead of North and South in that bloody three days in 1863 162 years ago:
The Republicans’ inability to compromise has stalled the nation on recovery, immigration, health care…you name the issue, the Republican Party has stalled progress in their frantic effort to roll back the clock to the turn of the 20th century. (1899-1900) when white and rich were right no matter what.
Robber barons, oil tycoons, industrialists, bankers, ruled the roost.–until the great Teddy Roosevelt broke up Standard oil, forced the banks to support the economy and supported the union movement. Teddy Roosevelt was the enemy of the rich and powerful and he made them cow-tow.
They hate that.
Now we have a vast majority of America –us– who think that the rich will help them thanks to the self-rights movement.
Ideas and rhetoric are one thing, but to vilify President Obama on the scale of what we heard in 2016 and the opposition party today is irresponsible. Because it is listened to by persons across the country who suddenly got the “OK” from Republican candidates and “leaders” that it was ok to hate, to blame America’s problems on immigrants, and trade policies, and ignore science on climate change and health practices.
When educated leaders in congress of both paties stand thought-idle and endorse the policies of hate and punishment 0f people people by their silence, I cannot be OK with that? Leaders are giving people license to hate and hurt, discriminate, exploit, kill and build up themselves at the expense of others’ lives.
So when you sit down to turkey Thursday give a thought to be thankful for a nation that once did not rise up in arms whenever a leader is elected that a portion of the populace does not like.
Be thankful that the American people once spoke and felt as one, and hopefully will learn to do so again even though we disagree.
I hope so.
You must.
President Abraham Lincoln’s words again. Speaking From eternity for the Salvation of The American Promise, please read them again.
You are there again across the fields of graves at Gettysburg in 1863.
At the Cemetery of 10,000 American dead united in death with crosses all the same who stopped the German Third Army at the Rhine in 1944 in The Battle of the Bulge.
10,000 Americans died in The Battle of the Bulge, 1944. (Photo by WPCNR)
Our sons who died in the same Argonne Forest in World War I Buried in Flanders Fields where poppies grow
Now again, hear read President Lincoln strong voice on the cold air sounding across the graves of all Americans who fought against each other: America’s bloodiest war. Who on that day were united again in death so that our nation lived:
