Thursday, November 3, 2022
5:15 a.m. The experience of watching the four-part Netflix series on “Bobby Kennedy for President,” and discussing with Paul our experiences of that time, has stirred up feelings I hadn’t visited in a while. A man of 76, confronted with emotions and memories of emotions, images and memories of images of his own, from when he was 22, and before that, ranging back to 1958 – powerful brew, and of course different from the same mix experienced earlier. I remember particularly the year 1988, 25 years after JFK was killed, when I finally came to terms with it.
OT1H, the world is only somewhat real; OTOH, it sure feels real! And this is surely most people’s experience. Even people who protest that they do not believe in free will – which surely ought to leave them feeling like puppets soullessly going through the motions – experience the pain and suffering of the 3D world as plenty real enough.
What struck me was watching this very alive man breaking through the veils of power and privilege and applied intellect and success – and suddenly seeing! Bobby had loved his brother, had invested heavily in him, probably identified with him (as that whole family seems to have identified with one another). He also had to know that his own actions had stirred up enemies who killed Jack. That is, he had to have felt somewhat responsible for his brother’s death, and for the shattering of the position they had used to good effect.
Powerful mixture of emotions to have to deal with, and boy, was it there to be seen in his face. The particular mixture of Strands that he was, resulted in propelling him (after a period of shock and bewilderment, and despair, I imagine) into action. Kennedy boys were raised to change the world, to make their mark. Joe Kenney in 1968 was lingering, still crippled after the stroke in 1961, but he had done his shaping of the boys and had done it thoroughly, long before. He had instilled in them a work ethic directed at public service, never at making money. That emphasis – combined with Jack’s and Bobby’s skills and drive – had propelled Jack to the White House. It might or might not bring Bobby there too, but it was not going to cease to impel him in any case.
But his pain, and the aftermath of the shock of seeing how we are at the mercy of fate, and perhaps the guilt, and the love, and the sense of unfinished business, and the incessant urge to fix things –
What was the result for him? It opened his eyes wide to human suffering. He in his turn opened the eyes of society, because he was a tremendous generator of publicity, so when he visited the Mississippi delta, or an Indian reservation, or visited the farmworkers and received Communion with Cesar Chavez, or toured the slums of our inner cities – the cameras came too, and they showed the real underbelly of the country, rather than the glossy sanitized version we usually got.
But not everybody was made like him. Or, no, let’s look at that a little differently. Bobby was known as a strong hater. It is the intolerant shadow side of passionate conviction, very evident in his ruthless pursuit, as Attorney General, of Jimmy Hoffa, a pursuit somewhat justified by overzealous.
Well, Bobby’s very person and personality, and then more so his actions, constellated that hatred in others, and our sick society had so many haters! You can see it in contemporary news footage. He saw poverty and ignorance and illness and neglect, and perhaps he thought, “Once people realize this, they’ll work to help overcome it.” But I think many people took it as criticism of themselves and their way of life and their ancestors. So the ugly, twisted, snarling faces on people who were shouting and hitting people – you know how it was. They were conduits of hatred, and it ran hot in their veins. Police, and politicians, and wealthy powerful men and women, and the scum that every society has somewhere. Bobby pointed out what our society was really like, and they hated him for it. They had to deny what was in their faces; they had to see him as an “outside agitator.” (Implied: “You don’t understand, you don’t really care about this anyway, you are doing this only to feed your own sense of superiority. Therefore you are a hypocrite and a wanton destroyer of our lives.”) And they hated him for it.
This is not to blame Bobby’s nature for the way his person catalyzed hatred. His brother Jack was, above all things, the man of reason, confident that people could come to terms, and yet the haters killed him. But in his case, it was because they feared him, I think. You’ll notice, people usually didn’t hate Jack Kennedy, they hated “the Kennedys,” meaning Jack and Bobby, because Bobby was seen as the instigator of so many disruptive events.
No reasonable person could say that the Civil Rights movement was begun or encouraged or even particularly protected by the Kennedy bothers, nor by the government they led. They didn’t originate it, but as the tide swelled, they were forced to respond to it. That meant, learn from it. That meant, respond as human beings.
No reasonable person could blame the Cold War on Jack Kennedy, nor the massive involvement in Vietnam on Robert Kennedy. But their actions – Jack’s in trying to defuse and even end the Cold War in 1963, and Bobby’s in opposing the waste of resources and the self-evident futility of the war, beginning in 1966 – aroused fear, and fear leads to hatred.
Now, I’ve been talking to myself for 45 minutes, but I sense that this is a larger issues for you, my friends. Proceed.
The question everyone faces, implicitly or otherwise, is “How real is this world? Is it merely a very convincing screenplay? Is it life and death the way it appears? Is it – ?”
Yes.
False dichotomy. It is real in its own terms, as we have always said. But “real in its own terms” doesn’t mean, “the realest thing there is,” it means you can’t see through the scrims just because you know that’s what they are. Your mind may tell you that what you are feeling is not ultimately as real as it seems, but that isn’t going to do you much good.
Think about Robert Kennedy’s shock, and his helpless concern, and even his anger at other people’s complacency, when he experienced the reality of hunger and ignorance and deprivation and suffering in general. Those were real feelings. It was one individual subjectivity, suddenly up against a shared subjectivity that predated him, outnumbered him, resisted his efforts to change it, and survived him. That’s your experience in 3D, in a nutshell: The shared subjectivity always precedes you, outnumbers you, resists you, outlives you.
Does that mean life is futility?
It can feel that way. Certainly it can seem that hope is illusory.
Of course it can. But, in practice, you have your life to live. You may say to yourself, “This is only somewhat real,” and be right in saying so, but you’re still going to have your somewhat real breakfast, and proceed with your somewhat real day.
Life is meant to be lived. Different eyes will see it to be different things, for the world has room for all kinds of people and tasks. But everyone breathes. Everyone gets through life one day – one moment – at a time. What differs is how you see it, and that difference can change everything.
Bobby Kennedy took it for granted that the world is real. So did his brother. So, perhaps, does every public figure, for who would put all that effort into something that was clearly illusory? But that isn’t the end of the story, for artists work hard too, even if they see through the scrims.
I don’t know where you’re going with this, but I’m sort of out of energy, it having been an hour. Sorry to have taken up the time.
You may be sorry, we are not. It is the beginning of a good discussion, and worth your expressing it anyway.
Shall we just call this one “Bobby”?
Maybe “The reality of ‘Only Somewhat Real”.”
Maybe. Okay, till next time.