Volume 1, Number 9 · December 26, 1963
The Fate of the Union: Kennedy and After
By Irving Howe
It has been hard, these last two weeks, to feel much pride in being an American. Two assassinations, each ghastly in its own right and each uncovering still another side of our social pathology; callousness, maybe planned negligence, on the part of the Dallas police; fourthgrade children in the South cheering the news that a 'nigger-loving' President had been murdered; subversion of the processes of law-enforcement to the demands of television; recurrent efforts to gain political advantage, which neglect to consider that whoever may have killed the President, whether a Castroite fanatic or another kind, there remains the common breeding-ground of a hatedriven society, the common responsibility of governors and lunatics; and then smogs of piety about 'national reconciliation' and 'an era of good feeling' in American politics—it is just too much. Only Mrs. Kennedy, in the splendor of her bearing, gave one any reason to be pleased with the human species; and it remains a question whether the style of a person can redeem the sickness of a culture.
Feature, 2460 words
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