Friday, November 22, 1963. The assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Today In Wyoming's History: November 22: 1963  President John F. Kennedy assassinated in Dallas, TX.

President Kennedy was a very popular President in a very difficult time.  A lot of my comments about his presidency here have not been terribly charitable, but he was a hero to many, and some of his calls here have unfairly not been noted.  For instance, he exercised restraint during the Cuban Missile Crisis, which almost resulted in a Third World War, and he likewise kept the separation of Berlin from escalating into the same, even though his comments caused that crisis to come about.

In spite of repeated speculation about it, it's clear that the assassination was carried out as a lone, bizarre act by Lee Harvey Oswald.  Indeed, the lone actor aspect of that has fueled the conspiracy theories surrounding the event, as people basically don't want to accept that a lone actor can have such a massive and unforeseen impact.

I was alive at the time, but of course I don't remember this as I was only a few months old.  In my father's effects, I'd note, was a Kennedy Mass Card that he'd kept. No doubt, Masses were said around the country for the first Catholic President.

Often unnoticed about this event, Oswald probably had made an earlier attempt on the life of former Army Gen. Edwin Walker, who ironically was a radical right wing opponent of Kennedy's.  That attempt had occured in April. And Oswald killed Texas law enforcement officer J. D. Tippit shortly after killing Kennedy.  Oswald's initial arrest was for his murder of Tippit.

It's fair to speculate on how different history might have been had Kennedy lived.  Kennedy's actions had taken the US up to the brink of war with the Soviet Union twice, but in both instances, when the crisis occured, he steered the country out of it, and indeed his thinking was often better in those instances than his advisers. Under Kennedy the US had become increasingly involved in the Vietnam War, but there's at least some reason to believe that he was approaching the point of backing off in Vietnam, and it seems unlikely that the US would have engaged in the war full scale as it did under Lyndon Johnson.  If that's correct, the corrosive effect the war had on US society, felt until this day, might have been avoided.

All of which is not to engage in the hagiography often engaged in considering Kennedy.  To the general public, the James Dean Effect seems to apply to Kennedy, as he died relatively young.  Catholics nearly worshiped him as one of their own.  In reality, Kennedy had a really icky personal life and was hardly a living saint.  His hawkishness in a time of real global strife, moreover, produced at least one tragic result, and nearly caused others.

Personal Retroactive Counterfactuals as an historical exercise.

Illustration of Kristin Lavransdatter, a brilliant and highly non romantic exploration of a Medieval Norwegian woman that conveys, as fiction, the life of a common northern European in the Middle Ages much more vividly than a straight history could have done.  I suspect that the author Sigrid Undset put herself in her protagonists shoes many times in writing it. So much so, in fact, that her exploration of Kristin's world impacted her own life to an enormous extent.

We touched on this the other day in regard to World War Two, looking back on 1940, and 1941, from the prospective of 2020 and 2021, and 1980 and 1981.

Okay, what do we mean "retroactive counter factual"?

Well, something that's common enough and which I think all people do. That is imagining yourself in an earlier time.  Certainly, I think, writers do it.  You almost have to in order to write historical fiction, or even history, very well.  

Now, first of all I want to distinguish this from the self delusion of "I wish I lived" type fantasies, which is something else.  I've written a time or two on that as well.  People look at the era they currently live in, with all the strife and problems, and imagine if they'd only lived in some simpler time things would be prefect.  The problem with that is that its a species of self delusion and, oddly enough, most particularly about a person's own era.  I.e., this is the worst of times and there was a better time. . . 

That doesn't mean that there weren't better times, but any time is the times, and every time has problems.  Deluding yourself that "if only I lived 100 years ago" sets aside that 100 years ago was full of problems, as was 200 years ago, 300 years ago, and so on.

Anyhow, I do think that as an historical exercise people looking back has some merits to it and I wonder if history teachers ever assign this as an exercise?  I don't think so, but I wonder if would have merit.

As we noted, when we tend to do this as an exercise we tend to retain the framework of our lives otherwise, which makes it a more useful exercise. We wonder how often this is done.  I suspect that unless that's done, no real lessons are conveyed.

And by that, what we mean, is placing things somewhat in the context of our actual lives.  We noted that the other day in noting that if we were of military age, more or less, in 1940, we'd otherwise assume that we grew up on the same place, graduated from a high school in a year that has an equal place in the decade with others, etc.  In other words, as I looked back the other day I imagined that instead of graduating in 1981 from high school, I graduated in 1941, and from the same high school

From there, you can explore what options would have presented themselves to you. For example, I live in the same town now that I graduated from in 1981.  If I had graduated in 1941, the same high school was there.  My options in life would have been pretty much the same at the time, which is something a person ought to keep in mind in such a mental exercise and which helps accurately explore the topic.  In 1941 the economy here was in the middle of a war induced oil boom, for example, which would have been good to know if I was imagining what the life of a 17 or 18 year old here was like in 1941.  The same was sort of true, the oil boom part, in 1981.  There were some real differences in the economies here of 41 and 81 however.

In 41 there was no junior college, as they called them commonly then, as there is now.  Indeed, my father attended the local community college in what would have been one of its very early classes.  It was located in the high school at the time, which I would find dispiriting now, but which provided a real opportunity then.  But it didn't exist in 41.  I think it may have come in around 1946.

That would mean that educationally, as I noted, I'd have gone on to the University of Wyoming, probably, in 1941.

I note all of this as this presents roadblocks and diversions to how a person might engage in such a mental exercise, and that's the point.  Too often when people do something like this they imagine going back to a perfect world  The classic example is the Middle Ages and where you would have fit into them.

I can just as easily do that, as a mental exercise, but if I do there's more leaps. For one thing, in order to make that realistic, I'd have to go back to one of my ancestral cultures and locations.  I know them, so that's easy enough.  But more than that, I'd have to keep things realistic.

Usually when people do this they imagine themselves living in a castle and being a knight or something.  Indeed, I've seen exercises written for children which were "what was it like to live in a castle?".  Well, most people at that time wouldn't have know the answer to that question.

Most people would have known the answer to "what was it like to live in a hovel and subsist mostly a diet of grains augmented by whatever wild rabbits I could snare". That's quite a bit different.

But maybe a more useful lesson.

Retroactive Counter Factual. Imagining yourself seventy-nine years ago.

Romanticizing the Past

Retroactive Counter Factual. Imagining yourself seventy-nine years ago.

It's always temping to look back at an historic event and imagine "where would I have been".  I have to admit, having an historical inclination and mindset, if you will, I do that often.

When I do, I usually imagine it with some calendar related restrains.  I'm not sure why, but to some degree I don't think you can accurately imagine where you would have been, and what you would have done, but for that.  The constraints of time, when you were born, and how that plays into where you are at anyone time, are an inescapable fact.  I know that I tend to do that pretty strongly, when inserting my hypothetical self into past events.

Having said that, for whatever reason, in seeing something on the upcoming 79th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, to some extent the real framework of "1941" struck me for the the first time, in a realistic sense just the other day.  It's weird, as I've looked back to World War Two quite a few times, as I imagine nearly everyone with a sense of history, and imagination, and wondered "where would I have been"?

I graduated from high school in 1981; forty hears after. . . well not actually forty years after, the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.*  In May 1981 when I graduated from high school I was 17 years old.  I joined the National Guard that following August, by which time I was 18, not even telling my parents that I had done it before I had.  That, in some odd way, tend to have formed my frame of reference looking back, as that puts my actual military experience in context.

But in looking at the calendar of the United States in World War Two, the National Guard was mobilized in August 1940.  So if I imagine myself 40 years prior, and apply a sort of calendrical lock to it so that I would have graduated from high school in 1941, instead of 1981, the National Guard would have been mobilized for a year.

Now, I also know that lots of high school men, and no matter how we might imagine it the story of service during World War Two includes women, but far more it includes men, had been in the local unit of the National Guard at that time. Indeed, the 115th Cavalry, Horse Mech, included not only a lot of high school students, a significant percentage in fact, but it included a lot of underaged ones.  Would I have been in that number?  Those too  young to serve in the Army were discharged, along with those too aged and infirm to serve.  Were the 17 year old sent?  I imagine some where, some were not, depending upon their wishes and those of their parents, maybe.

I wonder.  I like to think that I would have, and just knowing myself I probably would have joined the unit in high school, probably whenever I could have, but who knows.  Maybe not?

Well, in my own actual life in my junior high years I was in the Civil Air Patrol and I did in fact join the National Guard when still a teenager.  So my guess is that I probably would have.  Almost certainly.  I didn't, however, join high school JrROTC (which was mandatory for those in our local high school until some date in the 1970s), so maybe not.  Indeed, at that time I conceived of myself as busy, so I may not have.

In August 1940 I would have been 17. So would that have meant that I would have been mobilized with the 115th?

Maybe.  It's hard to know for sure.  I know that the 115th discharged a lot of underaged soldiers, as noted above, right at the start of their mobilization, and I know that the U.S. Army required parents consent to enlist until you were 18.  Contrary to what people typically think, the service itself wasn't too keen on teenage soldiers at the time.  

I know that my father wouldn't have been, but it would have been just my father's consideration at the time, assuming my life otherwise played out as it did, my mother being horribly ill when I was 17.  I'd have only been 17 for a few months at the time and also knowing myself I very well may have waited until fall to join, if I'd been planning to.  I only joined the National Guard in August 1981 as I'd planned on going to the University of Wyoming that fall and joining ROTC but changed my mind and didn't want to be hypocritical to my stated desires, so I joined the Guard.

Indeed, looking back, I'm stunned how earnest I was in my convictions.

That plays a role here too.

So, on December 7, 1941, I might have been an 18 year old cavalryman at Ft. Lewis Washington, surprised, and not surprised, that the nation was finally at war.

Or I might have been an 18 year old University of Wyoming student (the community colleges didn't yet exist here).

If that was the case, and for reasons I can't quite define I think it more likely, I would have joined the service after that semester.  And it would have been the Army.

If I'd gone to Ft. Lewis with the National Guard at some point I would have cadred out, almost certainly, and have been assigned to some other unit as an NCO.  Likely armor, and that would have likely meant Operation Torch and the ETO in that branch.  Most of the war. . . if a person survived it.

If it was UW and on to the Army, I wouldn't have opted for armor but rather for infantry, and maybe airborne, knowing myself.  Same theatre and the like, but probably less of it.  And again, assuming a person survived it.

All of which is interesting to imagine, and I'm surprised that I haven't really though of this retroactive counterfactual in this context before.

*This upcoming year, 2021, I will be as many years from my high school graduation as I was from World War Two at the time I graduated. A sobering thought.  This effectively means that, at that time, high school graduates from the class of 1941 were men my present age, something that's stunning to imagine.

Monday Morning Repeats. An Election Recollection Issue. The best post of the week of November 5, 2017.

We are running two Monday Morning repeats today, for two reasons.

One is that we missed last weeks, so we're making up for it.

The other is that this is suddenly timely again, but likely forgotten.

Lex Anteinternet: Go Donna! In a week of revelations, Donna Brazile...

Had Brazile had her way, the recent election probably would have been on whether or not to reelect Joe Biden. . . and his opponent probably would have been a much younger Republican.