It was not just the week nor was it just the US. 1968 itself was one of the worst years of the latter half of the 20th century around the world. The year began with the Tet Offensive which contributed in large part to the terrible year in the US, it completely polarized the American public making not only the anti-war faction much larger and more radical but the pro-war "patriotic" faction much more radical as well, ending up with the worst presidential selection in recent American history between a corrupt Democratic political hack (Hubert Humphrey) and the corrupt Republican hack Richard Nixon, (Nixon was so unpopular that with a tired and disliked Democratic administration in office, a very unpopular war and a political hack as an opponent, he still just barely squeaked out a narrow win.). That year also saw the invasion by the Soviet Union of the Republic of Checoslovakia and the vicious crushing of its hopes and dreams of a more democratic form of goverment. It effectively guaranteed another 30 years of slavery for the people of Eastern Europe. It was also the year that the corrupt PRI dictatorship in Mexico used undercover agents to provoke Mexicos's students into widespread protests in the streets in order to use the Army to gun down thousands so as to supress all dissent prior to the 1968 Olympics there. This is still a huge trauma in the country and considered one of Mexico's blackest moments in history, not only by its citizens in general but by its own Army as well. 1968 was the year of the Isreali Six Day War when the victorious Isrealis conquered Jerusalem, Gaza, the Golan Heights as well as the West Bank, an action which after 40 years of occupation, still reverberates throughout the Middle East. Of course the murders of King and Kennedy were terrible and traumatic incidents which wounded a whole generation of Americans (and even non-Americans like myself) but in truth, the whole year was an unmitigated disaster from start to finish and in fact laid a terrible trauma upon the whole world...........
The Worst Week
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Navigating the tricky shoals of race, Kennedy stumbled a little at first as he tried to relate King's death to the killing of his own brother. RFK had never before spoken publicly about JFK's assassination, and he could hardly bear to speak of it privately, though the death of the president had gloomily filled his thoughts for months and years. "For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and disgust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say," he began, "that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my own family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times," he said, his voice gaining in strength as he found his peculiar comfort zone, the realm of myth and tragedy. Kennedy was not an articulate intellectual, but he was surprisingly well read, and he could quote the texts he carried in his pocket.
"My favorite poet was Aeschylus," Kennedy told his audience, not many of whom had graduated from high school, but who now listened with rapt attention. "He wrote, 'In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.
"What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or black.
"So I shall ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, that's true, but most importantly to say a prayer for our country, which all of us love—a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke …
"Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and to make gentle the life of this world.
"Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people."
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