July 27, 2007
by Mike Palecek

An excerpt from Mike's new book: "The American Dream"

As I recall, in the summer 1968, Robert Kennedy came to Norfolk, Nebraska.

He was going to speak at the railroad station that these days is a flower planter or native prairie grassland display, I think.

I remember going down there myself, on my bike. I was just out of the eighth grade. I wanted to go to pick a saying out of his talk to live by.

I sat-stood on my banana seat and listened and watched him stand at a podium and gesture with his thumb inside his first finger and I heard that Shaw quote that I thought was Kennedy's at the time.

. "but I see things as they never were and say why not."

Sounds like a plan for someone who wants to try writing novels, I suppose.

At the time I was a pretty mediocre paperboy.
We lived through John Kennedy's murder and Martin and Bobby, barely.

Most of us still breathe.

I remember the night I went to sleep while we weren't sure yet if RFK was dead. My mother said that for him to recover was "what this country needs."

Well, we didn't get it.

Through my adult life I have breathed through a number of presidential elections and watched the Democrats get creamed with such sorry candidates that it was all a person could do to drag himself down the church basement steps to vote and then run home to gargle with Listerine.

"Back then" we believed Oswald did it.

We believed in the Warren Commission, Johnny Carson, the Catholic Church, the Norfolk Daily News, and the Omaha World-Herald, because we were brought up to believe. Go Big Red.

We believed in the network TV news anchors - and anything on radio news was true, of course. This isn't Russia.

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Now we have the Internet and we don't believe in any of that stuff - we know they killed Wellstone and did the whole 9/11 thing themselves, actually stole elections - but still we drift toward fascism as if on a rubber raft on a lazy Sunday afternoon on the Niobrara River, not having the energy to really care about anything, or even lift up our heads to see where we're heading, just toss the empties into the water and stare up at the sky.

And leave it all to people in Congress who are either cowards or too rich to care or both.

We go to sleep at night without hope.

Bobby Kennedy died.

If any children, my own perhaps, are trying to get in close and hear what I'm going to say, grab something to live by, they might hear, "What time is the game on tonight? Is this enough beer?" But . there is still some time on the clock. When we die we will be dead for a long time.

We're not dead yet.

Kids, here is what I think.

We should change the national anthem from that firecracker farce we now have to "This Land is Your Land," and sing all the verses.

And we shouldn't stand up like tired robots every damn time somebody plays the other one.

And I know you give it all you've got, but you can easily end up giving your "110 percent" for a tyrant, and that just ruins everything, like those young people now serving in the military for George W. Bush.

We shouldn't pay taxes for bombs or prisons.

We should let any Mexicans who want to come here to come on in, this being a Christian nation and all, Wally.

Any bishops or priests or ministers who say war and bombs and whatever are A-Okay should be sent out to get a construction job.

Phony bastards.

And the Democratic Party - oh, God, the Democratic Party - should say a prayer and light a candle and do penance and look over those pictures of the folks lining the tracks when they brought Bobby Kennedy's body home.

Stand for something.

Care about something.

Feel something.

Imagine health care and poor children fed and bomb factories bulldozed and prison walls torn down and say "why not."

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Mike Palecek [send him email] is an activist for peace and social justice. He served time in federal prison for civil disobedience and has run for US Congress. He has authored a number of books [click here to view] on behalf of the cause.