I don’t have much time to write in the opening entry, so I am going to keep it short.

The opening line for my first novel: The American dream is dead.

I have a couple of quotes that I found to be particularly poignant from Vanity Fair’s story on the primary campaign of Robert Kennedy in 1968. But first I wanted to reflect on what I read. I am quite astonished by the mindset of a lot of people when he entered the race in 1968. The story went into detail about how many people who knew him, even those in his campaign, thought he was going to be assassinated before he ever won the presidency. What a strange period of time for our country. With JFK’s assassination at the beginning of the decade and MLK and RFK’s assassinations near the end, along with the Vietnam War and everything else going on, I can’t imagine what it was like living in the 1960s.

But what I really took from the story was just what kind of a person Kennedy was. He was a lightning rod for hope in this country, and he ran for the presidency – when politically, it probably wasn’t the best idea in the world to go up against sitting president LBJ (by the way, what is with the three initial names in the ’60s?) – on the grounds of what he believed was right. Kennedy was morally opposed to Vietnam and that’s why he put himself out there like that. It’s refreshing to see a politician do something for that reason.

“Only those who dare to fail greatly can achieve greatly” – Bobby Kennedy

“The hottest places on Hell are reserved for those who, in a time of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality” – Dante

I think both of those quotes pretty well sum up the picture that the Vanity Fair article painted of Kennedy. He stood up for what he believed in because he couldn’t imagine doing otherwise and he dared to failed in the hopes of really achieving something great for this nation. It is quite a shame that he died because I believe he could have done wonders for our great nation. Remember, Richard Nixon ended up getting elected instead and politically, at least, that set the United States back big time.