President Kennedy was seriously wounded in a PT Boat that he was the Commander of during World War II for which he had to take pain killers for the rest of his life. However, after that when he was elected first as a Senator from Massachusetts and then President by beating Nixon in 1960 he also became the first modern President.
There was always a sort of beaten down quality to American Presidents before Kennedy. Kennedy was the first "Disneyland" President. What do I mean by that?
What I mean is that after World War II by the mid 1950s people started believing anything was possible in a positive way. America was rich in a way it had never been before and it started to go to everyone's head. The rest of the world was still economically recovering from World War II. We were the only relatively untouched nation having only really been attacked once on our land in Hawaii. We were likely the only big nation on earth that could say this. Russia alone lost 20 million people to war and the starvation caused by Hitler invading Russia just like Napoleon had. And both ended their rules by attacking Russia during the Winter, one just over 100 years after the other.
So, Americans had this: "Anything good is now possible" kind of attitude while simultaneously believing we would all die pretty soon in a nuclear holocaust. It wasn't logical at the time that we could avoid an earth killing war that would naturally extinct all life on earth. But somehow we have.
So, this is how Camelot was born. It was a very wealthy and privileged young President and his privileged young wife and they became like Royalty sort of like Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1930s and early 40s. And they were used to living a "Royal Life" unlike most Americans who were relatively uneducated at the time. People didn't really start getting degrees until Viet Nam so this didn't really get going until around 1965 to 1980 when literally anyone who could started getting Bachelor's and Master's Degrees and PHds.
But, I can say this whole thing all started with Kennedy and his wife Jacquelyn.
However, there is another aspect to royalty which also goes with privilege and I have seen it especially in very wealthy privileged people even today. And it goes something like this: "Whatever a man wants to do and doesn't dishonor his family he does." So, what is kept secret often stays secret and this was true of the Kennedy's too. Jackquelyn once said something like, "He always comes back to me." Which means no matter where he goes or what he does he always comes back to me and the children. Women who were really in love with their husbands who were privileged have often felt this way down through the centuries. This sort of attitude extends back to the English kings like the Johns and the Edwards. I believe it is one of the Edwards that almost everyone in England that has relatives that go back that far is biologically related to. Which meant he spread his seed very far and wide indeed to have everyone in England related to him now.
I'm not saying this is a good thing. However, I am saying it is a fact of life often around very privileged people. So, to put down President Kennedy for this I believe is unfair because it is a class thing that goes back thousands of years in regard to both royalty and wealth and privilege.
Another thing happened in 1960 that changed the western world forever. IT was the legalization of the Birth Control Pill. I remember as a 12 year old reading articles about it in Reader's Digest which was incredibly popular as a magazine then. (Remember there was no Internet until the 1990s). So, in 1960 in some ways Readers Digest with "Humor in Uniform" and other funny things and human interest stories likely was the closest thing to the Internet except for CB Radio we had.
The birth control pill allowed women in general to have sex without getting pregnant. And VD didn't become a real problem in the middle and upper classes until the late 1970s. So, the younger generation went wild with women not having to get pregnant any time they had sex anymore. This created a great divide morally among the generations and even my wife had to deal with her mother getting angry with her even though she wasn't having sex with anyone in High School. I think it was because she was recommended to take the pill for her complexion which she did. Then a friend of hers got pregnant at 15 or 16 and so her mother freaked out on her without good reason.
So, there was a whole lot of craziness culturally around the new sexual freedoms of the 60s and 70s which all came crashing down around 1980 when AIDS came into the public awareness and thousands and millions started dying from it around the world.
But, it is also a fact that the first modern president was John F. Kennedy and the first modern first lady was Jacquelyn. And so to lose them both now is really awful not only for America but for the world too. Because everyone wants to believe in Camelot because if there is Camelot there is actually hope for the human race to be happy and to continue to survive everything that is here and that is coming.
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