What If?

50 years ago today was the inauguration of John F. Kennedy. One one level, for many of us, it was the beginning of a lifetime of "what if" questions. 

What if JFK had lived? The Federal Reserve crushed and the U.S. issued its own debt free currency? The CIA broken into a thousand pieces? The Vietnam War never ramped up and the military industry complex held at bay? Israel's nuclear ambitions thwarted and maybe they could have been convinced to change their course of actions? More basically, what if Kennedy didn't ride around in a convertible all the time? The assassination plans would have still gone on but who knows what would have happened.

Moot points. 

Backward looking "what ifs" may make for interesting discussions but what do they do for today? Possibly give us philosophical points to use when trying to effect positive changes for the present and future? Maybe. 

On a personal level we all have plenty of historical "what ifs." We could make those lists and run them over and over in our minds but to what end?

An acquaintance of mine runs a "what if" over in his mind every day. What if he had not encouraged his son to join the military? It would make him a man he said. It did, a dead man. He wishes him alive, maybe married, maybe have a kid, maybe even happy. It's too late. We don't get to go back on our "what ifs." 

The rambling point of all this is that we can't dwell on what might have been. JFK didn't make it. There is no Camelot. That doesn't mean there can't be. Our decisions not only materialize in overt events right in our face but also effect what doesn't happen, what we don't see, what we don't even know. 

JFK's legacy or legend as some call it is still important in the sense that it gives us a point of reference.  The idealism of that time, although unrealized,  is not lost. It's just been put on the back burner due to the ever increasing control of liars and psychopaths for the last 50 years.

"What if?" Two words that can take us in many directions. It's misdirection that holds us in check.

"Time is tight."  It always has been.