It figures that Kennedy should have loved this show and its memorable song since he spent most of his political career dreaming impossible dreams: the impossible dream of socialism, of radical justice for the disadvantaged and poor-the helpless victims of a cruel and racially unjust society. The impossible dream of a nation without poverty and crime where everyone is healthy, happy, prosperous and wise; where the sin of economic inequality is absolved by the massive redistribution of wealth from haves to the have nots. The dream that flourished in the radical 1960s, that was put into practice and disastrously failed; the dream that transferred trillions in government handouts for 25 years in a war against poverty where poverty won turning our inner cities into war zones and wastelands of violence, crime and drugs.
Long after this ruinous war and social experiment failed Kennedy undaunted bravely fought on and wouldn’t retreat; surmounting every tragedy, obstacle and defeat by strength of will: two murdered brothers, an airplane crash, the deaths of Mary Jo, Jackie and John Jr.; the defeats of ERA, Hillary Care, John Kerry and welfare reform (which he opposed), he stayed the course through it all advancing ahead to the very end while cancer was consuming his brain. How admirable was this man in his folly much like the errant knight Don Quioxte.
Kennedy remained a warrior for utopia unto death and now the mantle of his impossible quest of egalitarian justice: equality of income, outcome, condition and health care for all, his reckless Quixotic idealism, has fallen on Barack Obama, said to be the last of the brothers Kennedy, the most powerful man on earth and conceivably its most dangerous fool.
“To dream the impossible dream; to reach the unreachable star; to fight the unbeatable foe” this nonsense is Obama’s goals as he lurches from disaster to disaster feeling everyone’s pain while causing more; reinforced in his lunacy by Kennedy’s death, the senator from La Mancha, the compassionate.