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What If JFK Had Lived? Three Wrong Assumptions That Won’t Go Away
Debunking myths on the anniversary of his assassination
Today is the 59th anniversary of the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963. It was one of the most traumatic and pivotal moments in American history, and undoubtedly altered the course of world events in ways we cannot begin to fathom. The assassination also spawned a cottage industry of conspiracy theories, with books and films claiming to know the “true” story of who killed JFK still being produced nearly 60 years later. One of the best known and most believed is the Oliver Stone film JFK, which somehow managed to get nearly everything it presented completely wrong.
Aside from the myth that the Mafia/the Cubans/the Russians/LBJ/the Secret Service/Yankees slugger Joe DiMaggio/my mom all had a hand in Kennedy’s death (I will reveal the real culprit at the end of this piece), the most lingering legacy of that event is a simple hypothetical question: what if it had not happened at all? How would the world look different today, and more importantly, how would the tumultuous 1960s have been different?
The “what if?” question is one we all love to ask; simply look at the success of last year’s animated Marvel series of the same name for proof. With comic…
