What does it matter? It was 50 years ago! What difference does it make now?

A lot of young people – who didn’t live through the 60s, or even the 70s – actually have every right to ask those questions. And they deserve some real answers, too.

To put it bluntly, the assassination of President Kennedy makes all the difference in the world. That tragic day in our history was a determining factor in the type of world we have today.

The founders of this country had a vision of freedom and liberty that they tried to ensure for generations to come. They tried to design a democracy so full of checks and balances that it was bulletproof. So that no matter how many crooks managed to get themselves elected, the republic still prevailed.

There have even been a few brief shining moments when the real potential of that original vision took hold. One such moment was Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency. A decimated work force that was shell-shocked from the Great Depression was struggling for its very survival. FDR came to the rescue with the New Deal, a program that redistributed wealth from Wall Street to workers who’d lost their jobs as a result of corporate greed and government corruption – does that sound like a problem you might be familiar with?

Another great moment was the presidency of John F Kennedy in the early 1960s. This time the world was reeling from the Cold War, and a military gone so mad with power and war-like policies (again, sound familiar?) created a very real threat of nuclear annihilation.

But JFK brought us away from the brink of death and destruction by standing up to the war mongers and allowing sanity to prevail. For a moment, we truly seemed to be moving away from the horrors of war and toward a new world where peace between all countries was possible. Then JFK was murdered, eliminated by the same madness he had been fighting against; and it was like the dream suddenly died. We were left with a horrible void and a profound sense of hopelessness. Grown men cried, and with good reason.

So I hope that young people can forgive me for still getting emotional about the JFK assassination 50 years later. We haven’t even had full disclosure, let alone closure.

What we have had is unbelievable amounts of lies and obfuscation, something that affects every single American citizen. I have written about and refuted the incredible government lies, lies that are supported throughout Tom Hank’s movie Parkland. If you read what those doctors at Parkland Hospital actually said and believed, you’ll understand how our government lied to us and is still lying to cover up that crime.

In fact, through my research, I discovered there are hundreds if not thousands of documents that the government won’t release to the American people concerning the assassination of our president. If Oswald really did it, if the Warren Commission’s findings were 100% accurate, what purpose does it serve to conceal these documents? What are our elected officials hiding, 50 years later?

Perhaps what they’re afraid of is that we’ll figure it out: they’ve successfully destroyed our nation. They’ve looted the treasury, pulled the rug out from under the working middle class, and re-routed our country’s resources back to the war machine and the wealthiest 1%.

On top of that, they’ve destroyed our Fourth Amendment rights, the Bill of Rights, and our basic civil liberties by spying on us. They continue to stand in the way of offering us one form of government-run health care while our tax dollars pay for their four separate options.

Today, we face a crisis almost everywhere we look. Our Congress is an international joke. As Will Rogers said:

We have the best politicians that money can buy.

Now, more than ever, we need real change – and that won’t come from either Democrats or Republicans when both parties are bought by the same lobbyists, corporations, and banks. We are being told by our so-called leaders that conflicts are unavoidable, that we must live in a state of perpetual war, and that we must surrender our rights to survive. I’d like to remind you of the words of Ben Franklin:

Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.

22 November marks a crucial moment in American history. Americans have always had the resources to put our country back on track, now we need the resolve. Let’s give the 1% the big wake-up call that they truly deserve. There’s a time for observing history and there’s a time for making it. We can take back our country. And if we don’t do it, nobody else will.