Why the JFK Assassination Still Intrigues and Rankles America

More than sixty years after November 22, 1963, the assassination of John F. Kennedy remains the wound America cannot stop picking at. It is not simply that a young president was murdered in broad daylight; it is that the nation watched its own innocence die on live television and then spent the next six decades arguing about what, exactly, it saw.

The intrigue begins with the sheer improbability of the official story. A lone gunman, a misfit Marine with a mail-order rifle, fires three shots in six seconds and changes history forever. The Warren Commission assured us this was possible, yet every subsequent investigation, from the Ramsey Clark panel to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, has nibbled away at that certainty. Acoustic evidence suggested a fourth shot; the “magic bullet” still performs geometric miracles no ballistics expert can fully replicate. Doubt metastasized into a thousand theories because the evidence itself seemed to conspire against closure. (Read The Dark Side of Camelot by Seymour Hersh.)

But the deeper rankling is existential. Kennedy’s death arrived at the precise moment when postwar optimism was curdling into cynicism. Vietnam was escalating, the CIA was running rogue operations, and organized crime felt untouchable. If a president could be erased with such apparent ease, then no one was safe and nothing was sacred. The assassination could easily be labelled the original sin of modern American paranoia: the moment citizens realized their government might lie to them not out of incompetence, but by design.

What keeps the fascination alive is not the hope of solving the crime; most serious researchers now accept we never will. It is the recognition that JFK’s murder marked the fracture line between the America that believed its myths and the America that could no longer afford to. Every new document batch, every grainy Zapruder frame slowed to agony, is less about finding the killer and more about staring into the abyss of what we became when we stopped trusting the story we were told. I think here of Kurtz's stark observation in Heart of Darkness upon staring into that abyss: "The horror."

For those who lived that moment in time, every one of us remembers exactly where we were, what we saw, what we felt. It was quite similar to having you car struck by a speeding vehicle that ran a red light, leaving you dazed and confused. We were suddenly lost in a nationwide concussion. 

In remembrance of that day and event, here is a collection of links to some of my past blog posts about the JFK assassination as well as the life of JFK.

Did Lee Harvey Oswald Act Alone? Here's a Fresh Analysis and Disturbing Conclusion

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2025/08/did-lee-harvey-oswald-act-alone-heres.html

Flashback Friday: Will A.I. Finally Solve the JFK Assassination?

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2024/11/flashback-friday-will-ai-finally-solve.html

Notes of Infamy: Paul Metsa's Song About the Shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2023/11/notes-of-infamy-pul-metsas-song-about.html

JFK -- Murder Most Foul and the Debate Goes On

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2020/04/jfk-murder-most-foul-and-debate-goes-on.html

More Thoughts on Murder Most Foul: Most Foul Indeed

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2020/07/more-thoughts-on-murder-most-foul-most.html

JFK's Speech to the Northland Shows What Hibbing Was Like During Dylan's Youth

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2020/04/jfks-speech-to-northland-begins-by.html

Latest Dylan Release Brings Back Memories of JFK's Three Visits to the Northland

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2020/03/latest-dylan-release-brings-back.html

Dylan Dishes Up A New Meal with a Feast of References: Murder Most Foul

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2020/03/dylan-dishes-up-new-meal-with-feast-of.html

Wordless Wednesday: The JFK Assassination

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2012/01/wordless-wednesday-jfk-assination.html

11/22/63, The Rest of the Story

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2012/01/112263-rest-of-story.html

A Midpoint Book Review: 11/22/63 by Stephen King

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2012/01/midpoint-book-review-112263-by-stephen.html

A Book That Changed History

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2009/10/book-that-changed-history.html

A Few JFK Quotes

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2009/09/few-jfk-quotes.html

Where were you on this day in 1963?

Gallipoli Remembered: The Anguish Behind "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda"

"And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda" is one of the most powerful antiwar songs of the past century. I can't recall the first time I heard it, but the Joan Baez track is like a pearl. This version by Liam Clancy is equal in capturing the horror of that scene. It begins... 

When I was a young man I carried my pack
And I lived the free life of a rover
From the murrays green basin to the dusty outback
I waltzed my matilda all over
Then in nineteen fifteen my country said son
It's time to stop rambling 'cause there's work to be done
So they gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun
And they sent me away to the war
And the band played Waltzing Matilda
As we sailed away from the quay
And amidst all the tears and the shouts and the cheers
We sailed off to Gallipoli

The heartbreaking scene unfolded like this...

The August 1915 landing at Suvla Bay during the Gallipoli campaign was a descent into a hellscape of blood and chaos. Allied soldiers, under heavy fire from Turkish positions on the high ground, were cut down in droves as they struggled to disembark. Boatloads of men were decimated before even reaching the shore, their bodies littering the crimson-stained water. Those who made it faced a brutal landscape of barbed wire, shrapnel, and machine-gun fire. The stench of death and cordite hung heavy in the air, a constant reminder of the carnage.

Snipers perched on the cliffs picked off the vulnerable troops with chilling precision. The wounded lay unattended, crying out in pain as the sun beat down mercilessly. Dysentery and disease spread rampant through the unsanitary conditions, claiming as many lives as the bullets. Exhaustion and despair gnawed at the survivors, who were forced to endure the relentless pounding of artillery and the nightly terror of Turkish raids.

The failure of the Suvla Bay landings sealed the fate of the Gallipoli campaign. The once-optimistic Allied forces were bogged down in a bloody stalemate, forced to face the horrifying reality of trench warfare. The beaches of Suvla Bay became a graveyard, a testament to the tragic cost of strategic blunders and the unrelenting brutality of World War I.

* * *
What made the debacle more horrific was that in the first wave of the assault Turkish snipers struck down the officers, leaving their soldiers lost and confused, dealing with deteriorating conditions and decimated morale in a foreign land. It's hard to imagine a more terrifying nightmare.

When will we learn?

Illustration generated by AI

I'm On the Side of Civilians

This week I was talking with a friend who made an interesting statement. "I'm not Conservative or Liberal, Republican or Democrat... I'm on the side of Civilians."

This resonated with me. And it reminded me of a statement I heard last fall: "The problem is the Bureaucrats." In fact, I heard that statement twice in two days, from different sources.

Whether it's Ukraine or Gaza, Israel or Somalia, it's apparent that the decisions made by those who wield power are going to have consequences that impact the powerless. America alone has been bombing countries since the beginning of World War II. The world was horrified by Guernica, a civilian village in Spain bombed by fascists during the Spanish Civil War, yet in how many times and places has this bombing of civilians taken place? 

America alone has bombed China, Korea, Guatemala, Indonesia, the Congo, Peru, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Libya, Bosnia, Sudan, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq. American bombs and missiles are being generously supplied to Israel to destroy Gaza. In many of these cases we claim to have been liberators. I'm curious what the civilians whose homes have been pulverized have to say about all that. 

At the end of Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness, Kurtz, a central character who has descended into madness in the heart of Africa, utters these memorable, haunting words as he reflects on the darkness and depravity he has encountered: "The horror! The horror!"

The statement encapsulates Kurtz's profound realization of the moral corruption and brutality that he has witnessed and participated in during his time in the Congo. It's all the more ironic because he is the one who supposedly came from a "civilized" culture. Ultimately Kurtz serves as a chilling commentary on the human capacity for evil and the consequences of unchecked power and imperialism. 

While headlines herald the machinations of the powerful and the elites, let's not forget the civilians. At the end of the day one must continue to ask, "What about the people?"  

Gaza: Are These Things True? Or Are They Lies? I Find It All Quite Disturbing

Screen Shot: October 22, Gaza

The current horrors in Gaza show no signs of abating. As one Palestinian on Twitter put it, "No words to describe the horror we live every hour!" (I will continue to refer to the social media platform in this manner because it seems easier than "X, which was formerly Twitter") 

Certainly there is a propaganda war going on, so one has to find ways to differentiate reality from myth or disinformation.

For this reason, I am sharing here a batch of statements and observations, and you can help us by affirming, clarifying or disproving in the comments.

* * * 

IS THIS TRUE?
During an Al Jazeera segment on Israel's bombing of Al-Wafa Hospital, they needed to pause to update viewers that Israeli airstrikes had also just killed the wife and children of one of their reporters, Wael Dahdouh, in an airstrike on a refugee camp they were ordered to flee to.

Source: Posted on Twitter

IS THIS TRUE?

Netanyahu, the leader of Israel’s Master Race Democracy, declares, “We are the people of the light, they are the people of darkness,” then vows to fulfill biblical prophecy through the bombardment of Gaza.

There's no such thing as Geneva Conventions. This is all theatre for Westerners. Like children believing in Santa Claus.

Source: Posted on Twitter

IS THIS TRUE?

Israel has not stopped bombing gaza despite the UN’s vote for ceasefire, please continue being vocal, emailing/calling politicians, and attending protests for at least a ceasefire and humanitarian aid

Source: Posted on Twitter

IS THIS TRUE?

We are at the point where ambulances and civil defense crews no longer rescue anyone in Gaza. 

They have no fuel to move and it is too dangerous to move in the first place.

Corpses and injured people are laying in the streets and under the rubble of their bombed houses

Source: Posted on Twitter

IS THIS TRUE?
Sy Hersh says that Netanyahu’s plan is to turn Gaza into another Hiroshima without the use of nukes. But nukes could be next.

Source: Posted on Twitter

IS THIS TRUE?
The Situation in Gaza 

I had the opportunity to communicate with some members of my family. The situation is unbelievable. Hungry dogs are eating the remains of bodies buried under the rubble in Gaza City. The smell of decay pervades the city. There will be catastrophic health consequences. Food and clean water are scarce. One of my nieces was taken to the hospital because of lack of food two days ago. People are beginning to experience starvation in its most literal sense. They spend 7 hours in line to receive a single piece of bread for each member of the family. When food is found, it's exorbitantly expensive. If this continues before our very eyes, it will turn into a horrendous BLACK MOMENT IN HUMAN HISTORY.

Source: Private email to a friend earlier this past week

IS THIS TRUE?
From Chris Hedges:
Israel was founded on lies. The lie that Palestinian land was largely unoccupied. The lie that 750,000 Palestinians fled their homes and villages during their ethnic cleansing by Zionist militias in 1948 because they were told to do so by Arab leaders. The lie that it was Arab armies that started the 1948 war that saw Israel seize 78 percent of historic Palestine. The lie that Israel faced annihilation in 1967, forcing it to invade and occupy the remaining 22 percent of Palestine, as well as land belonging to Egypt and Syria. 

Israel is sustained by lies. The lie that Israel wants a just and equitable peace and will support a Palestinian state. The lie that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. The lie that Israel is an “outpost of Western civilization in a sea of barbarism.” The lie that Israel respects the rule of law and human rights. 

Source: Israel's Culture of Deceit

IS THIS TRUE?
Israel has violated more UN Security Council Resolutions than any other country.

Source: Middle East Monitor

IS THIS TRUE?

A. Israel has been occupying Gaza  and killing civilians before Hamas existed

B. Israel’s indiscriminate bombing has killed hostages

C. Israel is holding thousands of innocent Palestinians

D. Israel does NOT have to do what it’s doing
Source: Posted on Twitter

IS THIS TRUE?
A United Nations official stated that “these events didn’t happen in a vacuum.” Israel immediately denounced this statement as antisemitism.

IS THIS TRUE?

HERE are the only countries who voted on the side of the United States and Israel regarding Gaza situation: Austria, Croatia, Czechia, Fiji, Guatemala, Hungary, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, and Tonga. 

IF THERE IS ANYTHING INACCURATE ON THIS PAGE, PLEASE POST CORRECTIONS IN THE COMMENTS. PERSONAL ATTACKS WILL BE MODERATE

Poilu -- A Grisly WWI Memoir from the Trenches

French soldier at lookout, WWI

grisly:  
ɡrizlē / adjective/
"causing horror or disgust"

gruesome:
ɡro͞osəm/ adjective/
"causing repulsion or horror"

Synonyms: ghastly, frightful, horrifying, fearful, hideous

* * * * *

I recently had a discussion with a friend with whom the topic of World War I came up. I was recommending that he watch Kubrick's Paths of Glory again, as I had just revisited it recently. This led to discussions about books, of which he made three recommendations: The Great War by G.J. Meyer, Goodbye To All That by Robert Graves, and Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker. The latter two I requested the next day from the library and then purchased Meyer's volume as a Christmas present to myself. 

The word "poilu" is literally translated "hairy" but its meaning is similar to the dismissive term "grunt" that is used in our American lingo. After a few short pages I became utterly immersed with this detailed and insightful account of life in the trenches and its horrors. The words grisly and gruesome only begin to describe the experience for these grunts who suffered the most appalling indignities. 

One of the recurring themes in the narrative is how much the soldiers despised their commanders, and rightly so. The abuse they endured for no reason and the lack of any kind of empathy or attempt to relate to the circumstances these poilu were being sent into is unbelievable. 

A second theme that closely parallels the first is that over time there developed a greater camaraderie between the German grunts and poilu than either group of fighting men with their own officers.

On one occasion the French troops were crawling forward in a heavy rain through the mud and, emboldened by the silence they encountered, they arrived at the German trench they had been ordered to take. They found it stuffed with corpses. There was only one wounded German, who was taken away and the trench reoccupied.

"They tossed out the dead bodies to both sides, front and rear, and covered them insufficiently with the earth they shoveled out while deepening the trench. But the steady rains uncovered the bodies, little by little, and they had to abandon the trench. A sign post at its entrance bore this lugubrious inscription: Trench of Death. In truth, there were only dead men there." (p. 34-35)

Over and over the weather brings additional challenges to bear upon the men. It becomes apparent that there will never be any kind of "winning" in this war. The real objective is to not lose one's sanity.

"The steady rain brought on landslides which uncovered many French cadavers alongside our trench, which had been taken on September 25. They had been tossed out of the trench and insufficiently covered with a bit of dirt. It wasn’t unusual to be grabbed while passing by a skeleton hand or a foot sticking out of a trench wall. We were so blasé about it that we paid it no more attention than to a root we might trip upon in our paths." (p. 134)

And then there were the lice. 

"We had six days of rest at Agnez-les-Duisans. With heavy rains each day forcing us to stay inside our billets, our primary occupation was hunting lice. Each of us carried thousands of them. They found a home in the smallest crease, along the seams in the linings of our clothing. There were white ones, black ones, gray ones with crosses on their backs like crusaders, tiny ones and others as big as a grain of wheat, and all this variety swarmed and multiplied to the document of our skins.

"And these lice bore in as well on the tough skin of a rude peasant as on the soft skin of an effeminate Parisian. It made no distinction among levels of society. To get rid of them, some rub themselves all over with gasoline every night; others carried sachets of camphor, or powdered them selves with insecticide; nothing did any good. You'd kill 10 of them and 100 more would appear.

"This all came from the repulsive filthiness of our bedding, which was hardly ever changed, and the difficulties we had and doing laundry. The cold was so pervasive that as soon as everything was washed it froze solid. Where could we thaw out and put it out to dry?"

There were good reasons the poilu detested their officers. Here is one example. In order to motivate the soldiers to run toward the German trenches, Balthas' unit was told that they must go relieve the 23rd division at a certain location. The soldiers pressed forward only to find no French soldiers at all. They had been lied to and advanced into a withering blaze of machine gun fire. The lie was supposed to make them feel more confident in their advance. Naturally it made them distrust their commanders even more.

If a soldier requested leave because his frostbitten feet made it impossible for him to walk, the soldier would be court-martialed for making excuses to avoid having to fight. And just as in Paths of Glory, sometimes the officers would order the shooting of their own men if they failed to run forward into blistering machine gun fire.

Reading Barthas puts a perspective on the realities of that time. On page one he describes the manner in which the coming war is announced. There is a drumroll in his village followed by the declaration of a general mobilization, which is a prelude to war. 

Barthas writes, "This announcement, to my great amazement, aroused more enthusiasm than sorrow. Unthinking people seemed proud to live in a time when something so magnificent was about to happen... Everyone got ready, at a fever pitch, as if they really feared not getting there in time before the victory was complete."

* * *

“Ah, the notebooks of Louis Barthas! This book has profound historic value. It is also a genuine work of literature.”—François Mitterrand, former president of France

* * * 

Related Links

The Great War: So Much Sorrow, And for What?

Paths of Glory (A 2010 review)

Tech Tuesday: Close Encounter of the Wrong Kind (An AI Adventure Story)

Close Encounter of the Wrong Kind

Photo by Donovan Reeves on Unsplash

Burt is an intimidating giant of a man, a great hulk of a man, a man of a sort not seen in a long time, hence his fearless demeanor. He's as tall as a tree, as wide as a bull, as strong as a bear. In the depths of winter he has a beard as black as a raven's wing. His skin is as hard as iron, as smooth as the scales of a fish, as sweatless as a pine tree. The man's achilles' heel is a strand of blue rope that he never sees.

He’s young, maybe thirty, maybe younger, with fair hair. His eyes are brown, lost in a fog of alcohol. He shuffles along, shuffles his feet, smiles at every corner, and manages to find every newly littered alley to take a tumble in.

Yesterday Burt became separated from his friends after an altercation at The Hot Spot, a club in the seamier part of London. After staggering about in a part of the city that was strange to him he stumbled into yet another unfamiliar alley. The air was cold, crisp, and wet, the heart of winter beating against him, the air damp with the smell of rotting fish and watery oysters, the smell of decay.  

The alley was lined with abandoned buildings, broken windows, broken lamps, broken chairs, broken bottles, and all the brokenness of a broken world. It was dark, as if night had swallowed the sun. The light of the day was gone, and the taste of the day was gone. All the colors were gone; there was only fog, mist, and darkness.

Out from this darkness a creature emerged and slammed into him. It was not human, but something else, some sort of beast with a head that was too big for its body. Its eyes shone red, and its teeth glowed white.

"Hey, watch it," Burt mumbled.

The beast growled, it's breath a meaty stench, the odor of blood and rot.

The hairs on the back of Burt's neck stood on end. He became instantly alert, heart racing, fear coursing his veins, a fear that smelled of seaweed and of wet rock, of diesel and of the sea, of storm clouds and of rain, of dark water and of dark shadows. He cursed under his breath. He'd been caught alone and had nowhere to turn. Suddenly, an involuntary prayer rolled off his tongue.

It was a prayer, but not one Burt recognized. It was not the kind of prayer you said every day, the kind of prayer that was used to white-wash a sin or to get your mom off your case for not taking out the trash. It was a prayer of terror and of fear and of need and of desperation and of love and of grief and of loss and of hatred and of anger and of horror and of despair and of hope and of praise and of forgiveness and of all of it and more--ten of it and a hundred of it and a thousand of it and an infinity of it and all of it. Words flowed out like the unrolling of a leather scroll, like a song from the sea, full of longing and filled with light.

He felt a shiver rush up his spine as the beast fell backwards, clattering against a dumpster. As the shadow of the beast moved away Burt felt a comforting touch. His lungs filled with wet dust, his eyes stung, the familiar scent of rain and tree branches flooding into his nose.

As he blinked back the moisture, he wondered, "Have I been dreaming?"

He'd always believed there was evil in the world, but it had never before been so tangible. The beast's dark shape was only part of the horror. Its every movement, smooth as silk, lithe, serpentine. He imagined it slithering through dumpsters like the world's largest python.

From somewhere in his past Burt seemed to recall rumors about such a resident evil in the world's darkest cities, but he'd always dismissed them. Till now.

# # # #

Afterword
I have been experimenting with an AI website that writes poetry and stories. This story was a hybrid team effort involving the creator (myself) working in conjunction with a digital ghost in the machine.  My "partner" created the character and together we spun a tale. My role was simply to give a nudge (prompt) here or there. 

Some of the language was clunky in places, so my second role was as editor, something akin to Maxwell Perkins working with Hemingway, except in this case my bot is unable to take a swing at me when we're not in agreement. And I always get the final say.  

* * * * *

What was the 1932-33 Holodomor Horror?

Sigmund Freud. He studied dreams.

Sigmund Freud chose to publish his epic Interpretation of Dreams in the year 1900 because he and his peers believed the 20th century would see the fruition of humanity's Golden Age. How unexpectedly different the 20th Century proved to be. World Wars, Cold War, military disasters like Viet Nam and Afghanistan, genocides, apartheids, African horrors like Idi Amin and Rwanda's tribal slaughter, the Spanish Flu epidemic (50 million killed worldwide, 675,000 in the U.S.), Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the perpetual threat of nuclear war... OK, you get the picture. I do not believe the idealists of 1900 had a clue what lay ahead.

Though I've oft heard reference to the massive quantities of deaths produced by Stalin and Mao in their efforts to acquire and maintain power, I was not familiar with the word Holodomor, so it intrigued me to read about it yesterday.

The word Holodomor means "to kill by starvation." It is used in reference to what occurred in the Soviet Union because it has now been recognized as an intentional man-made genocide of the Ukrainian people carried out in 1932-33 by the Soviet government under Stalin.

The Wikipedia account goes on to say, "The term Holodomor emphasizes the famine's man-made and intentional aspects, such as rejection of outside aid, confiscation of all household foodstuffs, and restriction of population movement. Whether the Holodomor was genocide is still the subject of academic debate, as are the causes of the famine and intentionality of the deaths."

* * * *
FAST FORWARD
This past week I noticed a story about potatoes being dumped in Idaho. Someone else sent me a story about lettuce being plowed under. Once you look and see stories about the food chain breaking down, it's easy to wonder how far this (our current pandemic) will play out.

All my life I've heard expressions like "the cure was worse than the disease." Is our government's initial knee-jerk mass closures and panic-driven determination to "do something quickly" doing more harm than good?

Are all the inefficiencies and poorly thought out "remedies" due to good intentions gone bad? It's easy to see how some conspiracy theorists have already begun to conclude that it's "all part of a bigger plan."

* * * *

Well, let's not overthink it. Here's a song to give you a lift as you enter another day of lockdown. Freight Train Blues, Doc Watson.

Related Links
Holodomor at Wikipedia, source material for this blog post.
COVID-19 Highlights the Harms of Bad Food Regulations and the Benefits of Lifting Them
Coronavirus creates glut within previously tight potato market
'Food supply chain is breaking,' Tyson Foods chairman says as processing plants continue to close

17 Thoughts In Response to Kathryn Bigelow's Detroit

1967 Detroit riots. Photo Credit: Public Domain/http://j.mp/1SPGCl0

It's an axiom of great photographers to focus the lens on a micro view that serves as a mirror of the big picture. For example, a closeup of a mother weeping over her shrapnel-damaged infant son as a means of showing the side effects of carpet bombing and the meaning of that impersonal euphemism, "collateral damage."

This, it would seem, is what Katheryn Bigelow was attempting to do in her 2017 focus on what occurred at the Algiers Motel in the movie Detroit, a purportedly fact-based film set against the backdrop of the Detroit riots of 1967.

My initial title for this review was going to be Detroit Starts Fine But Veers Into Horror for Horror's Sake.

My blog response was initially going to read... Recommended: Read the Reviews and Skip the Film. Or maybe, Recommended: Don't watch this if you're depressed.

I would have skipped it altogether (a public response) but then found myself dwelling on certain aspects of the story and decided to make a list of thoughts about the film, partly in an effort to purge myself of some things that were stirred by watching it.

1. "the city routinely declined to promote black patrolmen, and the police had a reputation for exhibiting 'crude racism' and ignoring the needs of the black community. The police were perceived as unwilling to enforce the law and slow to respond in black communities, and police harassment of African Americans was the norm. Subsequently, African Americans... tended to strongly distrust the police. There had also been several incidents of brutality committed by the police... which worsened the tension between the police and the city's African American citizens."

The above paragraph is taken from a Wikipedia entry not about Detroit, but about riots in a section of Cleveland in the mid-Sixties. It could have been Chicago, L.A., Newark, Louisville, Kanas City, Baltimore or a multitude of other places, including Detroit.

2. The incident at the Algiers Motel in Detroit served not as a microcosm of the problems in Detroit, but of a pervasive issue throughout the nation.

Newark riots. Photo Credit: Tabitha C. Wang, Public Domain

3. My family living in New Jersey at this time. After the Newark riots, a neighbor of mine stated that there were cops in Newark who welcomed the riots. It gave them an opportunity "to shoot a n***** and get away with it." His uncle, a cop, had said this. Being an impressionable teen it depressed me to hear this.

4. Will Poulter played one of the most evil characters I've ever seen in film, but this character was not really a character. Compare Poulter to Javier Bardem in No Country For Old Men. Bardem was scary bad, but interesting. Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood was another evil man, but we saw a fully developed character, a human being with motivations, albeit bent.

5. Speaking of motivations, none of the characters appeared to be really developed. The five Motown singers were given a few minutes to let us know they were young folks with dreams. Characters have motivations. Characters must each have a quest, something they want. We only got that from one person in the film, a singer who had talent and a dream.

6. To quote from one of the reviewers, the film became "an over-indulgent orgy of violence" that failed to address the historical context in which the riots arose.

7. There are a lot of films that deal with tension, violence and the like, but the best films give the viewer some relief, places to catch one's breath. Maybe that is the point that Ms. Bigelow was making. "If you think an hour or two of unrelenting torture is bad, well imagine how these kids felt after eight hours of this, and worse." O.K., but I didn't sign up for that. And whatever happened to the maxim, "Less is more"?

There are dozens of films that effectively deal with injustice without putting this whole horror directly in your face. Even Tarantino's violence is interspersed with comic relief.

8. The deeper, long-term causes of the riots barely appear in the film. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, "The deeper causes of the riot were high levels of frustration, resentment, and anger that had been created among African Americans by unemployment and underemployment, persistent and extreme poverty, racism and racial segregation, police brutality, and lack of economic and educational opportunities."

9. The crazy guy who fired the fake gun and initiated this whole crazy sequence events was killed right at the start. Why didn't anyone explain what happened? I dunno.

10. O.K., maybe I do sort of understand this. One time, in my hippie youth, I was beaten up by a couple tough guys from outside the neighborhood. The police talked to the assailants first and afterwards hassled me in such a way that I, like the victimized young people in the film, kept my mouth shut. I could tell the police had no interest in my side of the story. I suppose it is possible the young people were too terrified to speak and believed any attempt to say anything would be considered insolence. Power can be intimidating.

11. Getting back to Will Poulter... How do actors feel after playing a role like that? I mean. at the end of each day, where is your head at?

12. In some communities, like Duluth, there have been improvements. Here is an example involving an artist, Carla Hamilton, who was profiled, singled out and interrogated improperly. Her response was to go to Chief Tuskan and turn this into a learning moment for the police by having them hear how they mishandled the situation. The follow up was an art exhibition at the Duluth Art Institute the following winter.

This would not have happened 50 years ago. The dialogue with Chief Tuscan led to a broader dialogue, ultimately with the community.

13. Improvement does not mean that race issues have disappeared. There is much work yet to be done.

14. The animated re-telling of the story of how blacks migrated North for jobs in the rust belt and the "white flight" that occurred in the inner cities after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that permitted blacks to leave the ghettos, this was well done and got my hopes up for the film. Handled with a light touch, yet informative. The scenes that followed raised more questions than they answered.

15. There are many ways to tell a story. I can imagine that many people watching on DVDs quit watching before it reaches any kind of conclusion. I think here of 12 Angry Men, which deals with an injustice without hanging it in front of your face.

16. One reviewer at imdb.com  wrote, "Too bad the writing didn't create a more coherent picture of the time period. Statistics of unemployment, arrests of African Americans, a rising black prison population, would have helped create the setting in which the riots occurred." Well, that is the kind of material you can bring to the fore in a documentary.

17. The next comment from the reviews falls into the same category, info that could be better shared in a documentary. "The film fails to show how the riots were a watershed moment in the history of Detroit, how everything afterward became worse economically for the city and where that left the city today. Near the end of the film, Detroit goes from civil rights drama to procedural drama and completely loses its way. Certainly, presenting what happened to the three white officers charged with murder was worthwhile, but that could have been done in a paragraph as an epilogue."

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The history of race in America is depressing to think about, but it cannot be ignored.

Related Links
imdb.com User Reviews
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Meantime, life goes on all around you. Make a difference.