Martin Meenagh blog

Restoration

Forty Years ago, the history of the American Republic, and therefore the world, was derailed by an act of murder. The last words of Robert Kennedy to an audience were uttered as he stood on the cusp of a nomination which would have resulted in a very different series of presidencies from those which we have experienced. Kennedy raised the same mad energies, the same mad hopes, and echoed the same wild dreams, as Obama now has to try to defuse. Yet as far as I can tell, he lifted hearts in the same way.

Senator Kennedy's last words in public, as he walked into eternity, were quite clear. 'Now, it's on to Chicago, Let's win there'.

Forty years later the world is waiting on a victory in a city I love and which I am very attached to. The determination of the voters of the republic, in their millions, to hope for something and someone whom they found in Chicago, seems to have launched them upon a restoration of what America could be.

I wonder if anyone can hear those words tripping down through time in the windy city tonight?

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