As someone who live through 1968 at an age when I could realize what happened … you are exactly right (Hammer, “The Legacy of 1968,” Dec. 12-19). 1968 was also a time when it became in-vogue ... after a post-1950s period of enlightenment and change ... to become cynical and self-centered, as some of the previous comments evidence ...

The connection you make is apt ... If Bob Kennedy isn’t killed, Nixon is never president ... and Bush could not have followed him ... we probably would not have backed bin Laden against the Soviets and he probably would not have survived into the 1990s ... for us to betray and disillusion him. True.

Bill Clinton would probably never have been elected … as there would not have been 12 years of GOP domination … but the Bushes and their dangerous drift towards isolationism and world domination would also never have occurred ... Nor could the Supreme Court have been stacked to nullify the physical results of that or any election ... as occurred in 2000 ... outwardly or inwardly demoralizing most of the American public and sealing the lid on their freshly brewed lack of faith in fellow Americans and the government ...

But, regardless of the alternate universe I paint, Indiana would still be 20 years behind the times, dominated by dinosaur thinking and you, Steve, would still be dealing with some “basement readers” who like their civil libertarians and their minorities as they like their women: face down on their knees in front of them. Hang in there, Steve.