"The past lies like a nightmare upon the present." - Karl Marx

I came upon the quote in an unlikely place, the recently released sequel to the novel "Dracula." Marxian economics aside, the quote is extremely profound, and it fits in perfectly to the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Today is the 46th anniversary of our nation's "Nightmare on Elm Street." This country has been in downward spiral ever since. I would venture that if you took an average American alive in 1963, and transported him or her through a time machine to 2009, he or she would be dumbfounded at the deterioration of just about everything political.

When President Dwight Eisenhower left office in 1960, he warned us of the dangers of what he termed the military-industrial complex. John Kennedy, elected as a cold warrior became something quite different as he settled into the job. Military and defense contractors were not at all happy about the change. The cathartic event precipitating this change was the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962. It was at this time that JFK stood up to our military leaders and resisted their demands that we invade Cuba.

After the missile crisis, Kennedy was increasingly at odds with our military and the Central Intelligence Agency, which he had threatened to shatter into a thousand pieces. One can only imagine the rage felt by the military and the CIA when they learned that JFK was intent on ending the Cold War in favor of a rapprochement with the Soviet Union, and that he was going to pull out all of our troops from Vietnam after he was re-elected in 1964. Author James W. Douglass makes those same points in his recent book, "JFK and the Unspeakable." By the summer of 1963, Kennedy had become more than an irritant to the military-industrial complex. He had become an enemy to be removed.

In his book, "Plausible Denial," author/lawyer Mark Lane details the story of how he convinced a Florida jury that the CIA and its agent, E. Howard Hunt, were involved in the assassination of John Kennedy. Recently a new book by Russ Baker called "Family of Secrets" posits the likelihood that George Herbert Walker Bush, otherwise known as the first President Bush, was a member of the CIA at the time of the Kennedy assassination. What's interesting here is that George Herbert Walker Bush, until recently, told people that he couldn't remember where he was the day John Kennedy died. Can you believe that? Most everyone older than 10 in 1963 can tell you where he/she was when they learned of the tragedy. And Bush couldn't? Well, author Russ Baker did a little digging and found an announcement in a Dallas newspaper that George Herbert Walker Bush was scheduled to give a speech in Dallas on Nov. 21, the day before the assassination. And for years afterwards, Bush couldn't remember where he was? Nonsense.

Opinion polls in the past 30 years or so have shown that a large majority of the American people do not believe the government explanation of JFK's assassination. Yet if you should ask President Barack Obama or any other ex-president, he will stand by the government explanation. Even the late Teddy Kennedy, to his everlasting shame, defended the government explanation in his recently published memoir. What we have then is a serious disconnect between our political leaders and the American people on a matter of extreme importance, the murder of a president who had challenged the military-industrial complex. Has the military-industrial complex triumphed over our democratic processes? Is this why we are still in Iraq and Afghanistan? Is this why trade policies that benefit the corporations remain in place despite their negative impact on American jobs? Despite differences, both the right and left in this country have sounded a common theme: "We want our country back." It appears it was taken from us 46 years ago today on Elm Street in Dallas.