James B. Comey is a former director of the FBI and deputy attorney general.
When I was a little kid, the United States seemed to be coming apart. The president was murdered in public. The first lady had his blood on her pink suit. Then the man who killed the president was murdered, also in public.
Earlier that same year, four black girls in Birmingham, Ala., were killed by a racist bomb attack during Sunday school. Then Malcolm X was assassinated. Then Martin Luther King Jr. Then the murdered president’s brother, who was a senator and likely to be the next president.
Our cities were torn by riots and fires. Troops were deployed — at least those who weren’t half a world away in Vietnam, being killed by the thousands in a war few understood. Many thousands of young men fled the country rather than be drafted to join them. Thousands more marched to protest the war, often burning flags and battling police or counterprotesters. Unarmed students were killed by soldiers. White Americans violently resisted desegregation. War and death and disorder dominated the news. Continue reading.