Visiting the JFK Museum in Dallas just reinforces the huge dissonance between Kennedy-the-man and Kennedy-the-myth. If the presentations are to be believed, Kennedy would have pulled the US out of Vietnam, ended racial strife, and generally achieved liberal utopia.
Those assertions are incredibly laughable given what we know about (a) Kennedy's politics and (b) what actually happened in the decades after his death.
A reminder for everyone: on this day in 1983, Stanislav Petrov saved the world.
It occurs to me this time around that there's an interesting relationship here - 9/26 is forgotten, while 9/11 is remembered. Do something charitable, and not patriotic, sometime today.