Cuban Missile Crisis

This was the, the, the country that uniquely almost in human history was, was safe.

You know, barring perhaps the Cuban Missile Crisis, this was the country where you were never vulnerable.

You know, there's been no blitz in the United States of America.

Pearl Harbor was, I, I, you know, not a blip, but it didn't actually threaten people living in Middle America.

This was the, the, the country that uniquely almost in human history was, was safe.

You know, barring perhaps the Cuban Missile Crisis, this was the country where you were never vulnerable.

You know, there's been no blitz in the United States of America.

Pearl Harbor was, I, I, you know, not a blip, but it didn't actually threaten people living in Middle America.

I guess I was trying to report it.

But I remember going there and, and, um, thinking that the world, uh, you know, has really, you know, for a lot of people, maybe it was the Cuban Missile Crisis for more older people.

But, like, that was the event for me that kinda, like, awoken me to, like, how much the world has changed.

It's, it's just really something.

You know, we did have— And they're done that, huh? Yeah, we did have a civil war.

We did have a Cuban Missile Crisis.

We did have polarization and political assassination in my lifetime, in the 60s.

And I don't—National Guard was shooting kids on the campus in Kent State.

And all you did was live in fear that they had the H-bomb and it's going to hit us.

And I remember one day I lived next to the Wilco Naval Air Force Base during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

And I said, Mom, it's really dark outside.

And she said, No, Jimmy, those are the planes.

And most SAM systems are designed to intercept aircraft that are in the 30, 40, 50,000 foot range.

You saw this in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

that when they finally shot down Francis Gary Power, not during Cuban Missile Crisis, but during the early days of the Cold War, the U-2 was hit.

They built the U-2 to get above SAM systems.

So then the Russians built a SAM system that could hit the U-2, and they shot down the U-2, so they built the SR-71.

Many of today's young people feel they've been beset and battered by such catastrophic days, endless wars in the Middle East, the 2008 financial crisis, the COVID lockdowns, race riots, inflation, the madness of woke or the rise of conservative populism or both, depending on your point of view.

But, of course, my generation also saw things like this, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the 60s riots, assassination after assassination, the stagflation of the Jimmy Carter economy and the gas shortage.

Speaking personally, I lived in the crime-ridden New York City of the 70s and 80s when smoking was bad for your health because you were likely to get shot going to the store for a pack of cigarettes.

But I also saw that things could turn around.

It made me remember, so this is going way back, you guys.

I was in elementary school during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and we're walking to school.

It was only three blocks away.

And every time we saw a plane flying up, we were looking up there trying to figure out if it was one of ours or one of theirs, right? And that reminded me of that going back to like 1963, 62, whenever the Cuban Missile Crisis was.

Okay.

So as we look at what the Cowboys are doing this weekend and on Sunday night at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, Yankees are playing the Mets this weekend.

So, but now with the Cold War, it comes to the most dangerous moment in world history.

And that's the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962.

I don't remember it, but some people do.

And that is that the world almost destroys itself.