In this epochal year in America of political upheaval, the only thing we should not be shocked about is that there are huge shocks to the country. There will be more. Americans and everyone invested in that country’s future need to steel themselves for the events that will unfold.

Hotel busboy Juan Romero, right, comes to the aid of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, as he lies on the floor of the Ambassador hotel in Los Angeles moments after he was shot.Credit: AP

Many acute observers have already drawn parallels with the last presidential election year of seismic eruptions: 1968. An unpopular Democratic president, Lyndon Johnson, under siege from an immensely tragic war with no end in sight and no path to victory in November, announced he was leaving the field. His vice president, Hubert Humphrey, took up the party’s mantle, only to be challenged by Robert F. Kennedy, brother of the president slain five years previously.

The country was engulfed in the civil rights and anti-war movements. On April 4, Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated in Memphis. On June 5, Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles. The country, divided in despair, turned to former vice president Richard Nixon, who won the election. Nixon adopted the message on a sign carried by a young girl at a Nixon rally that read, “Bring us together........

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