I saw much the same reaction to RFK’s death in my Catholic high school and Catholic community. Since my parents though were ardent Republican and conservative by then, none of us were in sympathy with operatic displays of grief at RFK’s assassination. To us, his tragic death was yet another sign that the country had taken a wrong turn under the Democrats. Even as a first generation Irish Catholic, my mother worried far less about the Kennedys than the risk that her three sons would get drafted and sent to Vietnam if the Democrats won in 1968.
You were a few years wiser than us
But we all eventually saw the hypocrisy, corruption, unpatriotism, and PC ass kissing, and switched allegiances accordingly