Posted on 11/23/2003 6:40:47 AM PST by GaryL
CNN reporter Kelly Wallace stands in Dallas' Dealey Plaza and points to the Texas School Book Depository window where, she says, Lee Harvey Oswald is "thought'' to have shot President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963 -- 40 years ago Saturday. Then she and the anchor chat about the various conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination and conclude that the truth will probably never be known.
That's nonsense. And worse, it's popular nonsense. The truth is known. Oswald, acting alone, murdered JFK. We know this with as much certainty as we know anything in history. And just as we don't speak of the "alleged Civil War'' or the "supposed sinking of the Titanic,'' so to give credence to the lingering and numerous wild theories about the assassination of JFK is an unwise pandering to folklore and uncritical thinking.
Rather than continue to ask if there is any validity to these imaginings, we should wonder why they are so popular in the first place.
Several answers come to mind. People equate skepticism with independence. If the government says the sky is blue, a certain slice of the population would begin to doubt it. People also seek meaning in their lives. The idea of random tragedy, of a lone lunatic being able to destroy a man such as John F. Kennedy, is difficult to accept. They would rather cling to enticing accidents of history -- did you know that Richard M. Nixon was in Dallas the day before the assassination? -- than face a world where bad things happen for no reason at all.
Credulous media coverage by shallow reporters makes the situation worse. Balancing unequal arguments seems like fairness to them. Thus the Warren Report is weighed against Oliver Stone's fevered fantasies, just as science is pitted against UFO fanatics or, occasionally, the historical record of World War II is forced to justify itself to Holocaust deniers.
There is a human need to see order in chaos. We see it in every corner of human experience. It's what causes us to see animal figures in the stars. But the beauty of Western Civilization is that we have a commitment to empirical reality, and dry fact tells us that, despite the desires of our hearts, Elvis is not alive. The Jews don't run the world. And Kennedy was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone.
The Italians have a word, "dietrologia,'' which translates as the tendency to find shadowy motives behind the obvious. That is what is going on here. Oswald was a skilled marksman. He shot Kennedy at what amounted, for him, at close range. The endless skepticism and analysis are a waste of time, and, worse, they distract attention that might otherwise be devoted to the actual trials and triumphs of Kennedy's short-lived, long-ago administration. Forty years is long enough for wild speculation to be indulged. It's time to stop humoring the conspiracy buffs.
Caroline is still alive.
Kennedy's head didn't move in the same direction as the bullet. Conspiracy buffs keep saying: "Backward and to the left." Oswald's third shot was fired toward Kennedy from his (Kennedy's) right to his left (i.e. approaching from over Kennedy's right shoulder). If Kennedy's head had moved in the direction of the sixth-floor window, it would have been backward and to the right.
For every action there is an equal and oppopsite reaction. Kennedy moved backward and to the left while his brain and blood exploded out of his head forward and to the right. As far as I'm concerned, this explains why he moved backward and to the left.
Facts:
What a patently absurd statement! There is an entire warehouse full of Kennedy assassination material at the Natinal Archives in College Park.
That one statement means you can no longer be taken seriously.
It's already getting close. But it still is the best of what is out there.
As opposed to what you, and what your conspiracy friends have posted here of course -- all solid facts, nothing made up, no speculation. < /sarcasm >
Then why didn't Ruby kill Oswald at the first opportunity, namely, when Oswald was paraded before the media at midnight? Ruby was there and did nothing.
Every time it is explained satisfactorily to you, you ignore it.
Go read this web page and follow the links. Then come back here and explain what is preventing you from accepting the single bullet fact (fact -- not theory).
Sirhan Sirhan murdered Bobby Kennedy.
Teddy Kennedy left Mary Jo Kopechne to drown in shallow water.
What am I missing?
Ruby silenced the "witness". Ruby wortked for the mob.
You do the math.
This is a typical post of the conspiracy buffs. Notice it contains not a single fact or piece of evidence. It is all speculation and "stuff made up."
And Al Gore claimed credit for inventing the Internet. It doesn't make what he said is true.
Again we have a case where every senior official in the government for the last 40 years, every conspiracy debunker, the person under Oswald in the 5th floor window, his co-workers, his family, his wife, the Dallas PD, the FBI, the Secret Service, an so forth are all a bunch of bald-faced liers -- but a Mafia hitman -- he is as clean as the driven snow and always tells the truth?
Again, the poster gives us no evidence to back this up. It's simply an opinion. No matter how many times it is repeated it will never turn to fact. What do you base this opinion on?
What am I missing?
That Sirhan Sirhan is a Palestinian. Did he have any ties to Yassar Arafat?
I don't get this Oliver Stone thing. He is a movie maker. Since when have movie makers been truth tellers? If I disagree with Posner, am I forced to defend this Communist? If I would have to choose a public person to offer a debate against Posner, it would be Mort Sahl. The problem is, since it seems the sheeple do not have the attention span to discern the truth, they surely cannot handle the thought provoking social and political commentary offered by Sahl. The are left to the likes of Rush, Hannity, Gallagher, and Savage who are little more than evolutions of Joe Pyne in refined and marketable packages. Rush would dismiss the likes of me as KOOK, an entertaining acronym that no one ever remembers, but derivation of the acronym is not the point. Ad hominem attacks by name calling is proven way of dismissing questions that do not have pat answers. There are others who populate this forum, that like to use the term tin foil hat.
I dismiss the magic bullet theory not so much by weighing its merits, but by evaluating the creditibility of it author. He knows about as much about forensics as he does about Scottish law.
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