Posted on 06/12/2007 1:24:58 AM PDT by goldstategop
Vincent Bugliosi's remarkable 20-year work on who killed John F. Kennedy has just been published. Containing about a million and a half words and thousands of footnotes, "Reclaiming History" is probably the most detailed examination of one moment in time ever written. It reconfirms that a man named Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing the American president.
As one who never doubted the original U.S. government report that Oswald acted alone, I am deeply grateful to Bugliosi for the service he has rendered our country. But I also regret that he had to.
Not One Shred of Evidence
Why did he have to? Because it was necessary to definitively refute all those who believe, despite bipartisan government reports and excellent books such as Gerald Posner's "Case Closed," that there was some conspiracy to kill President Kennedy and that Oswald was not the only shooter.
There is not a shred of evidence that there was a conspiracy to kill John F. Kennedy, but that is entirely irrelevant to those who choose to believe that there was one. The lack of evidence only reinforces their belief that a conspiracy has been hidden.
One would think that someone would have come forward in the last 44 years to tell the world about the conspiracy. He or she would become a major figure in history, not to mention the likelihood of becoming very wealthy. But somehow, despite the fact that the government can rarely hide for months even what it wishes to hide, both Democratic and Republican administrations acting in cooperation with each other have hidden these facts.
As Bugliosi pointed out to me, it would in fact have had to be a double conspiracy -- first, the plot to assassinate, and then the plot by a much larger group, including many honorable people involved in the investigation, to cover up the original conspiracy.
Likewise, given the vast amount of planning and implementation -- and the large number of people -- that would have been involved in arranging the 9/11 destruction of the World Trade Center towers and part of the Pentagon, not one person has come forward -- not one American or foreigner, not one leftist or rightist -- to reveal a U.S. government plot to murder thousands of Americans and bring down two of the tallest buildings in the world.
Why, then, do people believe in these and other conspiracies? (Of course, there are known conspiracies -- Osama bin Laden and others conspired in the 9/11 plot -- but there are no successful hidden conspiracies. I cannot think of one in my lifetime.) There are at least six major reasons:
1. Many people find it impossible to believe that a few utterly unimpressive individuals can do so much damage. Lee Harvey Oswald, a man who can best be described as simply a loser, could change history all by himself? It doesn't seem to make sense.
2. Many people want to blame those they loathe for as much of what they do not like as possible. Just about everyone who believes in hidden conspiracies attributes those conspiracies to those they hate. People who hate President George W. Bush blame him and his administration for 9/11. Egyptians who hate Israel have blamed AIDS on Israeli prostitutes. Indeed, attributing to Jews hidden conspiracies -- the "world Jewish conspiracy," the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" -- is the oldest and most common belief in a hidden conspiracy.
3. One should never underestimate the power of boredom -- and the subsequent yearning for excitement -- to affect people's thinking and behavior. Belief in a hidden conspiracy is far more exciting than accepting prosaic truths. Figuring out the "mystery" of who killed JFK is a much bigger thrill than accepting that one jerk was responsible. Deciphering who was "really" responsible for 9/11 is a lot more interesting than accepting that 19 Arabs with box cutters did it.
4. People who feel powerless over their own lives are far more likely to believe that some invisible force controls their fate than people who believe that they are the masters of their lives.
5. There is, apparently, a great yearning among many people to believe that there is hidden knowledge and that they have access to it. It makes them feel special, perhaps even superior to the rest of us who do not have access to this hidden knowledge.
6. In Western societies, it appears that secular people are more likely to believe in hidden conspiracies than the more religious. It may be that the religious already believe in an invisible power that governs the universe -- God -- and therefore seem to have much less of a psychological or emotional need to believe in invisible powers on earth.
Whichever reason or reasons apply, the bottom line about those who believe in hidden conspiracies is this: They choose to believe in them. Their psyche, their emotions, and/or their political agenda bring them to their belief in a hidden conspiracy. Never the facts.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
“Their psyche, their emotions, and/or their political agenda bring them to their belief in a hidden conspiracy. Never the facts.”
A perfect view of these people is to listen to Coast to Coast on late night radio. I refer to it as Kook to Kook.
It is a great view into the minds of deranged fools.
It is fun listening for me, as I can get it via internet radio when I am just waking up.
Do I have to give up on the facts surrounding the downing of TWA Flight 800 too?
You know, I watch the Zapruder film, and I can’t help but notice how much it looked like a controlled demolition. Also, I swear you can see a SAM hit that plane right before it crashed.... wait, I’m all confused!
Well, I’m glad that’s cleared up.
“— but there are no successful hidden conspiracies. I cannot think of one in my lifetime.”
Dennis; by definition, if you could think of one of these; it wouldn’t be one.
One fact that overly rational people sometimes fail to take into account is that a big enough conspiracy can be hidden in plain sight by virtue of its incredible nature. For example, let's say that a retired NASA astronaut were to write a book stating unequivically that the U.S. government was involved in hiding the fact that UFOs were spacecraft created by extraterrestrial aliens. No one would believe him except a few conspiracy nuts. After all, if there were really were a conspiracy to cover up the truth about UFOs, no astronaut would ever admit it, right?
Or what if a distinguished and well-connected professor of history from Harvard with an Ivy League teaching career were to calmly admit in print that the U.S. and UK governments are secretly controlled by a conspiracy composed of the Anglo-American business and political elite (including the Council on Foreign Relations) and that both the Republican and Democratic parties are controlled by an international Anglophile network? Who'd believe him? I mean, a conspiracy that big would be too big to hide, right?
Right. A conspiracy doesn't have to hide if it's big enough. The bigger a conspiracy is, the less likely people are to believe it is real — even if the truth is standing on a grassy knoll right beside them with a gun in its hands.
I´ve experienced that, too. Stand up and get your life in order, and don´t blame the government, the weather, your parents, or whoever that your life isn´t like you want it to be.
I am in the camp that goes with the “shot down” theory.
It is a bit different then a conspiracy theory.
I guess the only conspiracy there is government cover up
of a terror attack, or accidental shoot down.
As for OKC/911 and whatever, there are just too damn many people that would have to be involved if they were anything other then what they were.
I can name one conspiracy that has never been solved. What happened to Jimmy Hoffa? Another conspiracy which held almost completely until Hiroshima was the development of the Atomic Bomb (defining conspiracy as keeping an activity secret but not necessarily criminal). Another would be the breaking of the Enigma code.
While I happen to agree that the JFK assassination was the work on one lone nut, by definition a successful conspiracy can never be documented. We would not know about it. Some events just crawl through our minds that we are not getting the whole story such as the following:
1. Vince Foster and Ron Brown
2. Oklahoma City
3. TWA 800
4. O.J. Simpson
I would think a book about the history of conspiracies, how long they held, and why they finally broke would be fascinating. Such a study could verify that successful conspiracies could go on for a long time (perhaps forever if the involved parties died).
I have a problem with 9/11 theories BECAUSE of TWA Flight 800. Remember how we were told to believe the reports that people saw something fly up from the ground and hit Flight 800? Well, on September 11 we saw the airplanes fly into the World Trade Center, and later we saw a video of another airliner hitting the Pentagon, but conspiracy theorists tell us we’re not supposed to believe our own eyes in this case. Something’s inconsistent here!
“Sometimes conspiracies really do exist. After all, our country is the result of a conspiracy between the members of a cabal of wealthy, ideologically-motivated revolutionaries who succeeded in their plot to overthrow the lawful government under which they lived. Ideology aside, at the most basic level John Hancock and Thomas Jefferson were revolutionaries — the Fidel and Che of 18th Century New England.”
I tend to disagree with you about the analogy with those murderous thugs. While all the early fathers (Hancock, Jefferson, Adams, Washington) had personal motivations for the Revolution, they later demonstrated that they would work within the system which developed and lay aside power within a democratic framework. Neither Fidel nor Che (of course Che never had the chance thanks to the Bolivians) can claim such an approach. A better example of Fidel and Che would be Aaron Burr, but Burr was not nearly as bad.
This depends on the limits or definition of a conspiracy.
Two people can conspire to do something, as in Vice Foster,
or even TWA 800.
How is OJ a conspiracy? It is one nut (OJ) that killed two people.
OKC would require the work of many, if it was a set up demolition. It would be hard to cover up.
9/11 would have required a cast of many thousands for it to be anything other then what it was. On Kook to Kook, everything in life is some big conspiracy
of the Illuminati or some such garbage.
Contrails have now become chem trails. It is so laughable.
I am also in this camp. Remember who was ‘el presidente’ then and you don’t need to go much further. Still a lot of unanswered questions and why the government would choose to say that scores or hundreds of eyewitnesses were lying...just boggles the mind!
This may be true, but the Propaganda Machine (the "Mainstream Newsmedia") can hide anything behind a wall of disinformation, obfuscation, censorship, manipulation, groupthink, re-writing of history, and confusion--and its so-called "journalists" regularly do.
“— but there are no successful hidden conspiracies. I cannot think of one in my lifetime.”
How about the fascists at Fish & Wildlife who planted lynx hairs in the northwest a few years back to ensure closure of federal lands to people?
Oh, that’s right, this government conspiracy was revealed. It’s no longer hidden so it doesn’t qualify as a “hidden” conspiracy.
Now, let’s talk about the global warming conspiracy. Oh, the science is settled, those who don’t believe are “deniers” and we need to plan out stipends to pay off the high priest Goracle.
And let’s not bring up the “Oil for food” conspiracy. That might wreck Prager’s carefully knitted cocoon.
See The Pearl Harbor Myth - Rethinking the Unthinkable
George Victor, Potomac Books, January 2007
The Declaration of Independence is the product of a conspiracy?
The men who made the revolution were by and large the colonial political establishment of their era. They had been engaged for years in open quarrels with the mother country. They had debated, negotiated, agitated, and compromised. The process could hardly have been more public. In the end, they assembled in convention in Philadelphia and voted a resolution calling for independence, had it printed, rang the bell, read it out to the public, and published it across the colonies.
If you call this a conspiracy, just about concerted action can be called a conspiracy.
I am not saying any of them are conspiracies. OJ would be a conspiracy because others (possibly AC or his daughter) most likely conspired to destroy evidence.
OKC because of the mysterious third person seen during the execution of the event. I am not sure that person actually exists, but I am just citing it as an example.
If sufficient motivation exists, anyone can keep a secret.
No. I don’t think 9/11 was a conspiracy other than that created by the fanatical Moslems who executed it. My point is that a successful conspiracy is not known by its very definition. Where you could have a conspiracy is in the conscious failure to stop these individuals (ala Franklin Roosevelt and Pearl Harbor). I don’t think explosive charges were set off and I don’t think missiles or drone planes were used on 9/11. Three airliners with passengers and crew were guided towards three buildings by nuts.
bump
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