Forty-four years ago last week, Sarajevo came to Dallas and the boy king of Camelot stood in the footsteps of Archduke Ferdinand. Rather than igniting a world-wide conflagration, when Lee Harvey Oswald fired those three shots from the sixth floor of the Texas Schoolhouse Depository he ignited what was to become the American culture war – a war whose volleys echo to this day.
Partisans of the handsome young president and his glamorous bride saw in him the manifestation of all their aspirations and prayers. His murder on the streets of Dallas sent them searching for an enemy to blame. They found it in Oliver Stone-style conspiratorial visions of an America divided by race and class, gender and age. They found in it a reason to hate themselves – or at least, to hate those among them who did not share their vision of the America-that-ought-to-be.
The truth was, as ever, hiding in plain view – effectively, as it turns out. As James Piereson, author of “Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism” points out in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal (subscription only) the dominant narrative coming out of the Kennedy assassination – which, like 9/11, briefly united Americans before tearing them asunder again – was that he had been murdered by reactionary forces because of his support for sweeping civil rights reform.
Oswald makes an ill-fitting foil to that narrative. But as Piereson points out, and conspiracy theorists notwithstanding, Oswald’s solitary guilt cannot plausibly be denied by those still tethered to reality:
His rifle fired the shots that killed the president; spent shells from the rifle were found in the building where he worked; he was seen in that area before the shooting; witnesses on the street saw a man firing from a sixth floor window. Based on a description, a policeman stopped Oswald while he was walking in another section of the city. Oswald shot the policeman and then fled to a nearby movie theater, where he was captured. For those who weigh the actual evidence, there can be little doubt that Oswald was the assassin.
And yet, with the evidence in plain sight, why do two-thirds of those polled today continue to believe that JFK was “cut down by a conspiracy engineered by organized crime, the CIA or FBI, or right-wing groups upset by Kennedy’s liberal policies”? (This is a number, by the way, which is charmingly similar to those who today believe that the federal government ignored specific warnings about 9/11.)
We might as well ask why people believe in conspiracy theories generally: The world can be a hideously complex place, and believing in conspiracies – shadowy groups that move behind the scenes, pulling the strings – tends to simplify the picture. And conspiracies can lend drama – even melodrama – to otherwise gray and uninteresting lives. Many of those who howl the loudest at the theoretical depredations of the NSA or Google must in their heart of hearts be secretly pleased to know that perhaps somewhere, somebody actually cares enough about what they’re privately saying to listen in. Finally, in the Oswald case, and as in the 9/11 attacks, some people believe in conspiracies because reality ill-comports with their their personal preferences:
Oswald was a dedicated communist who had defected to the Soviet Union in 1959 out of disgust with American capitalism. After becoming disillusioned with Soviet life, he returned to the U.S. in 1962. In early 1963, he bought a scoped rifle through the mail and soon used it to fire a shot (which missed) at retired general Edwin Walker, the head of the John Birch Society in Dallas. In the summer of 1963, Oswald was active in street demonstrations in support of Castro. In September 1963, he visited the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico City seeking a travel visa that would allow him to travel to Cuba.
Oswald was among the radicals of the time who saw Third World revolutionaries like Castro as the wave of the communist future. He was well aware of Kennedy’s efforts to overthrow Castro’s regime. As a Senate investigative committee suggested in 1975, Oswald shot Kennedy to interrupt his administration’s plans to assassinate Castro or to overthrow his regime in Cuba.
Not much to do with the heroic advance of civil rights, but far more with heroic defense against communist tyranny. An uncongenial reality happily ignored by those who saw more to loathe at home than fear overseas – and the same moment when the much-derided neocons got off the left/liberal bus to forge their own way forward.
When Kennedy was shot a part of our polis unmoored itself from reality and invested itself in the belief that the United States and its government – a government elected from among their own kind – was the chief source of the world’s evil rather that what most people had theretofore shared as a consensus view: That the US was at least a potential and often necessary power for great good in a world all too often beset by darkness and tyranny.
All of us can lament the increasingly degree of incivility in our public discourse, where policy decisions are no longer contested as merely unwise or wrong-headed but are accounted by those who disagree with them as actually illegal. But perversely, even as our public men embroil themselves in overheated rhetoric, our civic culture slouches towards an increasingly apathetic “who am I to judge” moral relativism – a poison that saps us of our will to draw distinctions between good and evil in the world abroad. To deny, in effect, that such distinctions exist – or if not, then to deny that we are qualified to make them.
There may have been times in the world when such a general and deliberate flight from reality and the moral confusion it generates could be safely and sensibly embraced. I just do not know that I myself have ever lived through any of them.
Part of the reason for conspiracy beliefs may be the influence of people–I’m thinking especially of journalists and certain types of professors–who are fascinated with *power* without ever actually having held it or understanding how it works. Kind of like the sexual fantasies that might be held by someone who has never had sex, but is obsessed with it.
I’m struck by the extent that today, in the age of rovers on Mars and a sequenced human genome, people seem to be willing—even eager—to deny reality. Ignorance I can almost forgive (half the people in the world are dumber than the other half, after all), but active denial?
Through man’s history we’ve sought comforting answers with easy explanations, and even persecuted those who reveal reality. A monk by the name of Giordano Bruno comes to mind, but then so does the current and continuing mortgage crisis.
Sign up for a no-doc variable-rate loan , ignore the reality of what you really can afford and inevitable rate increases, and you too can look forward to, to, to . . . to having some other deniers of reality suggest the bank holding your loan not raise the rate or foreclose. Say what? Oh, and then there’s the idea that we can use government funds (that’d be your money and mine) to bail out these idiots.
But to lighten up a bit, there a Baltimore DJ that does man-on-the-street interviews with real people. Question: “What the main ingredient in popcorn?” Answer, “Um, er, wheat?”
Jay Leno also shows American ignorance on The Tonight Show, asking on-the-street passers-by simple questions about US & world history, current events, science.
The results are hilarious, until you realize that their vote counts as much as yours…
There should be a qualification exam in order to be a voter.
It’s so obvious that Oswald did it, and that he acted alone, but try tellin’ that to the folks who have so much invested intellectually in the conspiracy theories. The Sixth Floor museum in Dallas ia a moving place to walk through, but it’s also a shrine to the Kennedy mystique. I’d recommends that people go and see the place, but they need to read Posner’s book and wise up on the crazy theories. The case is closed.
From what Manly Dad said, in a magazine I order from, I saw a t-shirt that said, “Joan of Ark was NOT Noah’s wife.” Supposedly a high percentage of Americans believe that which kind of made my skin chill… or the bile rise in my throat. Pick one. Or both.
I refused to see Oliver Stone’s JFK movie. I told anyone who would listen, there would be a whole slice of young Americans going to see that and viewing it as fact and not fiction. The power of the media and Hollywood is actually scarier than those pinheads who think Joan was married to Noah.
Sorry, pinhead me, that was Joan of Arc. Great proofing on my part. Crap.
I watch those Jay Walking segments sometimes and am always blown away… I wonder if they are set ups, if people can really be that stupid. So I guess you are telling me they are legit.
Which reminds me, on Thanskgiving, they had a special show for and about the military. One of the questions for people on the street was what the five branches of the military are. Now, admittedly before hanging out here I wouldn’t have connected the Coast Guard as part of the American military (hey, at least I have an excuse!) but … even at my most ‘uneducated’, I never would have guessed the CIA!
Many of those who howl the loudest at the theoretical depredations of the NSA or Google must in their heart of hearts be secretly pleased to know that perhaps somewhere, somebody actually cares enough about what they’re privately saying to listen in.
Heh, don’t bother from this phone number unless you want to hear a continuing saga with S#2 about getting his banking situation together in Japan or, with S#1 how to stuff a capon…
I actually had to look capon up. It is “an unsexed male chicken from 6-10 months old.”
When we came in the other day and heard the message inquiring about how to stuff a capon, my husband’s first reaction was “slather liberally with KY jelly…” Is that illegal?
Oops, that should have read FBI, not CIA.
Oh well, at least *I* knew the answer wasn’t either one.
The same folks who saw American Idealism and their own faith die with Kennedy AND are convinced that only a great conspiracy could (and would) extinguish something so beautiful as “Camelot”, also tend to overrate him as a President and deny the well documented history of who he was, what he was, and what exactly he accomplished and what “potential” was lost. Cult of Personality-type stuff…poor Historical interest/knowlege/education.
Excellent material and fertile ground, though, for the unscrupulous media types to make a buck or two AND push a Liberal agenda far beyond what JFK ever advocated (while invoking his name). Cynical appeal to the guilty self-loathers amongst us.
“Virtual Sainthood” by a fickle populace also occurred after Lincolns assassination–though more deserved. Excellent first-hand account of one neighborhoods reaction in the days following the Lincoln assassination in the book “Generals in Bronze” by William B. Styple.
I was born about 3 weeks prior to the “other” Lee’s heinous act on our President. My Grandfathers namesake I was (he was Clarence Oscar Lee… I know why they called him Lee!). Not a very popular move on my Mom’s part as were whilst I was still aged in months, with the neighbors. I don’t know if it was a conspiracy or not. Seems plausible, but I don’t much care anyway. I’m just angry the bastard had to have my name.
Wasn’t there a “Red Dwarf” episode about who shot Jack Kennedy?
M’self, I think Oswald did it, but enough people were angry at Jack, and that was the perfect opportunity, that there were several teams present, and the amateur shot first. That explains the weird folks seen then and there. Unless one prefers the time-traveller explanations.
P.s. I first heard about this in my 8th grade American History class, over the P.A. Cemented the history geek worm into my brain, forever.
Conspiracy nuts have been amongst us in all of recorded history. Lawyerly weasle-wort crackpots like Jim Garrison and Mark Lane just made careers out of it.
Vincent Bugliosi blows ‘em all outta the water with the facts and LOGIC in “Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy”. Please read it if you’re one of the “unsure” like I’m sure some of the readers here are…Then talk to me.
IMO, it’s the “scope-locked lithium dependent creative type” Oliver Stone’s of the world who make it worse exponentially where these “truths” make it into the brains of everyday people who frequent those barrooms I talked about and are amongst us at work sometimes. People who don’t read, don’t know how to think critically. Yet they get to vote, drive cars and airplanes and have children. Scary, ain’t it?
In my life experience I have found ’secrets’ and the conspiracies built behind them to be erroneous nearly 100% of the time when I was privy to the original ’secret’. The simple fact of the matter is human beings are lousy at keeping secrets and co-conspirators are worse than average. Look at how people run to report the latest Britney sighting…..can you imagine trying to hide dead froggin aliens on an AF base? If you don’t believe me ask your local police detective about people and conspiracies.
b2
The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the – Web Reconnaissance for 11/26/2007 A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day…
What B2 said.
I watched the Oliver Stone JFK movie with rolled eyes.
The one thing Kevin Costner really captured in his movie character was the serial self-importance manufactured out of a string of untested [or untestable] assumptions. Unfortunately, he probably wasn’t being ironic at all–just playing Garrison as he was.
The hysteria neurons can never stop firing, or the manic propeller beanie will slowly spin to a stop…
And we can’t have that.
We might as well ask why people believe in conspiracy theories generally…
Truth and reality are hard to deal with – much easier to believe/accede to conspiracy theories and crackpot ideas, especially when you can get an incompetent elected body to investigate them.
- SJS
The list of Kennedy casualties looks pretty bad. Airplanes are ahead of bullets on the risk chart. 1 brother (combat mishap), 1 sister (civil mishap), Ted (back injury, civil mishap), JFKs son (civil mishap).
Well, I’ve got a couple of decades on ya, Lex, and I know for a (presumable) fact I haven’t lived in such times. Unless I… um… missed something.
But I think not.
“(This is a number, by the way, which is charmingly similar to those who today believe that the federal government ignored specific warnings about 9/11.)”
I bet you are now going to try and deny that there are aliens kept some where??
You know I think that much of the nation has an over inflated belief in our government and how unified it is. They have no understanding of how fractured and obtuse many sections of them are. More importantly they have no understanding of how the intelligence agencies prior to 9/11 really did not play nicely with one another. Those in the military or having some government work experience realize just how poorly all these agencies communicate with one another. They understand the budget wars and politicking that occurs because they have seen it. Many Americans never get a chance to see this and they are dismayed if they join a governmental service, no matter how small. Sometimes people like to feel lost in their own ignorance; it can be quite comforting.
I don’t think you can equate people who believe there was more to Jack Kennedy’s death than the Warren Commission stated, to people who think 9/11 was an inside job.
I have not read Mr. Bugliosi’s book. Although I am sure I will at some point since this is an interesting subject. However, I don’t see it changing my mind unless it gives a plausible reason for Dave Powers to lie or Kenny O’Donnell to drink himself to death.
I am not saying there was definitely a conspiracy but I am saying that the Warren Commission does not answer all questions. I am also saying that a book written 40 years later can never reveal the whole truth. The whole truth will never be known.
I was two a half years old on that day but I spent my childhood in the most perfectly preserved Kennedy bubble you could imagine. Charlestown was the first place that Jack Kennedy ever campaigned. The entire population of Charlestown took that day personally. Jack was alive there long after that day. When people said “Jack” or “Bobby” and even, heaven help us, “Teddy” there was never any question as to who they spoke of. I am not talking about individuals *not getting over it*, I am talking about a Town of 16,000 *not getting over it*. We fed off of each other. Knowing, speaking, studying their lives was a sacrament and Dave Powers, Kenny O’Donnell, they were our priests. We were awash in it. Some more obsessed than others, of course, but none untouched. All of Boston was like this to some degree, but Charlestown in particular. Every house had pictures of them, books on their lives and deaths and even records (LPs) of their speeches. The assassination was discussed from every possible angle. I have heard every arguement known to man for every side of this discussion.
The one thing I can state with utter certainty is that no one alive KNOWS what happened.
To compare anyone who dissents from the Warren Commission or Mr. Bugliosi’s book with those who think Dick Cheney rigged the Twin Towers to implode is insulting.
I don’t know Mr. Piereson, but Dave Powers was a man of honor and he was completely tethered to the horrible, sad reality of that day and every day that came after until he died.
An Essay on Humanity (which is to say a long treatise on why people believe in nonsense):
I received a revelation one night on the High Plains. It was the first real cold night of the winter, about five below, and I’d been unable to sleep. I looked outside and found the crisp, clear air to be perfect for star-gazing. Grabbed the spotting scope, determined to see the rings of Jupiter for the first time. Saw them. Beautiful.
I was perhaps 14 at the time, and quite proud of myself for having located Jupiter at all.
Thought there was a bit of a cloud overhead, running southeast to northwest. Didn’t pay it much mind, it’s always like that. Then we lost power. A sub-station tripped and all the ambient light in a 40-mile radius disappeared.
That cloud, that little stream of light haze above, I suddenly identified as the Milky Way.
Have you ever sat in the middle of n0where, on a cold and lonely night, looked up, and seen the very firmament and realized that in that light haze are billions and billions of stars, billions of solar systems, and that you’re seeing the light they let off long before there was even life on this planet? Have you ever even fathomed the vastness of the universe we inhabit? Compared to that, of what significance are we?
Such a visage might make one believe in a God, or gods. People take comfort in knowing somebody is in charge, that there is order in this world of chaos. For some, that god is government or shadowy organizations pulling the strings of their lives. For others, a Creator that made all this for us and takes an interest in our affairs. Still others don’t care to control their lives and trust in a benevolent diety to do so.
To believe we know something everybody else on the planet has overlooked and we are powerless to change it? To know there is a vast organization in control of everything? To accept that our insignificance is not something we can change? That makes us comfortable. To think we are in this On Our Own and with Nobody To Help is a frightening thing for a human being.
Ignorance is inescusable, of course, but I can understand why many cling to fantasy.
– Max
re- “I don’t see it changing my mind unless it gives a plausible reason for Dave Powers to lie or Kenny O’Donnell to drink himself to death.”
Well Maggie I was about 12 and watched it live on B&W TV..at least the Oswald part and I come from 50 miles from you. As a budding hunter I also subscribed to the Kleins of Chicago catalog from whom Oswald bought the cheap but highly effective rifle. I also read the Warren Commission report when it came out- twice. That’s how invested I was in coming to my own conclusions.. I don’t think Powers lied or it’s not sad that O’Donnel drank himself to death, but those are just their eyewitness accounts, not everything…Ask any detective about solving cases, just about all crimes have gray areas with lots of unkowns..look at the OJ debacle.
Please. Read Bugliosi’s compendium. Not to be condescending, it’s a big book, but if you study it, I think you will lose some of that Discovery/History Channel info-tainment knowledge and Massachusetts chataqua you’ve acquired.
If it’s aliens at Area 51 though, I can’t help ya Ma’am!
Max- nice entry. What a jump!
Me-self, when I gaze up at the Montana sky, sleeping out in the open, where everything up thar seems so close and vast, I just know there’s a God….I don’t relate it back to anyone in charge here on earth though..
I’ve seen power being wielded and it ain’t pretty or fair, most of the time. If conspiracies were as rampant as some believe you would figure at least some of ‘em would be proven correct outright..Nope. They just exist because nobody can conclusively, despite the facts, disprove ‘em.
b2
What I can’t stand is Donnie and Marie Osmond have been overworking for years trying to clear the family name because of their dad, Lee Harvey Osmond.
Bob – Not to be too arguementative here (which I can be), but why is Bugliosi’s book the be all and end all here? Sure some crackpots have written books on the subject, but plenty of other serious people who have really looked into this have as well. As I said, I will most likely read it because I read everything that comes out about this subject. I don’t think that my knowledge on the subject can be dismissed as info-tainted. I am not saying that I subscribe to one particular conspiracy theory because I don’t. I am saying that the Warren Commission did not answer all questions. I am also saying that reasonable people can have differences of opinion on the subject of the JFK matter. Not trusting the Warren Commission’s conclusions 100% does not make one hysterical.
Healthy skepticism is not the same as believing in E.T.s at Area 51 or that Bush warned Jewish people not to go into the Twin Towers on 9/11.
Maggie,
I’m not calling Bugliosi’s book the end all but it does a good job of sorting through all the evidence, all the testimony, all the theories and putting the preponderance of facts into alignment to prove a point. In other words it is not a debunk type piece of work by itself. It actually compels one to acknowledge the facts available and draw a reasonable conclusion.
I can tell that even this conclusive piece of work is not going to change your mind 100% but if you read it, I guarantee you will doubt some of the things you’ve came to conclusions on.
Most importantly, you might lose some of that distrust that possibly our own government was involved somehow..that must be an awful thing to live with. Personally, if I felt that the government I have worked for directly over 30 years was capable of presidential assasinations, I would have been in the private sector decades ago. Buffoonery, political chicanery, shortsightedness and institutional disregard, sure, but government sanctioned assasination of presidents and maintenance of conspiracies? Nah.
b2
Bob – No need to worry about my psyche. I have faith in the underlying goodness of my government. What I actually believe was that several well meaning people made decisions to “spare” people any more pain. Whether it was the widow, the family, or the American people as a whole. They wanted this to be over.
I believe with all my heart that Kenny O’Donnell changed his story after talking with RFK. It’s what his family has said. I do not believe Bobby would have colluded in some evil government conspiracy to cover up a government engineered assasination plot.
Why? To close the matter. And in that haste to be done with it, things were left out, avenues of investigation were left unexplored.
I was drawn to comment on this post by the statistic cited the 2/3 of American’s don’t believe the Warren Commission. I was surprised that there are 1/3 who do. I literally don’t know anyone who believes the Warren Commission report as written. I have had people say they don’t know enough to form an opinion, but otherwise, no one believes it. I have talked to some who do beleive that it was an whole Oliver Stone conspiracy, but most just believe that there was a concerted effort to cover up some facts for more benign or banal reasons.
Maggie,
re “there was a concerted effort to cover up some facts for more benign or banal reasons”
Concur. That may be true, at least partially, and the Warren Commission Report is far from complete, but of course, even Justice Warren had a deadline.
Still a far reach from Garrison and Stone’s conspiracy theories though.
I’ll leave you with the potential of the Bugliosi book mydear Maggie.
b2
Well. There you are. I have you just where I want you, Bob.
I’ll report back when I’ve read it.
I know somebody who knows Kerry Wendell Thornley. She pointed him out to me in Little Five Points, in Atlanta.
As far as I know, I, myself, have not radios in my head.
Today is the anniversary of Johnson appointing the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of U.S. President John Kennedy in 1963.
As a frequent user of Occam’s razor, I dislike conspiracy theories more than most, but there is one objective piece of evidence that indicates something more than “Oswald did it”. The recording of a Dallas motorcycle officer’s stuck mic was analyzed by Bolt Beranek and Newman (a former employer of mine) and others. The echo patterns on the tape were consistent with a shot from the area of the infamous Grassy Knoll.
This indicates the possiblity of a second shooter. Anything more than that is pure speculation, but that seems to be a sport for some.
Dang, Maggie, and yer gonna hate me for this, but I am of two minds about the whole business.
That is, yes there was something of a whitewash to spare evverbodies’ feelings, but also there was, and is a visceral hatred of that divinely-condemned Kennedy family, even among some normal celtic persons, who believe that that family needs to be extinguished, not by assassination, but by due process of law, fair trial, hanging, etc.
The Kennedys are to the Irish community as Bill Gates is to the Autistic community; an embarassment, and something to boast about, all at once