conspiracies and whatnot ...

so it was 41 years ago today ... well ... yesterday to people without my wretched sleeping habits. i have been seeing some, though not a lot, about the kennedy murder in the press. and i guess i felt like doing a little bit of reading and asking questions tonight.

i guess it started when i heard that 81 percent of americans believe that there was a conspiracy to kill the president in 1963. i thought that was really fucking high, especially when you take into account that most "historical accounts" refute any such notions. you won't find too many history books that say anything other than that oswald acted alone.

and as a matter of fact, my interest this year was sparked upon my watching a documentary on the history channel, hosted by news anchor peter jennings, that "proved" that only oswald was responsible for the president's death. well ... i actually believe that. after all, i am not sure you could convince me that the bullet that pierced the president's neck and eventually wound up in the arm of the then governor of texas' wrist (aka "the magic bullet") would not have killed anyone. i mean, fuck. the damn thing severed the cat's nerve that controlled his breating. if he did survive, he would have wound up in an iron lung for the rest of his sad life.

and in all honesty, i don't know of a lot of people that would believe that oswald was not the man firing from the sixth story of the then "texas school book depository." but really, what the fuck do any of us care about the facts anymore? and no, i don't really mean to marginalize anyone who does believe that oswald was little more than a patsy.

i personally think it's foolish to assume so. i mean, you never find anyone refuting the notion that he bought the rifle that was found there in the "sniper's nest," nor do you really find anyone refuting his involvement. no, more often than not, you here refutation of oswald as the shooter that was responsible for the rather chilling head shot that caused the poor man's head to explode all over our celluloid history.

the thing i always have a hard time swallowing is this notion that oswald wanted to go down in history as the assassin of one of the great leaders. they often back this up with stories (of which i know little about) of a failed assassination attempt on a general not long before the death of kennedy. and of course, his life is peppered with the obvious traits of a man quite uneasy with normal social life. but i am always left with that one significant question: if the brother wanted to be remembered for killing the president, then why the fuck did he do all that he could to deny it after the fact?

don't answer that. really, i don't care.

being the little media whore that i am, i am far more intrigued with the whole situation as a media event -- and even more so with the public perception of it more than 40 years later. so i have foolishly spent my night reading some things, watching some things, and talking to some people to try and figure out what other people think.

yep, believe it or not, i care what other people think ... for the time being. and really, i only care because of my ever increasing interest in propaganda and the reason people buy the "truths" they buy -- true or not. in fact, i try not to make any distinction between propaganda that tells the truth honestly, slants it to one side or the other, or outright distorts it. propaganda is defined, at least to me, by the agenda of the propagandist.

and if the agenda is anything other than the free exchange of ideas -- which i certainly hope no one is really that unbiased -- than it is propaganda. i mean, who the fuck are these people that don't have any clue as to why they want people to know the "truth"? seriously, these people need to go fuck themselves. chances are they are journalism teachers at humboldt state anyway. and in that case, i can personally verify that they are full of shit.

there is this ideal behind journalism that we have to, as journalists, reject any tendencies to show favor to any one side of an issue. and that's just a crock of shit. they quickly forget that they have chosen their paths according to their natural tendencies. and they do so rather convienently. i think that the free exchange of ideas is driven by personal convictions. and in fact, when lacking in those personal convictions, you have little more than unusable garbage and hyperbole.

so i guess now would be a good time to get to my point.

these are the two things i have found to be most interesting: 1) most people believe in the conspiracy without knowing much about the case. 2) of those people, most have gotten their information from oliver stone's JFK, which stone himself has never claimed to be fact. in fact, stone has pointed out that he has taken a great deal of artistic liberty in making the film. of course, i happen to think the film is brilliant ... one of stone's best.

so i asked a number of people if they believed in a conspiracy. all said yes. i asked if they thought that oswald killed the president. most said no. i asked if the accepted the "magic-bullet" or "single-bullet" theory. most said no. and i asked where they got their information. most said from the film.

of course, this is why i pointed out that at least in my mind, there is no doubt that oswald killed the president, that the "single-bullet" theory is completely plausible, and that i love the movie. but i guess you could have figured that out by now.

but i had more questions too. you see, i wonder how much people think the world would have been a better place if kennedy would have lived. he has become such a cult hero, to conservatives and liberals alike, that i think it must be a natural notion to think he could have possibly been the answer to a lot of today's problems.

really, i just kind of wonder if people will always have this longing for the "way things used to be." and i can't say that i have come up with any difinitive conclusions. well ... i have concluded what i have always known. people want to believe something. and they choose whatever they can fit in their minds.

oh god, how did this entry get to be so convoluted? it seems i always do this. well ... i guess that's ok. i am starting to near the end of tonight's wick anyway.

mon petite theorie

lee harvey oswald killed president kennedy with a shot to the back of his neck. the bullet was the second fired by oswald. it, after leaving kennedy's body, changed orientation (though not trajectory) and entered the back of the governor. it then traveled through the body of the governor, exited, and re-entered his wrist. i feel like all of the evidence supports this perception.

first, the trajectory from the window that oswald fired from would have perfectly supported this. but you have to first realize that the governor and the president changed the orientations of their bodies after the first shot. you also have to realize that the governor was not sitting directly in front of the president, but rather a few inches to the left, and a few inches lower. these are all accepted facts of the case.

i also believe that there was a second gunman posted behind the fence in the area that has come to be known as the "grassy knoll." i believe that this is the shooter who shot the president from the front right, causing the head to explode. but i think that this "explosion" was the result of the third bullet coming from oswald's gun hitting the head at almost the same exact time.

i do not think that president johnson was part of this conspiracy, though i do think that he had a significant roll in the cover-up. i do not pretend to know why the president was killed. there could be a lot of motives behind this kind of murder. i would have to assume that it had grand political and/or geopolitical implications.

and i am not sure if i believe that jack ruby had any sort of role in the cover-up or assassination. in fact, it seems to be more likely that oswald was going to keep his mouth shut and say little more than that he did not do it, and that he was a patsy. i think that ruby simply had the connections and the short temper that drove him to murder. after all, you can't just set up one person as a patsy. the real world just doesn't work that way. there are always loose ends to try and tie up.