I've been wanting to write about this for a while...

Last weekend, the History channel ran a great show about the John Kennedy assasination. The main focus of the show was to dispell any doubt that there was a conspiracy afoot, and to prove once and for all that Oswald acted alone.

I don't want to say that the show completely achieved it's goal of leaving no doubt about Oswald acting alone, but coupled together with the Gerald Posner book "Case Closed," which I read a couple years ago, I now firmly believe that Oswald acted alone, and that any belief in a Kennedy assasination conspiracy theory equates to a person either, not knowing the facts about November 22, 1963, or being so dogmatic to their ideology that they cannot change their views despite almost conclusive proof proving them wrong.

I don't want to sit here and take each bullet point (pun intended) and shoot them down (pun intended x 2), but the forensic evidence, which can now be rendered using precise computer animations, is enough evidence for me to not believe in a conspiracy. The show basically proved that the Kennedy shots could have come from Oswald, and Oswald alone.

If I sit back and look at this objectively, I'm actually pretty surprised that I'm able to be certain that there was not a conspiracy afoot in Dallas. At one time, I was a pure 100% believer in all things Oliver Stone.

But not too long ago, I started having my doubts. The funny thing is that my doubts came directly from that very movie. My brother Luke texted me a couple months ago about "Fahrenheit 9/11." He said that he happened to turn the tv on halfway through the movie, and was really struck at how if you step outside of yourself, Michael Moore can seem like a complete leftist, conspiracy loon. I know that most of the population probably has that reaction anyway, but I think I understood what he was saying, because I had a very similar reaction to Stone's "JFK." The more I examined that movie, the more the movie started to come off as some hack ass ideological rant.

--that being said, I still agree with Michael Moore and his movie. Though some of his methods can be questionable, I find the gist of his arguments to be sound--

Not long after I started questioning Oliver Stone's movie, I happened to stumble upon a book called, "Case Closed," which almost literally took each conspiracy theory and broke it apart. It was the first time I had ever read about the assasination from a journalistic perspective, complete with historical facts, documents, and interviews, and more importantly, devoid of speculation, conjecture, and hypothesising. It was refreshing reading something basically devoid of subjectivity.

I think I've grown past "conspiracy thinking." I do believe that there are viable conspiracy theories out there, but so much of what passes for "conspiracy theorizing" is basically wishful thinking. To think that Kennedy was assasinated as part of some larger governmental plot, and not because some lone nut wanted to be remembered by the history books, gives his death more meaning. A conspiracy ensures that his life warranted martyrdom.

It's interesting to think of conspiracy theories through the eyes of narrative analysis. We want horrendous events to fit into tight little narratives. We want Kennedy dead because he was going to end Vietnam, because he was against the mafia, because he was against Cuba, etc. What we don't want, apparently, is Kennedy dead because some lone nut's ultimate motivation was his own lack of self worth.

To go a little bit further, conspiracy theories *thrive* off this need to put a narrative spin on every little thing that supports a conspiracy. So when random witnesses die throughout the course of the Warren Commission's investigation, intead of looking at the statistical data that would support xyz number of people dying over the course of abc years, we instantly think that these deaths must have something to do with the Kennedy assasination. And because President Johnson signed documents supporting the escalation of the conflict in Vietnam a few days after Kennedy's death, we automatically assume that this was all done as the next logical step of a conspiracy with Johnson at the helm, instead of because Johnson's long time opposition to Kennedy's Vietnam policies.

I think deep down, we all enjoy the thought that there are agencies out there that are so powerful, that not even presidents are safe from their influence. And if you look around, our pop culture landscape is littered with this very notion. I think this notion helps make shows like "Lost," "24," and "The X-Files" so popular. Even though we would probably fear these umbrella conspiracies should they really exist, deep down, we also kind of enjoy them.

I don't know...I've rambled on long enough. I'll end with this; my biggest problem with conspiracy theories is that too much of it is based off conjecture and speculation. We absolutely must hold ourselves to a high standard when it comes to examining conspiracy theories. We should take the opportunity to examine all the facts and form objective opinions of what happened. Because at the end of the day, to not to do that, would basically put yourself in the same shoes as the "bad guys" in conspiratorial dreams; so ideological that your thinking is actually dangerous.

matt out