Conspiratoratorially Thinking

The NYT Sunday Mag had an article by Matt Bai, taken from his forthcoming book, about Gary Hart. It describes the series of converging, unlikely events that led to the destruction of his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988, Bai concludes that, without these events, there would have been no President Bush (whom Hart led by double digits in the polls), no second President Bush, no invasion of Iraq, no where-we-are-now. There is, of course, no knowing where-else-we-might-be, but still…

I have been engaged in a recently revived, on-again, off-again debate for years, maybe decades, with friends, the most ardent of whom believe that the murders of both Kennedys, Martin Luther King, Jr, and Malcolm X, as well as the events of 9/11, were carried out and covered up by a vast governemental/military/industrial/national security conspiracy. I have been faulted by these friends for saying that I do not believe in this conspiracy, in part, because it would make me uncomfortable to believe I lived in such a world and that i prefer to believe in a world of randomness, chaos, chance, and odd, crazed madmen with rifles. But when I tell my friends that I believe they hold to their view, in part, because they are uncomfortable iin a world of chance, chaos and madmen and prefer the order brought by vast conspiracies, as some prefer to live in a world ordered by religion, they think this further evidence of my being naive and, well, off my rocker.

The destruction of Gary Hart could, of course, have been the work of a vast governmental/military/industrial/ national security conspiracy. But if it was, how much easier it would have been to, in similar fashion, destroy the careers of, if not Malcolm, King and both the Kennedys than to have killed and then covered-up their killings.

Then again, even if Hart was undone by chance, it doesn’t mean that the Kennedys and King and Malcolm were not assasinated and their assasins covered up. or that some were and some were not.

Uncertainty rules. At least in my world when I wake up each morning.

One thought on “Conspiratoratorially Thinking”

  1. Marty

    Dear Bob,

    I am going to answer your piece by focusing simply on the JFK assassination. You prefer to cast the matter into the field of “people believe this or that because they are more comfortable with this or that.” However in my book I present the reader with certain documents. The first I want to focuses on are Vince Salandria’s withering analysis of the conclusion of the Warren Report. Vince’s articles are based totally on the evidence the Warren Commission provided in the report and in the volumes of evidence. In other words he doesn’t add anything to what the government claims is the physical evidence of the crime. He shows in these articles that the Warren Report’s conclusions are totally contradicted by the government’s own evidence. He show this to a degree that there cannot be any error here. He shows conclusively that there were multiple shooters and the government had to know it. Therefore the WR is a criminally fraudulent document which represents an attempt by the US government to cover the truth of the assassination. He also shows that Oswald could have done any of the damage with his rifle. So he wasn’t one of the shooters. He was framed. Now I challenge you to show me how any other conclusion is logically possible based on a reading of Vince’s articles. If you can’t do this, it is not a matter of belief. It is a matter of knowledge. We know from Vince’s articles that there were multiple shooters. Again we know that, from a simple analysis of the facts of the matter. Again if there is anything amiss in what I have said so far, I challenge you to point it out. Once you have established there was in fact a conspiracy and Oswald was what he said he was, a patsy, you then have to move on to what what is the nature of this conspiracy. And you turn to an examination of who Lee Harvey Oswald was from the evidence that is available about his life. Learned Russian in the Marines, security clearances, defection to Russia where he supposedly gave away secrets, the Russians never trusted that he was legit, the US government pays his way back after several years, no prosecution, no investigation of him, he is running around with right wing Cubans and in Dallas has close connections with right wingers, he sets up his own Fair Play For Cuba Committee in New Orleans, he is the only member of it, he uses the PO box of right wing Cubans. Now you tell me what this suggests to you in terms of dossier. I have no other explanation that this guy is a low level military intelligence or CIA agent. Now ask yourself this question who has the means to frame a CIA agent? Does the Mafia frame a CIA agent? Can the Russians put this guy in position to be framed as the assassin. I have no other answer as to who had the means to set this up. If you do, please tell me. Finally motive. This is gone into in tremendous detail by Jim Douglass who shows the struggle JFK was waging with the military and the CIA from the Bay of Pigs fiasco after which he fired Allen Dulles, to the Cuban Missile Crisis, to the Test Ban treaty and his “secret” negotiations at the UN to normalize relations with Cuba. So I am saying that there is the motive. No you can brush this all aside and with a wave of your had posit your “Coincidence Theory”, which you prefer to believe in. That is your choice, but frankly it’s insulting when you try to equate your refusal to deal with evidence seriously, with the efforts to do so.
    As I tried to show in my book http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/HWNAU/ and essay http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/COPA1998EMS.html the whole notion of “conspiracy theory” is itself central to the cover up and is a concoction of the government. So in propounding this “theory” you go along with the government and help it in its generations efforts the cover its crime. This is what you are doing with your article. By choosing to write as you do, about a subject you don’t want to really confront, you are working for the government, and for free. Finally my question to you is, why do you feel the need to write as you do? Why do you choose to address a matter at all, when you really don’t want to look into it?

    The problem for me is that the assassination was a momentous crime that had tremendous implications for the direction of this country and the world. The military does not undertake the assassination of a President for the fun of it. And the fact that by and large the American people haven’t had the opportunity to really face this incident clearly is an tragedy of enormous proportions. If a person is unwilling to look at the overwhelming evidence in the JFK assassination, then what hope is there that that person would be interested in looking at the evidence in the assassinations of Malcolm X, MLK or RFK. I asked you to go the website of Project Unspeakable http://projectunspeakable.com/contact-us/request-script/ and request a copy of their script and read it. It provides an enormous amount of documentation on these assassinations. If you would do so, I think you would have pause to write what you have written at your blog, but instead you said you would wait for Douglass’ book on the MLK and Malcolm. If you want you can post this at your blog or not.

    Best,
    Marty

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