I Was a Teenage JFK Conspiracy Freak

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Mathias Baumann said:

About Oswald: Yes, I agree he aspired to make history in one way or another. But I don't agree that Marxism was what drove him. He didn't even know the difference between Stalinism and Trotskyism. No, Oswald lived in a phantasy world playing James Bond. And that's the reason it was so easy to set him up, because he was a big child.

I'm not suggesting Marxism drove him.  It's quite clear that, at least before he defected, he had no genuine grasp of Marxism and certainly no understanding of the USSR.  He only knew that Marx was the champion of the working class, which appealed to him.  After he defected, he quickly learned that the USSR was anything but a Marxist state (as the U.S. Embassy official joked to him, "If you're a Marxist, you're going to be a very lonely man in Moscow").  Instead of the prized American Defector Celebrity he had pictured himself being, he found himself a factory grunt in one of the notorious backwaters of the USSR, grunting away in a factory where the workers had no say and the Marxist principles didn't apply to the ruling elite.  He saw that the USSR differed from the U.S. only in ways that made the U.S. a great deal more attractive.

He came crawling back to the U.S. with his tail between his legs, anticipating that he would be some version of the Returning American Defector Celebrity here.  Instead, he found he was a faceless nobody with a failing marriage whom nobody liked and who couldn't hold down a minimum-wage job.  His lifelong delusion that he was destined to be a Great Figure In History was becoming impossible to sustain.  How much lower could life get than being a temporary order-filler at the TSBD and living in a grungy rooming house while the Mrs. makes fun of you, refuses to join you, and prefers to reside with Aunt Ruthie?

I believe the events of November 23rd were the product of the state of his marriage, the shift of his Marxist fantasies from the USSR to Cuba, the desperation flowing from his failed trip to Mexico City, the dumb luck that the Kennedy motorcade was going to pass directly beneath his window, and the last glimmers of hope to fulfill his destiny as a Great Figure In History (either in Cuba as the Revolutionary Hero Who Killed the American President or in the U.S. as the Great Marxist Thinker who used the assassination to give himself a forum for his grand views about all that is wrong with the world).

In short, I believe his life had reached a crescendo of desperation and that he was a bitter, angry and frustrated character who seized an opportunity that Fate seemed to have handed to him on a platter.  I think this is why he was able to make assassination attempts on two figures as disparate as Gen. Walker and JFK.  Neither attempt was about Walker or JFK per se.  Each attempt was about Lee Harvey Oswald - the pathetic state of his life and the stark conflict between it and his conviction that he was destined to be a Great Figure In History.  I see the entire arc of LHO's life as a series of dominoes falling in the direction of something like the assassination of JFK.  I don't claim to know precisely what was going on in his head on November 20-23, but I don't see the assassination as that difficult to explain when viewed in the context of his life as a whole.

I see the attempts to turn this loser into "Project Oswald," International Man of Mystery and vital cog in the Cold War machinery, as simply comical.  Of course his name was going to turn up in CIA and FBI files - he was a former Marine who had defected and then returned with a Russian wife to engage in pro-Castro activities.  But the notion that anyone in their right mind would have recruited and relied on him to engage in sensitive intelligence activities or entrusted him with any role whatsoever in a conspiracy to assassinate JFK strikes me as wilder by far than the Lone Nut explanation.

[David Von Pein]

1 hour ago, Cliff Varnell said:

"It's not personal, Sonny.  It's strictly business."  The Godfather

"The prevailing wind happens to be from Vichy." Casablanca

"I know that conspiracy theorists have a sweet tooth for silliness, but is there absolutely nothing that is too silly for their palate?" -- Vincent T. Bugliosi

Edited October 8, 2018 by David Von Pein

[Cliff Varnell]

2 minutes ago, David Von Pein said:

"I know that conspiracy theorists have a sweet tooth for silliness, but is there absolutely nothing that is too silly for their palate?" -- Vincent T. Bugliosi

Somewhere in Reclaiming Bugliosi acknowledged that JFK had a sweating problem.

David, do you remember that passage?

[David Von Pein]

3 minutes ago, Cliff Varnell said:

Somewhere in Reclaiming Bugliosi acknowledged that JFK had a sweating problem.

David, do you remember that passage?

No. But what's your point?

[Guest]

4 hours ago, Andrej Stancak said:

Thanks, Lance, for explaining your mental set again. To explain the mental set of a conspiracy thinker: nothing, even seemingly the most simple and trivial aspect of the assassination case,  adds up. We see reflections of what really happened back then mixed with multiple versions of the same. Those multiple versions were often produced by the law enforcement agencies during the assassination weekend or later, by genuine researchers who discovered something palpable, by genuine researchers committing honest errors, or by frauds. It is very difficult to find the truth, and it requires considerable investment of own time and intellectual resources to get a clearer picture. A conspiracy theorist is not satisfied with how the case has been solved and keeps searching. Conspiracy theorists are not waiting for someone to discover something on their behalf, rather they focus on some aspect of the case and try to get to the bottom of it. Sometimes, an aspect can be quite essential - for instance, where was Lee Harvey Oswald during the shooting. A conspiracy thinker has not resigned from investigating the case to disclose, however slim the chance is, maybe new facts or information. If there is anything out there which will completely turn the table, conspiracy researchers but none of lone-nut researchers will find it because these are not searching. Reading JFK assassination books or watching videos is important but not enough. I look forward to having you back in our rows sometimes soon.

As I said in the Prayer Man thread, go for it!  Produce a clear, no-question-about-it photo of LHO standing on the steps of the TBSD and I will instantly throw in the towel.  But the entire Prayer Man discussion, like the 900 pages of Harvey and Lee, didn't even dent my Lone Nut armor.  In all the decades of conspiracy theorizing, I have yet to see one piece of genuinely compelling evidence that points unequivocally toward a conspiracy.  Conspiracy theorists specialize in finding "flaws" in the undeniable evidence and "gaps" that they fill in with conspiracy-oriented speculation, but they never manage to produce any hard, compelling, no-question-about-it evidence of their own.  Isn't that rather telling?

[Cliff Varnell]

Just now, David Von Pein said:

No. But what's your point?

I remember picking it up in the book store and randomly opened it to that passage. 

As an expert on the book I just wondered if you were familiar with it.

Since you and I have nothing more to debate I thought I'd just ask a friendly question.

[Cliff Varnell]

2 minutes ago, Lance Payette said:

Conspiracy theorists specialize in finding "flaws" in the undeniable evidence and "gaps" that they fill in with conspiracy-oriented speculation, but they never manage to produce any hard, compelling, no-question-about-it evidence of their own.  Isn't that rather telling?

Factually incorrect.

The bullet holes in JFK's clothes are too low to associate with the throat wound.

Your LN true belief renders you incapable of observing the movement of your own shirt.

[David Von Pein]

22 hours ago, Lance Payette said:

Conspiracy theorists specialize in finding "flaws" in the undeniable evidence and "gaps" that they fill in with conspiracy-oriented speculation, but they never manage to produce any hard, compelling, no-question-about-it evidence of their own.  Isn't that rather telling?

Indeed it is, Lance, particularly since almost all Internet conspiracy theorists possess the very same like-mindedness of having gunmen firing shots at JFK from BOTH the front and the rear.

And yet, after all that blasting away at the President from both the front and the rear, what are we left with (ballistically-speaking) after the dust had settled in Dealey Plaza?

Answer --- We're left with bullets and bullet fragments that most certainly do not prove the multi-gun conspiracy that CTers insist upon believing. Instead, we're left with tiny little fragments that can't be tied to any one particular gun and we're left with three large pieces of bullet (including one whole bullet) that we know for a fact came out of the rifle owned by Lee Harvey Oswald. (And we're also left with those three spent cartridge cases---from Oswald's C2766 Carcano rifle---littering the Sniper's Nest on the sixth floor of the TSBD.)

Boy, did those frontal shooters on the Knoll get lucky or what?!

I say: the "frontal" shooters didn't get lucky at all. They were simply never there in the first place. And the physical (bullet) evidence clearly backs me up in that belief.

Edited October 9, 2018 by David Von Pein

[David Von Pein]

15 minutes ago, Cliff Varnell said:

I remember picking it up in the book store and randomly opened it to that passage. 

As an expert on the book I just wondered if you were familiar with it.

Since you and I have nothing more to debate I thought I'd just ask a friendly question.

Oh, okay, Cliff. I thought perhaps you were creating a new "shirt & jacket" theory----one where JFK's perspiring habits somehow would have made it impossible for the Single-Bullet Theory to be true.

Reprise.....

The Ultimate In SBT Denial....

http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2015/01/jfk-assassination-arguments-part-887.html

Edited October 8, 2018 by David Von Pein

[Cliff Varnell]

6 minutes ago, David Von Pein said:

Oh, okay, Cliff. I thought perhaps you were creating a new "shirt & jacket" theory----one where JFK's perspiring habits somehow would have made it impossible for the SBT to be true.

That was the first argument I made back in 1997 on the newsgroups.  My golden oldie!

But the fact is that shirts invariably move a fraction of an inch when you casually move around.

It doesn't matter if you're sweating, or not.

It doesn't matter if your shirt is tucked in, or if you wear a back brace, or if you wear tailored shirts or buy them off the rack.

It's an iron-clad physical law of clothing design that casual body movement makes a fraction of an inch of fabric ease.

This is the most readily verifiable fact in existence.

The evidence is literally under your nose.

 

 

Edited October 8, 2018 by Cliff Varnell

[David Von Pein]

6 minutes ago, Cliff Varnell said:

The evidence is literally under your nose.

~sigh~ (It's always about "the clothes". Nothing else matters to Cliff Varnell.)

Reprise #2....

JFK's "bunched up" clothing....

http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2014/12/jfk-assassination-arguments-part-862.html

Edited October 8, 2018 by David Von Pein

[François Carlier]

28 minutes ago, Lance Payette said:

As I said in the Prayer Man thread, go for it!  Produce a clear, no-question-about-it photo of LHO standing on the steps of the TBSD and I will instantly throw in the towel.  But the entire Prayer Man discussion, like the 900 pages of Harvey and Lee, didn't even dent my Lone Nut armor.  In all the decades of conspiracy theorizing, I have yet to see one piece of genuinely compelling evidence that points unequivocally toward a conspiracy.  Conspiracy theorists specialize in finding "flaws" in the undeniable evidence and "gaps" that they fill in with conspiracy-oriented speculation, but they never manage to produce any hard, compelling, no-question-about-it evidence of their own.  Isn't that rather telling?

It will NEVER happen.
Mark my words.
Never in a million years can anyone produce a picture of Lee Oswald on the front steps of the TSBD.
He was not there. He was on the sixth floor.
What makes me say that ? Easy. Of course, we have the physical evidence and the scientific evidence in this case.
But Oswald's behavior is a very good indication that he was the assassin.
His whole behavior in front of the police, and even his attitude in front of his brother.
Clearly, if Oswald had been on the steps of the Book Depository when JFK's motorcade drove onto Elm Street, he would not have been found at the Texas theater later on, after having killed a policeman.
Oswald's own actions show his guilt.

Edited October 8, 2018 by François Carlier

[Cliff Varnell]

1 minute ago, David Von Pein said:

~sigh~ (It's always about "the clothes". Nothing else matters to Cliff.)

The physical evidence in a homicide case is the sun around which all other evidence revolves.

Any citizen investigating a homicide who doesn't first examine the evidence found with the body should do the world a favor and find another hobby.

1 minute ago, David Von Pein said:

Reprise #2....

JFK's "bunched up" clothing....

http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2014/12/jfk-assassination-arguments-part-862.html

You acknowledge the jacket was elevated "a little bit"!

It's over, David.

[David Von Pein]

9 minutes ago, Cliff Varnell said:

You acknowledge the jacket was elevated "a little bit"!

It's over, David.

The arrogance of certain Internet conspiracy theorists simply staggers the senses.

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"The conspiracy community regularly seizes on one slip of the tongue, misunderstanding, or slight discrepancy to defeat twenty pieces of solid evidence; accepts one witness of theirs, even if he or she is a provable nut, as being far more credible than ten normal witnesses on the other side; treats rumors, even questions, as the equivalent of proof; leaps from the most minuscule of discoveries to the grandest of conclusions; and insists that the failure to explain everything perfectly negates all that is explained." -- Vincent Bugliosi; Page xliii of “Reclaiming History: The Assassination Of President John F. Kennedy”

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Oh, how true that is, Vince.

Edited October 8, 2018 by David Von Pein

[Cliff Varnell]

7 minutes ago, David Von Pein said:

The arrogance of certain Internet conspiracy theorists simply staggers the senses.

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"The conspiracy community regularly seizes on one slip of the tongue, misunderstanding, or slight discrepancy to defeat twenty pieces of solid evidence; accepts one witness of theirs, even if he or she is a provable nut, as being far more credible than ten normal witnesses on the other side; treats rumors, even questions, as the equivalent of proof; leaps from the most minuscule of discoveries to the grandest of conclusions; and insists that the failure to explain everything perfectly negates all that is explained." -- Vincent Bugliosi; Page xliii of “Reclaiming History: The Assassination Of President John F. Kennedy”

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Oh, how true that is, Vince.

It's easy to be arrogant when you've got the facts on your side.

And the fact is every time David Von Pein casually waves his right arm the fabric of his shirt on his right shoulder-top INDENTS.

That is a solid no doubt about it FACT.