11/22/63/50

[davemerrill]

Like most Americans I'm fascinated and horrified by the Kennedy assassination. You learn about it in school, you maybe go to Dallas and peer through the window in the Book Depository and are creeped out. If you're of a certain age you watched Oliver Stone's movie, you read a couple of books, maybe had lunch with a guy who served with Oswald in the Marines, and you started to question not only the Warren Commission but darn near everything official. And that's a good thing, to examine what you're told and where the evidence comes from, to have some skepticism and some doubt. I spent a lot of time in the conspiracy world in the late 80s - early 90s -reading zines, small press books, and mass market paperbacks, watching amateur videos, and immersing myself in the counterculture conspiracy culture. It led to the Phenomicon convention of 1990-91, a gathering of like-minded nerds interested in THE TRUTH behind UFOs, the Kennedy assassination, the Men In Black, the Illuminati, and the Christian Crusade To Stamp Out Science Fiction (the truth of only one of these topics was conclusively determined).

What I learned from my experience in that culture is that many of these people are really annoying. "Truth" takes a back burner to selling whatever amazing story can be sold to true believers through magazines, TV, books, or lectures; evidence presented by doctors, scientists, and universities is rejected in favor of hearsay, wishful thinking, "what if", and outright lies. The same old tired frauds are dragged out over and over again, no matter how many times they're debunked, because there is no money in boring old facts. Nobody feels like a special seeker when everybody can look things up in the library or verify things for themselves.

It's now fifty years since JFK was shot in Dallas, and it turns out the three tramps were just three tramps, that the magic bullet wasn't quite so magic after all, that Oswald was a desperate, troubled man eager for attention and notoriety. That sometimes a nut with a rifle in the wrong place at the wrong time can change the course of history. It doesn't fit in with any grand scheme or pattern, and humans are pattern-seeking animals, so there's always going to be a tendency to try and find connections. Sometimes they aren't there, no matter how many times the book says "Could it be that...?" or "Perhaps..."

The danger in the conspiracy mindset is being forever stuck in the research stage, never having the balls to say, well, we've been looking for flying saucers for 70 years and nobody's found one yet, maybe it's time to move on. They would have caught a Bigfoot or a Nessie by now, let's find something more productive to do. Maybe Oswald really did shoot JFK, time to use my research skills on something else. It's tough to cut your losses, to walk away from the dry hole, to tell the wide-eyed believers that there's no there there; but unless you want to spend all your time in the world of what ifs and could it bes and just supposes, you gotta do it.

This leads to paralysis in just about everything else, too; convinced the world is a giant interlocking criminal conspiracy, that the TRUTH will never be found out because everybody's in on the scam, that nothing can ever be taken at face value, why not spend all your time questioning everything? It absolves you of any responsibility for your own life. Your problems are always the fault of the Illuminati or the MIB or the FDA or the CIA or pick any Evil Conspiracy you like.

And that's where the real fun comes in, because the deeper you dig into conspiracy culture, the more you find the chewy chunk of racism and anti-semitism at its core. Ernst Zundel selling Nazi UFO books along with his actual Nazi propaganda, David Icke and his "lizard people", right on through the John Birch Society and the conspiratorial mindset behind the extremes on both the right and the left. All looking for the puppet masters behind the scenes, the "other" they can hang all the world's problems on, and then hang.

And that, my friends, is stuff I want nothing to do with. We walked away from the "big Sub-Genius" devival in 1991 to see Man Or Astroman? play in the hall, and I haven't looked back. Turns out MOAM? delivers.

Comments

[kidfenris.livejournal.com]

This brings back memories of reading my library's entire section of books about UFOs, Nessie, yeti, ghosts, and assorted "mysteries of the unexplained" when I was about ten. I was a pretty gullible kid, but my parents humored me with a visit to Loch Ness when we went to the UK, and I was thrilled. I'm glad I saw it before I realized that lake monsters are logs, deer, sturgeon, and outright frauds.

That said, I still love conspiracy theories for the sheer stretches of imagination and the things they say about the people who believe them. Sure, we all know that historians conspired to add a few centuries to the calendar, but was that to cover up the Black Knight satellite or the hollow moon?

Are there any conspiracy theories you still believe? I halfway buy the October Surprise, considering what we now know about the Reagan years.

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

Um, I don't believe UFOs are alien space ships. I don't think there's any such thing as Bigfoot. I think Oswald shot JFK. I have my doubts about Sirhan Sirhan and Bobby - there was a lot of gunfire in that pantry and not all of it came from Sirhan. *Lots* of unanswered questions about MLK and James Earl Ray and who was backing James Earl Ray. The truth of what was behind the Roswell "crash" is actually really interesting, in that we were floating radiation detectors the size of freight cars on balloons to detect Soviet tests.

We actually were running a damn Murder Inc in the Caribbean, as LBJ said. We did hire ex-Nazis to build Apollo. MK-ULTRA was in fact an intelligence operation aimed at US citizens. Most activist groups are heavily infiltrated with various government agents, and I'm cool with that - it's better than just shooting demonstrators down in the streets (the JIN-ROH option). All sorts of absolutely nutso, expensive, far fetched, and usually inconclusive stuff happens under the banner of national security, defense, intelligence, you name it, if they can throw money at it they will.

I don't think Thornley was a 'second Oswald'. I don't think Hunt or Liddy or Nixon had anything to do with JFK. The Black Knight satellite is one of my favorites, but amateurs would have nailed it by now.

I don't think GMO food is going to give us all cancer (everything you eat has been genetically modified in one way or another), I don't think vaccinations give you autism, I don't believe Sandy Hook was a government setup, I don't think 9/11 was an inside job, I don't think TWA 800 was shot down by a missile, I don't think AIDS is a government plot to kill minorities, I don't think the CIA was involved in selling cocaine except tangentially in that some CIA assets were also coke dealers.

I don't know what to think of Danny Casolaro and Octopus, he was obviously on to something. Gemstone I think is schizophrenia talking. I think most conspiracy nuts are lonely white guys who feel powerless and unsure and want to be on the inside for once.

Matt Murray

[(Anonymous)]

Conspiracy theories are a lot like religions, in that they involve starting from the conclusion and then cherry-picking data that can be laid out in a neat path of stones leading to the answer you've already decided on. Facts that don't fit on the path, which are numerous, are dismissed or chalked up to an even bigger conspiracy that is planting fake data with remarkable efficiency. And that, right there, should be a clarion call for all conspiracy theorists to wake up and take a look around: too many of these theories revolve around stunning government competency. One has only to look to the government's recent spectacularly bungled attempt to launch a damned website, and then consider these notions of a supremely slick, rigorous, highly regimented Information Police that masterfully controls all aspects of society, and try not to giggle.

[lolotehe]

I'm glad I missed the whole thing. It was raining and miserable all day and I've not been feeling that great.

Although, when callers ask, "Where am I talking to?", I really don't want to say I'm in Dallas (Usually, I want to say I'm behind that preposition), but especially today. They either want to talk about Kennedy or the Cowboys, both of which are topics that bore me to tears.

[jasonrmerrill.livejournal.com]

I was just thinking about some of this the other day. The stuff we believed as kids, that had been trotted out as 'Proof', has all been explained away. The Surgeon's photograph of Nessie. The Patterson Bigfoot film. Kind of sad, but at the same time I think it pointed a lot of folks towards the sciences. That's always a good thing.

With Sylvia Browne passing, I still think what the world needs now is another Houdini. Someone to take the psychics to task using their own methods against them. I've been reading his "Right way to do Wrong" and it's great.

[lolotehe]

Nnnngg. Look at this dumb son of a bitch. He used to be funny, but only because he sounded like Dec when he really got going.

[damerell.livejournal.com]

The best thing about alien abduction stories, I think, is that they're much older than one expects; except, of course, that the early aliens turned up in airships, presumably because they hadn't then seen Star Trek.

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

the airship reports always involved inventors who had just completed their amazing airship and were on their way to New York to announce it to the world. Thank goodness those enterprising small-town newspaper editors were brave enough to print the truth!

[damerell.livejournal.com]

Apropos of which, it is also curious how advanced aliens contacted by psychics never have a short proof of the Riemann Hypothesis, etc. :-)

[gallo-de-pelea.livejournal.com]

I remember picking up one of those "HOW MOC(k) FANDOM IS SUPERIOR TO MUNDANES" flyers at AWA 3 or 4 and being equally amused and confused

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

I don't know exactly how those wound up at AWA, but I was in the habit of dumping left over fan materials on the freebie tables at AWA. That particular flyer was intended for a Star Trek show around 1990, and it served its purpose well.