The Top 40

A knee-jerk acceptance of the mainstream narrative is a known glitch in human psychology. The "obvious truth" is of course occasionally true, but for most folks, truth is more a function of desire and is completely uncorrelated with the facts of a given case. For some reason, when people are faced with the possibility that the truth is ugly, unpleasant, or contrary to their comfortable worldview, they raise blind acceptance of authority to an art form. They cut context away from facts and arguments and assemble them into reassuring litanies. And over and over I've argued helplessly with smart people who cling self-righteously to the "truth" as dictated by Mr. Famous Author, Ms. Eye-Rolling Pundit, or the ever-popular Man on the Teevee -- the same folks who brought us devil-worshiping day care centers, the Population Bomb, and Anthropogenic Global Warming -- and who at the same time deride me for "believing in fairy tales".

The Dreyfus Plot. Soviet infiltration of the U.S. power structure. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident. All once scoffed at as "conspiracy theories". All indisputably true. Can't you see that the blind urge to accept surface appearances, pat answers and The Official Truth as the truth is what drives people to look for conspiracies?

Case Closed and Bugliosi's book are chocked full of evidence, not appeals to accept The Official Story. The voluminous errors of the Warren Commission don't change what happened in Dallas. Nobody need defend the WC Report to believe LHO killed JFK.

LHO killed JFK is simply the most supported and reasonable conclusion of the possible theories. It fits far more data points than the 39 other theories that usually explain one or two fuzzy data points and suggest you help invent or assume everything else.

As they say on the CB radio "what's the 10-20 on the blind urge to accept surface observations?" I grew up assuming the JFK assassination was hopelessly obscured by conspiracy and cover-up. I assumed there probably was one or more conspiracies leading to JFK's murder but it would be impossible to know due to the number of facts to be learned and the hopeless number of competing conspiracies/interpretations and increasing time from the events. Then I read Case Closed. It's a point by point examination of the events. It convinced me. Later on I spent years listening to conspiracy types argue their points, to each other on overnight radio, and started seeing certain patterns, regardless of conspiracy. One thing that disturbs me about the conspiracists is their anger as their theory is examined. The more detailed you examine their key incident or theory the angrier they get. Why? That suggests to me what psychologists have written is true. The Theory is filling a psychological need in the believer. Threaten the Theory and you are threatening the identity of the believer.

The comment in the box is absolutely true. However the author and the commentors here commit the logical fallacy if then saying "therefore all conspiracy theories are wrong. What is missing in choosing this easy way out is any thinking. So lets figure out what the anti-conspiracy people fear. Do they fear beng wrong? Probably. No one likes to be wrong so in this way they are exactly like the pro-conspiracy theorists. Do they fear the truth? Many do, not all but many do. A conspiracy that cannt be kept secret must be disparaged. Make no mistake in the greatest conspiracies in the last 50 years the disparagers are out in force. And the disparagement cannot be done with logic as you would tosomene whobelieve we didn't land on the moon. It MUST be done with name calling and increminations. Therefore how do you know the anti-conspiracy theorists are hiding something vs simply arguing their side of an issue? If they resort to name calling and lumping you in with "silly" conspiracies and other efforts to shoot the messenger. After all if Oswald shot JFK and acted alone why would they fear you so much that they hid the evidence for 75 years and they call anyone who questions the official answer names and makes public fun of them? They wouldn't need to. The evidence would stand for itself and who cares what others think. Sothe bottom line is they NEED to destroy you if you don't believe the Warren Commission was honest. You cannot be allowed to believe anythng else. The science is settled! we are 97% confident! Sit down and shut up!

The conspiracy theory is the impotent man's ticket to finding relevance in a world that both owns and ignores him.

GWTW: It's like the New Atheism. You have to wonder why some people spend all their time and energy arguing against the existence of a God that obviously doesn't exist. Hey, if God's existence is so obviously ridiculous, there's no point in arguing about it...

Mr. Wilson: your ad hominem has failed. Please try harder next time.