What bothers me about the JFK Assassination CT world is that it is the cornerstone of modern American CTism. It is a "Gateway" CT that opens doors to a world of nonsense, and gets in the way of intellectual progress.
I've said in the past that my dad got me into the CT saying there was no way Oswald could have made the shots alone. I was seven or eight at the time, and when you're a kid your dad knows everything, so there was never a question in my mind that there was a conspiracy to kill the President. My dad was in the Army, my godfather was Army Intelligence, so he must have known something about something...right?
As it turned out, no he didn't know anything. Soldiers spend a lot of time sitting around waiting, AND TALKING. My dad and my godfather were nowhere near Dallas on 11/22/63, instead they were at Incirlik AB in Turkey, where the US flew U2 missions from back in the day. Dad was in a closed environment with US military and civilian intelligence personnel. He was a medic, he had no security clearance, and had no access to classified information nor operational materials.
What I learned over time is that it's common for the rank and file on a high security base to begin to think they know what's going on on the other side of that fence, and behind those keypad-entry doors. It is those same rank and file personnel who go on to become Armchair Espionage Experts in the CT World. This is why my dad saw a conspiracy; not based on any evidence, but because his friend (my godfather) was someone who'd vanish for weeks on end on missions he never talked about, and that made dad special.
Dad had seen JFK in person in Florida during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He thought the President was inspiring, and the idea that some hack ex-Marine air traffic controller acted alone was too much for him, as it was for most Americans.
Dad was typical for his time, and between 1964 and the HSCA in 1976 men like him fed the general population with tales of conspiracy. Not in hushed tones in a dark room, but at Saturday barbecues with neighbors. It always started with, "Well I was in the Army in 1963, and let me tell you...", and the neighbors would listen and nod their heads. Many times one of the other neighbors would chime in with, "I was in the Navy, and this is what I heard...". By the time Mark Lane's first book hit the shelves there was a built-in audience waiting to read, and have their suspicions confirmed.
By 1967 my dad had lost a few friends with the 4thID at Dak To in Vietnam, and the ones who came home had REAL stories about how screwed up things were in SE Asia, and MACV-SOG running all kinds of crazy black-ops. CT logic kicked in from this point onward: If the CIA and US Army have this kind of capability then they must have used it in Dallas. Guys coming back from Vietnam had a built-in cynicism to all things US Government, and there was (and is still) a belief that the war never would have happened in JFK had lived...so they must have killed him to get the Vietnam War.
The JFK Assassination CT gained more traction after Watergate because if that was a real conspiracy then they all have to be real...right? This CT has been framed by MJ as a right-wing conspiracy, but the assassination is also left-wing conspiracy friendly too, which is how you know it's BS. The fact is that you can flip a coin and argue equally that Castro was behind it or the CIA did it. What CTists never realize is that who they think did it reveals everything about them, and nothing about the crime. The only thing the two sides have in common is that neither believes Oswald did it...which is how you know Oswald did it.
Then there is the snobbery of the JFK-CT crowd. They ignore the fact that the assassination has been linked to everything from Hunt Oil to the possible revelation by JFK of the existence of UFO's and extraterrestrial-human contact. The fact that each sub-CT has it's own "thoroughly researched" book or books to substantiate their claim raises no red-flags in the assassination CT world. The idea that a book about MJ-12 killing JFK sits next to a book alleging the Chicago Mob pulling off the assassination should concern most people, but not CTists since each book is considered one step closer to their truth.
The truth is that JFK CTists are no better, and in many cases - less honest than people who believe in UFO's, Bigfoot, Ghosts, and the Loch Ness Monster.
CT books are easier to read than history books because history books force you to read more history books until you understand the context, and get a full picture. Between 1961 and 1964 the Cold War heated up. We had the Bay of Pigs, the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the threat of communism in SE Asian and Central America. CT books focus on minutia, those inconsistencies found in any human endeavor, and every criminal case since Cain killed Abel. They never have to consider the idea of the CIA having to pull men off the front lines of the Cold War to conduct what would have to be the single largest operation in Agency history, and what that would mean to national security in real terms.
To them the CIA is magic. History proves the opposite is true.
What have we lost due to the JFK CT?
We could have started to think about gun-control, and established a decent background check system as early as 1966.
We could have reformed the FBI, maybe even forced out Hoover.(Yes, Hoover benefits from a conspiracy, thanks guys).
We could have instituted a mandatory line of communication between the FBI and CIA to keep both sides updated on possible threats (like a former Soviet -Defector from Dallas visiting the Soviet and Cuban Embassies, or Arabs learning to fly, but not land commercial airliners).
We could have rethought our approach to Central and South America.
With each new CT we lose the ability to solve problems because some lunatic demands equal time to spout his insanity as gospel, and with each new conspiracy dangerous men become more dangerous (Tim McVeigh, Dylann Roof, and idiots with Tiki Torches).
