If I've "bailed" it's because you don't get the point. You have assembled the detail why from your point of view you are right. And Hornberger has assembled the detail from his point of view that he is right. You put it forth to your circle.
FALSE. I understood your point. I first summarized your argument, then showed you how it was wrong.
In case you forgot, I wrote this (and more):
Major Major:
It appears you have bailed on the discussion. If that's true, I'm only putting this point out there for the lurkers:
Your argument is that there are two unwavering sides, and we're talking only within our own circles and are only talking past each other.
I know for a fact in my own case that's untrue. You see, from the publication of the earliest critical books on the assassination, I was a conspiracy believer. I read Rush to Judgment by Mark Lane, Whitewash by Harold Weisberg, Six Seconds in Dallas by Josiah Thompson and Accessories After the Fact by Sylvia Meagher in the mid-1960s and was convinced of a conspiracy. I read of lot of other stuff as well by lesser known authors.
It was only when I decided to find the conspirators and started by reading the 26 Warren Commission volumes and the 12 HSCA Volumes of supporting evidence (first doing this every Saturday at a major metropolitan public library -- then shelling out $2500 to The President's Box Bookshop to purchase the 26 Warren Commission volumes (the HSCA volumes cost considerably less from the Government printing office) -- that I began to be convinced otherwise. I can't count how many days I went to work dog-tired from reading and re-reading the testimony until one, two, or three in the morning.
By reading everything - twice - I saw how the sleight of hand by the conspiracy authors was done. I saw behind the curtain. I discovered how they took stuff out of context, how they ignored contrary evidence, and how they used supposition and innuendo in place of facts to fill in the gaps in what they believed happened....
I've put it plenty of places. He has no forum that I can find, so there is no way to put it forth directly to his circle.
Here's one other place I'm currently debating the Kennedy assassination.
https://groups.google.com/g/alt.conspiracy.jfk
Feel free to invite him to join us here, or there, or anywhere the assassination is being discussed.
He puts it forth to his. You consider that you have decisively made your case. He considers he has decisively made his case.
And meanwhile, the majority of people seem to think, "gee, there must be something to that."
The truth is not up for vote. It only happened one way. What the majority thinks really doesn't matter. The majority of people on the planet weren't even born when JFK was shot. I would venture we're over 50% of the population wasn't even born when the movie JFK was released (30 years ago) - if not, we're damn close. This is ancient history to most.
Moreover, if more than 1/100th of one percent of the U.S. population has read the Warren Report, I'd be very surprised. I would wager far fewer than that have actually read the 26 Warren Commission volumes of testimony and evidence. So why does their uninformed opinion matter?
I'm reminded of this comment in a different context about a different subject, but it is applicable here:
"Some things are believed because they are demonstrably true, but many other things are believed simply because they have been asserted repeatedly."
--- Thomas Sowell
It all dates back to Jackie Kennedy. She couldn't believe that a lone nut Marxist could have done it all by himself, not in that city full of right-wing anti-Kennedy hate. And that fit so well with the opinions of the Kennedy people that they took it up. (For more on this see Camelot and the Cultural Revolution by James Piereson.)
Jackie commissioned a book about the JFK presidency after the assassination. It was serialized in LOOK magazine (a competitor to LIFE). I don't recall it pushing a conspiracy theory. Both Robert and Ted Kennedy said they agreed with the conclusions of the Warren Report. I don't recall either of them pushing a conspiracy theory either. Blaming the "anybody but Oswald" fervor on the Kennedys when there are more obvious culprits (see below) seems to be stretching it too thin for my taste buds.
Meanwhile the Soviets discovered that oh govno, this was a man who had defected to them (and whom they were glad to be rid of), we had better deflect the focus. So they too publicized conspiracies. Not in coordination or cooperation or association with the Kennedy people, but they were pushing it too. (For the beginning of this read Operation SOLO by John Barron, wherein he describes how utterly consternated the Soviets were by all this.)
The Soviets were pushing a right-wing conspiracy theory on the day after the assassination. But that didn't make much of an impact on the U.S. population whatsoever, which was familiar with Soviet propaganda.
So conspiracy, pushed by two different groups, each for their own purpose, was founded. Then it got picked up by those, not of either group, but with their own purposes, and since there was no point in just reiterating one person's book something new was always added.
Most of the early critics were on the extreme left. Mark Lane, Harold Weisberg, Sylvia Meagher, Richard Popkin, Thomas Buchanan, Joachim Joesten, etc. Those are the people I read back in the day. Those are the people that moved the needle with the U.S. population's belief on whether there was a conspiracy or not.
Indeed, I just checked Piereson's book online. And he blames many of the same authors for the spread of conspiracism after the assassination on page 124 of his book. (I used the "surprise me!" function at Amazon.com. Serendipity strikes again.
Jim Garrison was neither a KGB asset not a Kennedy supporter, just a guy with a failing reputation trying to find something to grab the headlines. And so on.
I think that's an extreme over-simplification, but I'm not going to bother arguing it.
And they don't have to show how you are wrong. They say that you are wrong. The next level up. No need to confront the evidence.
Assertions are not evidence. They duck confronting the evidence because the evidence is against them.
Hank
