Fifty-six years ago November 22 also fell on a Friday. I remember the day started out clear and mild. It was so temperate in fact I rode my bicycle to Hoover Jr. High School in Oklahoma City wearing what was then known as wheat jeans, a short sleeved shirt, and a light windbreaker along with a pair of penny loafers and white socks.
At some point during the school day a cold front blew in from the northwest. By the time school was out the sky was thick with steel gray clouds and the Oklahoma wind was stiff and brutally cold. It cut right through the jacket and everything else I had on. By the time I got home my hands were numb enough I could barely grip the handle bars.
The weather that day in OKC was a perfect metaphor for what happened to the entire nation on Nov. 22nd, 1963.
By the time my fourth hour Earth Science class was about two thirds of the way done some two bit cretin had blown away most of the head of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the President of the United States. The initial reports on TV were confused as the three TV networks babbled out on scene observations of multiple gun shots, rumors, and what more than a few of us considered crazy shit.
By the middle of my 5th hour typing class the media chaos finally focused on the awful news, the President was dead. Teen aged girls in class and in the halls began to cry. A friend of mine burst out laughing. He would later tell me, he couldn't help it, because he thought crying girls were funny.
The last class of the day was, Civics. It was a double sized room with two teachers. As the TVs played on neither of them said a word to us from the beginning of that hour until the end. After all, how could they have added to, or critiqued the most devastating lesson in American, "Civics," we had ever seen? It would be later, well after I had returned home, the news broke Dallas Police had arrested a former Marine, Lee Harvey Oswald.
The Dallas cops were careful to say Oswald was not, at the time anyway, being charged with killing Jack Kennedy. He was, however, being held for allegedly murdering one of their own, Officer J.D. Tippit on a residential street not long after the assassination. The same department though was quick to say Oswald was their chief and only suspect in the assassination of the President.
Thus began the first unhinged media frenzy I ever witnessed. Rumors and speculation filled the airwaves. An international communist plot was afoot some reported. Others, such as Walter Cronkite, openly questioned how someone like Oswald could buy a murder weapon through a mail order service without any questions being asked.
I didn't know it at the time, but I was also witnessing the genesis of a phenomenon which has since grown wildly in size and for many in profitability. Indeed, on that blustery Friday and the surreal weekend which followed The Conspiracy Theory Industry, was truly born.
All it took for those wheels to start spinning was for another loser, Jack Ruby, to kill the alleged killer on national TV in front of what seemed like every cop in Dallas--in the department's parking garage.
From that moment on everyone from Castro, to the Russians, to rogue elements of the CIA, and the U.S. mob have been blamed for the death of John Kennedy. One movie maker went so far as to suggest, Kennedy's successor, Lyndon Johnson was behind the hit.
To this day, like so many other conspiracies, not one shred of proof has been produced which positively shows anyone, besides, Oswald was in on it. That hasn't stopped people from trying to dig up something, anything, to fulfill their suspicions.
I'm sure conspiracy theories existed long before Jack Kennedy was killed, but his death brought them out of the closet, as it were, and into what has become known as the main stream.
They have grown in size and complexity, involving everything from other notorious murders and killing sprees, moon landings, airline disasters, terrorist attacks, pizza parlor basements, presidential birth certificates, and missing computer servers. The current resident of the White House revels in them, turning some into campaign talking points. As he does chunks of his adoring crowds wear T-shirts proclaiming their belief in not only vast conspiracies, both domestic and international, but their conviction he is speaking to them through a secret code on the internet.
Yes, at times these days it seems we, as a nation, have gone full blown Twilight Zone. Nothing is as it appears. Every crack in the sidewalk is caused by the Illuminati, or the Masons, or, possibly the Deep State. Everything we want to happen, is being foiled by a dark sub rosa cabal operating beyond our reach. If you disagree you are either a dupe, or part of the conspiracy. There are no other options.
God, I wish Jack Kennedy hadn't been in Dallas this day 56 years ago. Not only because he died and didn't complete what would have been another five plus years of his presidency. Not just because there is some anecdotal evidence his policies might have avoided tens of thousands of casualties in Vietnam. But also because, Lee Oswald, and Jack Ruby gave assholes like Alex Jones, Donald Trump, and many others the excuse they needed to make boatloads of cash off how cruelly cynical and bat shit crazy they really are.
11-22-19
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