I don't find JFK's assassination overly interesting. Unfortunate, I know, since we are beginning a four hundred page book about conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination. But it just doesn't draw me in. I do find conspiracy theories interesting. I like to hear about the NSA and the ways that the government is controlling our lives as much as anybody else. But present conspiracies are more interesting than past conspiracies.
One of the reasons for my apathy is that there is nothing about the government's version of the story (the little that I know about it) that I find difficult to believe. I don't find it hard to believe that a 24-year-old nobody with little education and no real role in any government or military activities could kill the President. I recognize that during Kennedy's presidency, people viewed him as almost a deity. He was loved, revered, even though some of his policies were questionable. JFK and Jackie were role models for the entire country. But he was only human, and the people who were guarding him were human. At its core, it was one man killing another, something that has happened countless times over the course of history. He was a political leader--political leaders are killed all the time, whether by rebels or complete lunatics.
I also do not find it that hard to believe that the government might have been behind that. I grew up post-9/11. I have grown up in a society that does not entirely trust its government. Recent scandals with the NSA have made the government even more suspect. No one I know has complete faith in the government. There are many countries that have corrupt governments; as cynical as this may sound, I do not find it that difficult to see that ours might be one of them.
Finally, I believe that no one will really know what happened, and that what happened in the country after JFK's assassination is more interesting that the conspiracy theories that surround the actual murder. JFK was killed--that is terrible. But the political implications of his death, rather than the governments' possible role in it, are more important to understand because they have led us to where we are today. Contemplating the details of JFK's assassination has gotten us nowhere.
For me, it's the suspicion that we'll *never* really know what happened that makes this such a fascinating story. Because you're right, there's nothing particularly *hard* to believe about the official version of events, except for the nagging little details about Oswald's behavior in the year before the event that don't quite add up, and the preponderance of other very suggestive evidence that there's more to the story.
ReplyDeleteBut in terms of the topic of this course, and our faith in the idea of history as an accurate record of events, the idea that something so massive and consequential could take place in full view of the public, even *filmed*, with the full force of the FBI and CIA and other law enforcement marshaled to try and determine what happened, a federal investigatory commission with unprecedented scope--and there remain, 50 years later, fundamental questions about pretty much every facet of the narrative--is baffling and provocative. If we no so little for certain about the most scrutinized event in American history, what does that mean for less contentious events in history? Is it something about this assassination, or the practice of historiography itself?