Whatever else this project may lead to, it certainly has been good for my blogging productivity.
Robert said, after I had explained what I was up to, “It would be more interesting if you explained why a 73-year-old man would investigate a 52-year-old murder, when the investigation already seems to have been completed by someone else.” Adele said, “I agree with Robert. If only M would talk to the 73-year-old, if wouldn’t be chasing this wild-but-already-bagged goose.”
I was the 73-year-old. Vincent Bugliosi was the “someone else.” And my friend M won’t discuss his belief that the national security state killed Kennedy because to do so is to accept that there is something to discuss, which is to make one’s self complicit with the cover-up of what happened in Dallas in 1963.
I don’t disagree with Robert. I have often said why someone writes about something can be more interesting than what they wrote about. I also don’t disagree with Robert that it would be interesting to explore why people believe what they do about the assassination, except, I told him, I think I already know that. I once told M that I resisted believing in believing in conspiracies involving high government officials and multiple government agencies because it would make me uncomfortable to believe I lived in a world like that. He hit me over the head with that admission for several years, until I said I had also come to believe that people believed in conspiracies because it made them uncomfortable to live in world where a lone, loony misfit, like Oswald, could kill a figure they revered, like Kennedy. They were uncomfortable with the chaotic, unpredictable randomness of the universe this suggested so they sought assurance this was not so by believing in conspiracies like others sought assurance by believing in religion.
M said, No. He believed what he did because it was the Truth.
Which only strengthened my belief in what I had just said.