Max Good, the maker of "The Assassination and Mrs. Paine," posted a lukewarm statement about the passing of Ruth that concluded with:
I had a lot of respect for Ruth’s strength of character and her willingness to speak to people with different perspectives on the assassination. As I’ve said elsewhere, I sometimes suspected that she secretly wanted the truth to come out, but she was under such a burden that she couldn’t say anything too revealing.
As fate would have it, I read this morning a blog about conspiracy thinking at the website of the American Philosophical Association. The above quote from Max Good illustrates one of the points the author made. Conspiracy theories by their very nature are completely unfalsifiable because the goalposts just keep moving. Evidence contradicts the theory - voila, it was faked or planted. Testimony is contrary to the theory - voila, the conspirators got to the witness; it just shows how clever they were. The Klein's money order was found at the federal records center where processed money orders were stored (thank you, Lance) - voila, it was obviously planted there (thank you, Sandy Larsen). The goal posts just keep moving until you have so many conspirators, so much faked, planted and altered evidence, and so many convoluted twists and turns that the conspirators would have to have been Satan and his demons.
Ruth never wavered throughout 92 years of living. Nevertheless, now that she's gone we tell ourselves that she "secretly wanted to tell the truth" but was "under such a burden" that she "couldn't say anything too revealing." Voila, now she still fits right into our conspiracy theory, no problem.
What "truth"? What "burden"? At 80, 85, 90, 92? How about: She did tell the truth and was under no burden at all? Isn't that more plausible?
