JFK Assassination Plus General Discussion & Debate > JFK Assassination Plus General Discussion And Debate

A Beginner's Guide to the JFKA Conspiracy Game

<< < (2/2)

Tom Graves:

--- Quote from: Lance Payette on January 25, 2026, 02:03:48 PM ---See how clever I am? I knew if I posted that, TG and MTG would proceed to illustrate my points! Well done, gentlemen. Posterity thanks you. :D

--- End quote ---

Dear Fancy Pants Rants,

You seem to be blissfully unaware of the fact that the "points" you all-too-often make show the rest of us not only how extremely intelligent, but how profoundly ignorant, you really are.

-- Tom

Lance Payette:
To be fair, I have attempted at various times a corresponding LN Game version of my outline. The problem is, it's just never very interesting or witty.

The outline I posted here is a refinement of what I posted at the Ed Forum in 2019. I found that old thread: https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/25995-a-beginners-guide-to-the-conspiracy-game/.

Mama mia, what a hoot! Me at my absolute best - or worst, as the case may be. It went on for nine pages, with pretty much everyone having their ad hominem fun at my expense, and me doing my best to parry their thrusts.

I was characterized as delusional, a troll, an LN fanatic, a paid disinformation agent (by W. Niedernut, of course) and all the rest. Some of it is quite humorous. One guy accused me of cribbing the entire thing from some "old Seligman Sunbeam paper and a deity they called Delamer Duverus" (WHAT?). Others highlighted my one-and-only UFO experience and my inclusion in a very successful book about afterlife experiences involving animals - as proof that I'm just flat-out nuts, you see. My wholly undeserved (truly, I assure you) award as the Arizona Prosecutor of the Year was duly noted, as was my family's association with the United Fruit Company - all highly suspicious, you see. It was suggested that I might be Mormon or affiliated with the Knights of Malta (WHAT?). I was referred to as Lance Peyote, which is at least mildly wittier than Fancy Pants Rants.

Anyway, the usual stuff and all kind of fun in its own way.

Genial Kirk Galloway recognized the validity of my little effort, although he misunderstood its thrust. He also congratulated the forum, as I have congratulated TG and MTG here, for illustrating my very points:

If he wasn't taunting people here specifically about their belief in a JFK conspiracy, and just wrote it about people who are prone to conspiracy, a lot of points he brings up are valid. I think I've been here about 6 years, and have followed this forum off and on for much longer. And at one time or another, I've experienced every CT device he's mentioned. There's not a reasonable person who couldn't find truth in some of it. It's not that profound. It's just that he characterized it as depicting everyone on this forum all the time. So people took offense. It really wasn't the stuff that anyone here would feel like debating. It wasn't like others of Lance's posts about concrete things that can be debated yay or nay. Well, then don't debate!
 
I've seen no specific addressing to Lance' treatise or whateverTF it is. The forum was not prepared to take Lance on for his generalities, which is OK, but you let his prissy attitude lure you into food fight, and then it got wacko, which played a bit into Lance's theories. Nice going, forum!

I'll end with a couple of my old posts that I think are relevant, first my clarification for Kirk:

I would hate for “my” thread to end on Kirk’s note of misunderstanding.  I made very clear in my follow-up posts that I was not saying that everyone who investigates the assassination of JFK as a possible conspiracy or holds to a conspiracy theory is playing the Conspiracy Game. I don’t think Larry Hancock and others I could name are playing the Conspiracy Game. You identify the Conspiracy Game when you observe it being played – when what is posturing itself as legitimate historical research is actually the Conspiracy Game as described in my original post. Yes, I do believe that the forum in its present state of decay pretty much epitomizes the Conspiracy Game.


No one could argue against the existence of conspiracies. The Lincoln assassination was a conspiracy, solved in short order. Nevertheless, even with the Lincoln assassination there are STILL those who are playing the Conspiracy Game (I'm not quite up to speed, but I think Roy Truly and Ruth Paine may have been involved in the Lincoln assassination as well).

You highly intelligent but reading-comprehension-challenged folks are COMPLETELY MISSING THE POINT.  Are you really this dense, or are you so blinded by rage that you can't think clearly?

When one examines an event in a rational manner, "conspiracy" may well be the true explanation.  Those who live in the real world and those who are prone to see conspiracies everywhere may well agree on this explanation.  What identifies the Conspiracy Game is when you see the event being "analyzed" and "explained" IN THE MANNER THAT I OUTLINED IN MY ORIGINAL POST.

The Lincoln assassination is a near-perfect example. It actually was a conspiracy. The conspiracy was solved, it is part of the historical record, and those of us who live in the real world are in agreement. Yet even here there are still those who insist on playing the Conspiracy Game, precisely as I have described it.


My point is that the Conspiracy Game, which to one degree or another characterizes almost every thread I've seen on this site, is a cartoon caricature, a pathetic imitation, of genuine historical research.  The Conspiracy Game is simply the wrong methodology for arriving at the truth of the JFK assassination. I stand completely behind the description of the Conspiracy Game as set forth in my original post. What I should have made clearer is that the "Conspiracy Game" does not mean "everyone who thinks there was or may have been a conspiracy." The Conspiracy Game describes the methodology of those who "analyze" and "explain" historical events in the way I describe - and that includes a very large percentage of what takes place here.

What this thread has demonstrated once again - no breaking news here, folks - is that Conspiracy Game enthusiasts are utterly unwilling to look at themselves in the mirror even for an instant and immediately resort to the lowest form of ad hominem attacks when an infidel appears in their midst - because ad hominem attacks are all they really have.  I have at least now been inspired to post exactly the same thing on a couple of non-JFKA conspiracy enthusiast sites and confirm that the response will be essentially identical.


And last, but not least ...

What I perhaps have not emphasized sufficiently is the extent to which I was a gee-whiz conspiracy theorist myself.  I joined this forum in 2015, when I was 65. Since I entered law school in 1979, by 2015 I had been engaged in heavy-duty legal analysis and argument (because this was the nature of my practice) for some 36 years. Yet if you look at the first 50-100 of my posts here, you will see a gee-whiz conspiracy theorist. At that time, I would have (and did) laugh in the face of anyone who suggested the Lone Nut explanation was the answer.

How can this be?

I would never have taken any particular interest in the JFKA at all except for the fact that, for many years starting at about the age of 25 (when I was a writer of advertising copy and humor), I subscribed to the huge monthly newspaper-like catalog of Edward R. Hamilton Bookseller. Every catalog had a large selection of leftover JFK conspiracy books that had failed to sell. I thus picked up brand new hardcover editions of Rush to Judgment, Best Evidence, High Treason and many others for a mere $1.99 or $2.99.

All this conspiracy literature put the JFKA squarely into the category of the sort of “weirdness” in which I am interested.  For the next 40 years, the JFKA thus was one of my interests. Not an obsession, but a definite interest. I was steeped in conspiracy literature – but nothing else.

By 2015 my wound-down legal career consisted of little more than writing one 50-page appellate brief a month for other lawyers who valued my skills.  I had lots of time and dived into things like Walt Brown’s massive chronology, on which I spent an entire year. As I dived more deeply into the conspiracy literature, I had a dawning realization that “something is wrong with this type of thinking and this sort of approach to the evidence.”

But still I was a gee-whiz conspiracy theorist. I never really applied the research and analytical skills I had honed as a lawyer to the assassination, although I had begun to do this with other areas of weirdness and revised my positions extensively.  In many areas, I became less interested in the substance than the epistemology, which is the branch of philosophy dealing with how we know (or think we know) things and whether what we think we know is rational and justified.

I joined here, still a gee-whiz conspiracy theorist, expecting to be wowed by the vast knowledge of those who lived and breathed the assassination. For the first time I applied my legal skills in the areas of research and analysis to a handful of issues and discovered the emperor had no clothes. Conspiracy nuggets from supposedly knowledgeable contributors didn’t withstand even the mildest scrutiny.

I decided that I owed it to myself to step back and at least consider the Lone Nut literature, which I had never done to the slightest degree. I dived into everything I could find about Oswald and his life, the Warren Commission testimony, Bugliosi and Posner, as well numerous other researchers and sites. Even good old DVP (with whom I have never exchanged one private word, despite your suspicions and accusations) was an influence.

Gradually but decisively, the scales fell from my eyes. I realized to my amazement that the Lone Nut explanation was the one that actually made the most sense and best fit the evidence. As I have continued my growth, my position as a Lone Nutter has hardened to the point that only a genuine evidentiary bombshell would shake it.

I would bet large sums of money that most people here do not have my foundation of knowledge about the assassination.  I would bet even larger sums of money that no one here has research and analytical abilities, or experience in applying them, exceeding mine. You can dismiss me as some delusional Lone Nutter if that’s the best you can do, but you’re just making fools of yourselves.

I’m the Conspiracy Game’s worst nightmare: An enthusiastic former player who, when he actually applied his considerable research and analytical skills, recognized how silly and flawed the game actually was and, when he stopped playing it and started doing his own investigation and thinking, pretty quickly changed his position 178 degrees (the missing 2 degrees leaving space for the evidentiary bombshell that I eagerly await).

Most of you people are playing the Conspiracy Game. Most of your gurus are playing the Conspiracy Game – and playing you like cheap violins. My epiphany was that you don’t even care. You will never do what I did – step back, take a self-critical look and reconsider your positions. This is the nature of a mindless fundamentalist, which I have never been in any area of my life.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[*] Previous page