JFK Assassination Forum

As far as I know, he has not done a 3D video of the Tippit killing, so is unlikely to do one of an incident outside the JFKA.

Hard to do a 3D video of the Tippit killing without film.

Question 1: If a citizen has a permit to carry a firearm and is found by Federal officers to be carrying a firearm, do they have the right to take the gun away and shoot the citizen?

Question 2: If so, is this in line with the Second Amendment?

It should be noted that one is either a strong defender of the Second Amendment, or one is not. One cannot sometimes support the Second Amendment, but at other times not, and be considered a strong defender of the Second Amendment.

Of course, Gurvich realized it was all a sham -- a setup for him to be charged with perjury.

fred

I originally created this in 2019. My exchange with Paul Cummings today made me think about it again. I’m surprised at how little my thinking has changed. The original is buried in the bowels of the Ed Forum, so I’m just creating a new thread to preserve it for posterity. I was actually going to write a book because I thought John McAdams’ JFK Assassination Logic: How to Think About Claims of Conspiracy was pretty weak. But then I said the hell with it.

1. In the Conspiracy Game, there are a variety of acceptable approaches to the interpretation of evidence. Say, for example, that three eyewitnesses report, respectively, a “bluish” car, a “reddish” car and a “maroon” car, or that three documents describe a bullet wound in “the right shoulder,” “about 4” down from the neck” and “high up in the back.” In the Conspiracy Game, there are three possible approaches to this evidence:

a. There were three cars and three wounds on the body, if this will further your pet Conspiracy Theory.

b. There was one reddish car and one wound 4” down from the neck, if this will further your pet Conspiracy Theory. (The eyewitnesses and documents that say otherwise may serve as further evidence of the conspiracy if you’re sufficiently creative.)

c. The car was actually black, the wound was actually in the side of the head, all the eyewitnesses are lying and all the documents are bogus, if this will best fit your pet Conspiracy Theory.

d. The choice is made without regard to which eyewitnesses or documents are the most reliable according to the applicable legal standards or which explanation best fits with the other evidence. The choice is made solely on the basis of which one best fits your pet Conspiracy Theory.

2. As your pet Conspiracy Theory – three cars and three wounds, for example – is repeated over and over, it pretty quickly hardens into Conspiracy Gospel. It’s extremely rude of anyone to go back to the original sources to see if this Conspiracy Gospel is supported by, consistent with, or the best explanation of the actual evidence.

3. If some nugget of Conspiracy Gospel is conclusively disproven – for example, photos or videos come to light that show the car was definitely red rather than black – the Conspiracy Theorist has three alternatives:

a. Claim that the new evidence is faked or altered, thereby preserving the black car nugget of Conspiracy Gospel.

b. Move the goal post. Move it as many times as necessary. There was a red car as well as a black one that doesn’t show up in the photos, perhaps. Maybe the car was repainted. Or even if the car was red, this just shows that two of the supposed eyewitness were lying and involved in the conspiracy. Who were they, really, and what were they up to?

c. If your nugget is reduced to rubble beyond all redemption, change the subject. This is the “Oh, yeah, well what about this over here?” gambit, an accepted move in the Conspiracy Game. The nugget that has now gone poof was never really important anyway.

d. Choices “a” and “b” afford a Conspiracy Theorist almost endless opportunities for creativity, which is a big part of the fun of the Conspiracy Game. It thus is utterly futile to attempt to argue or reason with a dedicated Conspiracy Theorist.

4. All gaps in the narrative, whether evidentiary or logical, are filled with sinister speculation and sinister inferences. As your pet Conspiracy Theory expands like Topsy, as it inevitably will, it’s especially important to keep this principle in mind. It’s quite amazing the gaps you can fill with such speculation. In the hands of a Conspiracy Game master, a plausible Conspiracy Theory may be woven from almost nothing else.

5. In the Conspiracy Game, human nature is inoperative.

a. No one ever makes an innocent mistake, is ever simply careless or is ever honestly confused or forgetful. There is no bureaucratic ineptitude. Every inconsistency in the evidence and testimony has a sinister, conspiracy-furthering explanation.

b. The fact that the JFKA was sudden, wholly unanticipated and traumatic is irrelevant. Even in these circumstances, no one ever makes an innocent mistake or becomes honestly confused. There are no excuses.

c. No matter the circumstances, all participants should have made their statements, written their reports and done everything else with one eye on “how it would look” to future generations of historians and (especially) conspiracy enthusiasts. If they didn’t, too bad for them.

6.The actual characters and life histories of the participants and witnesses are irrelevant in the Conspiracy Game except insofar as they further your pet Conspiracy Theory. If a participant or witness whose testimony is damaging to your Conspiracy Theory is a garden-variety housewife and mother who attends church regularly, is active in community affairs and has lots of friends who vouch for her impeccable reputation, the Conspiracy Theorist has three choices:

a. Of course, she is clean as a whistle – this is exactly what you would expect in a truly diabolical conspiracy such as we have here. These conspirators were no fools.

b. Dig, dig, dig for something, anything. Her second cousin twice removed was a secretary for the FBI? Well, there you go! Need we say more?

c. Make something up! Speculate! Everyone is fair game for defamation and character assassination. While these may be illegal or unethical in the real world, they are just part of the fun of the Conspiracy Game.

7. Even though real-world conspiracies tend to be as small, simple and compartmentalized as possible because this greatly enhances the odds of success and non-detection, no Conspiracy Theory can ever be too large or convoluted in the Conspiracy Game.

a. If necessary to preserve your pet Conspiracy Theory, the conspiracy net will be allowed to expand ever-wider until it has captured pretty much everyone involved – unlikely and seemingly unconnected people from all walks of life, unlikely agencies and organizations, whatever it takes. Be sure to keep in mind the rule about sinister speculation and inferences.

b. The fact that the JFKA is “explained” by 15 or more distinct and irreconcilable Conspiracy Theories is irrelevant. With the exception of those who are actually deriving income from the Conspiracy Game (who can be quite defensive of their turf), the players in the Conspiracy Game are a fraternal brotherhood, united against that icky Lone Nut narrative. By Conspiracy Logic, the existence of 15 or more irreconcilable theories merely underscores that by God there had to have been a conspiracy.

c. Similarly, the fact that a Conspiracy Theory requires the conspirators to have been diabolical geniuses at steps 1-3-5-7 and bumbling idiots at steps 2-4-6-8 is irrelevant. It’s rude even to point this out.

8. Those who fail to see the conspiracy are never a problem. They either lack the vast arcane knowledge the Conspiracy Brotherhood possesses, are unwitting stooges of the very forces responsible for the conspiracy, or are disinformation agents bent on disrupting the Conspiracy Game.

a. No matter how sterling the academic and professional qualifications of a naysayer, no matter how exhaustive his research may appear to be, no matter how cogent his arguments may seem, he is dismissed as either a fool or a disinformation agent – usually the latter because paranoia about disinformation agents is an integral part of the Conspiracy Game.

b. As a last resort, the “disinformation agent” label may be applied even to a fellow member of the Conspiracy Brotherhood when the competition gets fierce.

9. A certain naivete about the real world is helpful when playing the Conspiracy Game.

a. Even though law enforcement in the real world is plagued by wannabes, tellers of tall tales, and even those who confess, for no apparent reason, to crimes they didn’t commit, this almost never occurs in the Conspiracy Game. Anyone whose tale will support your pet Conspiracy Theory is accorded instant credibility. Often this continues long after the tale has been exposed as fraudulent. (If the tale is inconvenient for one’s pet Conspiracy Theory, the “disinformation agent” label may be applied to the teller. As you can see, “disinformation agent” is sort of the trump card of the Conspiracy Game.)

b. Even though fast-buck artists and con men abound in every other field of human endeavor, they do not exist in the Conspiracy Game. Every owner of a large website, every active blogger, every speaker at conspiracy conferences, every purveyor of conspiracy books, CDs, DVDs and conspiracy paraphernalia quickly accumulates a cult-like following as a “serious researcher” even if in the real world he is a Safeway cashier who dropped out of school in the seventh grade.

10. Common sense, logic and critical thinking are anathema in the Conspiracy Game. Conspiracy Logic is more like anti-logic (think Alice In Wonderland).

a. It’s exceedingly rude to ask, either about a Conspiracy Theory as a whole or any aspect if it, questions such as “What would that actually have looked like in the real world?” or “How would that have made any sense at all?” or “Why would the conspirators have done that when they could have easily done this with far fewer participants and far less risk?” You’ll never get any substantive answers anyway.

b. To successfully play the Conspiracy Game, you must become utterly absorbed in, and indeed obsessed with, minutiae. The JFKA must be examined with an electron microscope. The objective is to overwhelm the uninformed with such a mass of detail that they throw up their hands and agree, “Yeah, I guess there must have been some sort of conspiracy” just to shut you up. This will improve poll numbers, thereby causing the Conspiracy Brotherhood to gain credibility. You can scream that “75% of the American public believes in a conspiracy!” as though 75% of the public actually knew or cared what the heck you’re talking about (and would laugh out loud if they knew your pet theory is that Secret Service agent Hickey accidentally shot JFK).

c. The tactic described in item “b” will help avoid inconvenient questions such as those described in item “a.” You want to keep the discussion at the electron microscope level, avoiding like the plague those pesky “What sense would that have made?” questions.

11. The likelihood that you’ll enjoy the Conspiracy Game hinges on a variety of factors.

a. It’s a great advantage if you have a preconceived notion as to how the JFKA “should” be explained. You’ll see that much of the Conspiracy Brotherhood is less concerned with arriving at the historical truth of the JFKA than in fitting it into some ideological meta-narrative they carry in their heads as to how the world “works” and what dark forces are really “in control.” Keep this in mind and you’ll be far less inclined to wonder “How could any sane person actually believe that?” If you are interested in historical truth, arrived at through standard methodologies, the Conspiracy Game may not be for you.

b. It’s likewise beneficial if you fit the profile that is now emerging, through peer-reviewed studies in such fields as psychiatry, psychology and the social sciences, of the type of individual who is prone to conspiratorial explanations even in the face of better non-conspiratorial explanations. This doesn’t mean there is necessarily anything pathologically wrong with you, merely that you’re a natural and could go far in the Conspiracy Game.

c. At the fringes of the Conspiracy Game, of course, it helps if you’re exceedingly credulous and even, well, nuttier than a fruitcake. People who are this way seldom recognize or admit it, but you’ll notice that you quickly feel as though you’ve found a home among kindred spirits.

d. The Conspiracy Brotherhood is essentially a religion. The members worship their respective theories. Many are extreme fundamentalists, others more moderate, others fringe cultists. The various Conspiracy Theories are the equivalent of religious denominations, each with its own priests and deacons, its holy scriptures and sites, and whatnot. This is a useful analogy to keep in mind when the intra-denominational bickering starts to get out of hand. Always remember, the real enemy is that Great Satan, the Lone Nut narrative.

e. Leave your sense of humor at home. Participants in the Conspiracy Game do not regard themselves or their activities as humorous in the slightest. This is deadly serious stuff, being pursued by dedicated seekers of truth for the good of mankind. They have nothing in common - or at least they don't think they do - with those loony UfO enthusiasts, Bigfoot enthusiasts, Flat Earthers and the like. Stifle that urge to titter, chuckle and guffaw at their work or move along.

12. Oh, remember: Do not omit Oswald. This is an amateur mistake. Do not allow your enthusiasm for LBJ, Hoover, the CIA, the FBI, Army Intelligence, the Secret Service, the DPD, Texas oilmen, the Mafia, the Mossad, pro-Castro exiles, anti-Castro exiles, the KGB and/or the French Foreign Legion as the culprits to cause you to completely overlook Oswald. You simply must fit him in there somehow. It is perfectly acceptable - indeed encouraged - to reinvent him as necessary to fit your pet Conspiracy Theory, even if he ends up seeming considerably more interesting than JFK.

a. The same is true of all other principals - LBJ, Dulles, Ruth Paine, Marina, whomever. Don't be shy: Just reinvent them to fit your theory! Since you're really just writing fiction anyway when you play the Conspiracy Game, there is absolutely nothing out-of-bounds about this.

You expect Gurvich to talk about this to a garrison grand jury. He had to be very careful because he knew
that Garrison used to charge people with perjury just to get at them.

fred

  "You haven't given us one thing to go on."