Believing What You're Told - Now & Then

As part of the cast of the Specter of Treason - An Oswald Trial performance, I've been asked to talk about the show on Vocolo.org 89.5 FM this Friday.  To add to the honor of just speaking about this show, I inevitably will get asked about the John F. Kennedy (JFK) assassination itself and how it relates to this show.  So, I've begun doing research on the JFK assassination and along the way came to an interesting observation.

The JFK assassination, which happened 50 years ago, has been controversial since that horrible day November 22nd, 1963.  I was born in 1976 and didn't get interested in studying the JFK assassination until 1991.  Until '91, I believed it was Lee Harvey Oswald (LHO) who acted alone in committing this crime as that's what all of my textbooks at the time read.  After seeing Oliver Stone's film JFK, I began to question the validity of what I had been taught.  I ended reading a ton of books at the time that explored different aspects of the crime - the botched autopsy, mafia connections, Cuban reprisal from the Bay of Pigs debacle, CIA's interest in Vietnam and Cuba, the FBIs involvement in in ballistic testing of the Warren Commission's "magic bullet theory", etc.  It was fascinating web of theories that stimulated my mind into trying to figure out all by myself as a high school sophomore :)  I was much more apprehensive to believe to government whenever they told me anything as the "truth".



Fast forward to 2001. 9/11 happened.  After seeing those two buildings falls, I truly believe what I was told from that day - two planes full of jet fuel were hijacked by terrorists and slammed into the tallest WTC buildings which in turned caused them to collapse.  Everything that contradicts this explanation in my opinion only strengthen what I believe I saw happen that terrible day.  Here's an example of one of the mos popular "truther" documentaries on 9/11:


I am not naive enough to believe everything the Government tells me but at the same time, when it comes to proving something contradictory, there has to be some more proof of the alternate theory presented .  For some reason, for the JFK assassination does that for me.  There's enough evidence there for me to say "What I was told was not the truth."  However, for 9/11, there isn't.  Why?  Could it be because I experienced 9/11 myself and have not had the distance away from what happened to consider evidence outside my recollections?  Am I just holding onto what I was told because it's more convenient for me to believe such a simple explanation vs. more sinister complicated plots?  Am I too tied to my experience vs. the facts?  I don't know.

As I learn more about the JFK assassination, I will continue reviewing my own attachment to my own biases.