So let's see if I've got this straight. The gun experts have no problem with the shot being fired from that location and that gun, right? The medical experts have no problem with the wound tracks, right? The sound experts . . . well, there's still debate there. Most of the proposed shooting sites are physically impossible (or, in one memorable case, didn't actually exist in 1963!). People with actual forensic training have no problem with Kennedy's movements in the Zapruder film, right?

So what's the problem? All the evidence is there. The US has a strong history of lone-nut assassinations. Oswald actually did have a pretty strong motive for killing Kennedy. Ruby actually did have a pretty strong motive for killing Oswald. (In both of these cases, remember that the strength of motive should be measured by how the person sees it, not by how outsiders see it. Mental illness, in both cases, might also have been a contributing factor.)

Oliver Stone didn't believe it, but the history in his movie was notoriously bad. Jim Garrison didn't believe it, but it only took a jury 45 minutes to acquit the one person he ever brought up on charges, and even most Kennedy conspiracists distance themselves from Garrison because his ideas are too crazy. (See, for example, the list of big-named CTs that didn't want their names on the Stone film once they found out he was going with the Garrison thing.) Basically, once people take a few hours to familiarize themselves with any and all pieces of the evidence they distrust, they stop distrusting it unless they want there to have been a conspiracy.

So why do they want there to have been a conspiracy? Because people have a hard time, despite the historical support to the idea, that a lone nut can kill a popular and beloved president. I don't remember Kennedy, gods know (I was -13 at the time), but my mother still has a pretty sizeable memorabilia collection from the assassination, and my mother's not big on saving things. Johnson used this to get some of Kennedy's legislation passed, but over the last 40-plus years, a lot of people have used their dissatisfaction (or lack of understanding) to sell a lot of books.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"