My Tin Foil Hats

The final installment of X's interview. Enjoy...

What’s your favorite conspiracy theory, and why?
Sheesh, I could have written an entire dissertation on this question alone. When most people think of conspiracy buffs they picture a paunchy, middle aged guy wearing a tin foil hat while sitting in the basement of his parents’ house. This may be true in some cases but most conspiracy theorists I’ve come into contact with are actually highly intellectual people who see something amiss and dig deeper. Or as my boss would put it “give it the smell test”. If it doesn’t smell right it probably isn’t. Talk to a conspiracy buff and you’ll find someone who knows more about history than just what was taught in your high school or college textbooks. But, I digress, on with the answer…There are actually 2 that I try follow on a somewhat regular basis.

JFK assassination – There are a million and one conspiracy theories about this assassination. What keeps me interested in this topic is that too many things don’t add up. How does a guy with U.S. military training defect to the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War then return to the U.S. to re-claim his citizenship with not so much as a peep from the government? How does a guy who, according to which account you believe, couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with a bulldozer fire 3 shots in 15 seconds and manage to blow out the brains of the sitting American President? Before he can be tried, or for that matter properly interrogated, he himself is killed in front of the entire Dallas police department by a supposed vigilante. As of yet, no one has accounted for how the third man was shot in Dealey Plaza, especially since he was nowhere near the motorcade (well, except for him…he compiled his own conspiracy theory and had it published). And where the hell is Kennedy’s brain? In April 1968, civil rights activist Martin Luther King was assassinated, again by a supposed lone, crazed gunman. In June 1968, JFK’s brother and then presidential candidate Robert Kennedy was assassinated by yet another lone, crazed gunman. Apparently in the ‘60s it was very vogue to be a lone, crazed gunman. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Add the assassination of South Korean leader and U.S. puppet Diem twenty days prior to the JFK assassination and Kennedy's limited withdrawal of troops from the war in the weeks leading up to his assassination.

And what about Vietnam? Kennedy was searching for a way to get the hell out - quickly. In less than a year after the assassination, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution based on 2 reports of unfriendly fire on U.S. destroyers. The second of these incidents, the attack on the USS Turner, was deemed to have been a fabrication according to a 2005 NSA report (similar to the whole WMD debacle). The Resolution effectively gave then President Johnson free reign in SE Asia. My opinion is that the whole thing stinks worse than week old fish. Someone was desperate to stay in Vietnam…the question is, why?

The second conspiracy theory that has recently caught my attention is probably going to gain me permanent membership in the tin foil hat club but here it goes. Originally it started as a quest to gain more information about the Nag Hammadi Library (aka Dead Sea Scrolls) after my curiosity was piqued by the movie Stigmata and then piqued again by The DaVinci Code. I was raised Presbyterian which means that I was taught to interpret the stories of the Christian Bible as fables rather than historical fact with the exception of a few, namely the birth as well as the crucifixion and subsequent resurrection. In reading the Scrolls and the subsequent research, I came across statements that the crucifixion of Jesus was faked. Actually one of the Gospels found at Nag Hammadi explains how the crucifixion was faked and contains some rather snarky comments from Jesus about how He fooled the Romans. Further research revealed a supposed burial site in India.

Is there any truth to this? Some, but I haven’t had much time to properly research this theory yet. If true, it could be the biggest conspiracy in history. Why does it appeal to me? To tell the truth, the mere idea of something being false that I've been taught to believe for so long drives me to flesh this out. I need to be able to say that I checked it out and either I believe it to be possible or I don't. When you boil it all down, that need is what drives any researcher.

Thanks to my dear friend, X, for dragging me kicking and screaming back into the blogosphere.