On September 27, 1964, the Warren Commission released its findings to the public, concluding that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in assassinating President Kennedy.  As far as that goes, Jack Ruby also acted alone when he killed Oswald. 

 

And so the conspiracies began, including the bullet angle, the second shooter on the grassy knoll, the ability to shoot that far and that accurately, and just about everything that had anything to do with the Warren Commission, including the Commission itself.  And since Oswald couldn’t have done it alone, or at all, then who did?  Favourites are a Mafia hit (they were upset because Attorney General Bobby Kennedy was going after them, which is why they killed him, too); Cuba (pick a reason); the CIA (anger over various foreign policy decisions); and LBJ (well, duh, he wanted to be the President).

 

So here at the Press, after all these years, we’re going to tell you who actually shot JFK... Lee Harvey Oswald.  And he acted alone.  Because that’s what the Warren Commission says.  Everything else is just unproven conspiracies. 

 

Thing is, there really are conspiracies.  I mean, for real conspiracies, where two or more people conspire to do bad things.  It happens all the time.  And sometimes those conspirators are caught.  Take Nixon.  He conspired to cheat on the 1972 election.  And he was caught.

 

So here’s how it works.  Or rather, how it should work.  You are innocent until proven guilty.  It’s that whole Due Process clause from the Constitution.  Sure, it may not always work that way with a legal system that basically works on the premise that you’re as innocent as you can afford to be, but in theory, guilt must be proven, not innocence.  Stay with me.  This will all make sense.

 

Next comes this thing called the “Status Quo,” which is Latin for “the way things are.”  If something has been proven to be true, then that’s the way things are.  You may not agree it’s true, but that doesn’t change a thing.  Let’s say the Supreme Court rules that the colour blue no longer exists.  That, then, becomes the Status Quo, because it is assumed that all the arguments for and against it have already been given, and blue lost.

 

And that brings us to Burden of Proof.  If you are arguing against the Status Quo, then it is your burden to prove it is wrong.  If I support the status quo, I no longer have to prove that it is right.  It’s already been done.  You, though, must prove that blue is still a colour, while I don’t have to do squat.  It’s a technical term.

 

And that takes us back to conspiracy mongers.  It is a favourite ruse of these folks to try to flip the Burden of Proof.  They are trying to get us to prove they are wrong, instead of their proving they are right.  They want me to prove how Oswald shot with such accuracy.  They want me to prove how it wasn’t the Mafia that killed the president, or whatever.  Never mind that it is impossible to prove a negative.  They want me to prove they are wrong, and I don’t have to.  The Warren Commission is the Status Quo.

 

Sure, the Warren Commission could be wrong.  It could be a collated collection of lies.  And I’d be willing to believe the Commission is wrong, but only if it can proved.  Hell, I’ll believe in chem trails, Bigfoot, the moon landing was faked, the world is flat, or whatever crazy shit anybody wants me to believe... if they can prove it.

 

But there are rules.  First of all, proof is never a question.  It is the answer.  Proof is quantifiable.  It can be measured in all sorts of ways.  It can be verified.  It must be verified.  And the verification needs to be quantifiable, too.  It is objective, not subjective, which means just because you believe something might be true doesn’t make it true.  And there is usually a lot of it – proof, that is.  And... oh, what difference does it make?  As Joe Walsh once said, “You can’t argue with a sick mind.”

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