Take 2: Recent History Book Related to Possible Kennedy Presidential Nomination
The Author is Head of the Soviet Archive, Hoover Institution at Stanford University, who personally knew Lee Oswald and his wife
My Apologies: The last email that was sent was only a draft with a few mistakes. Here’s the final version that I meant to send out:
The son of the Attorney General of the United States when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated is now a major contender for the Democratic nomination for president. His father was 5 years later also assassinated.
For those interested in a RFK, Jr. possibility for president in 2024, a new book has been featured on Uncommon Knowledge, a Republican think tank podcast produced at Stanford University.
The book is The Oswalds: An Untold Account of Marina and Lee, by Paul Gregory, who knew them both personally. Gregory’s father was Russian and served as the translator for Marina during her interrogations in 1963.
If you’re not aware, Lee had defected to the Soviet Union where he lived for some years before the murder of the president. He brought home a Russian wife, who is still alive to this day.
I have not read the book but I’m passing on this account to you to add to the historical record what may be the best rendering, as far as can be understood, about what happened and why. Gregory has a firm conviction of the best explanation of the data, including data that he himself had privately (though he had been interviewed himself by Secret Service and the Warren Commission as a part of that record) about Lee and Marina.
A word about archives and epistemology: As an educator, I fuss over the kind of intellects we are producing and nurturing. Historical thinking is one of the skills I worry is devolving into historical non-thinking.
Often, the truth isn’t sexy. Sexy sells in media and Hollyweird. We have short attention spans naturally, and unless a disciplined attention span is nurtured in education at home and in school, the short attention span will continue.
It’s a bit ironic, at times, but a short attention span can manifest in something that appears to be a long attention span, as when a child stares transfixed at a phone for hours at a time. It’s ironic because, more likely than not, the child is not following an argument, with careful attention to evidence and reasonability, with an aim for truth, the entire time. The child is probably going from one thing to the next, not thinking at all, not developing the art and science of thinking. Such things, like exercise, require long development, persistence, discipline, hard work, and skillful, demanding coaching or teaching.
A word about “conspiracy” theories: “Conspiracy” does not mean “false.” That seems to be the way the word is wrongly used in some cases. I urge you to resist that sloppy way of non-thinking. A conspiracy theory is, first of all, a theory. What is a theory ? Theories have a purpose: they are designed to help us get at the truth. Their purpose, to say so again, is to help us get at what is the case or what was the case, i.e., the truth. Theories help us do so by offering explanations that purport to best explain all and only the relevant data. A conspiracy theory is just one kind of theory. Conspiracy theories offer a conspiracy to best explain all and only the relevant data. A priori, conspiracy theories are neither more probable or less. Each one has to be assessed on its own terms in the context of the thing it purports to explain. They can fail at times and they can, and have, succeeded at times. That’s because we all know that conspiracies actually exist : They happen all the time. Any particular conspiracy theory’s explanatory strength depends on what data needs to be explained, or, what happened, and what evidence is left of what happened, and whether those data are better accounted for on the basis of the theory as opposed to its rivals.
If one has a preference for conspiracy theories a priori, that’s an unhealthy bias that taints one’s look at what needs to be explained and what the best account of the evidence will be .
A preference for conspiracy theories in advance can sometimes come from the same source, the same kind of intellectual malignancy as the child with the phone has: a short attention span, a forgetfulness about how boring and non-sexy real life can be. Often times, the truth is not sexy, is not especially dramatic. Some , many I would say, prefer drama to truth. Social media capitalizes on this very thing in human nature. It started in the Garden of Eden. I guess Adam and Eve found it to be boring. So they followed a lie. How exciting !
Archives are boring, usually. But the hunt for the truth has its own rewards. They don’t often feel as good as looking at your phone for hours, though.
What I mean is — and I say this as someone trained by professional historians in archival methods for my Ph.D. work — archival work is slow, tedious, meticulous, sometimes, often-times exhausting, and often, the best explanation is right there right in front of you, but you have to want the truth over drama to see it. It can be that non-conspiracy theories are just as dramatic, seen from another angle. But any theory’s success or failure to best account for all and only those data which are relevant are properly judged by epistemic and alethic qualities, not by qualities preferred by the short attention spans of the least disciplined and least intellectually developed among us.
Listen to this man who knew the Oswalds and consider what he says. It’s still relevant to presidential politics all these decades later because of how crazy the Democrats have become on matters of Public Health.
https://www.hoover.org/research/lone-gunman-man-who-knew-lee-harvey-oswald
Have a great day,
Ljm for Trp