Tomorrow will mark the sixtieth anniversary of perhaps the most infamous crime in American history: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. While President Kennedy was not the first president to be assassinated while in office, the circumstances surrounding his death seemed just too tragically simple for some people to accept.
The man who murdered President Kennedy was a 24-year-old Marxist named Lee Harvey Oswald, a man who was, by all measures, an utter failure at life. Lee Oswald's short life was punctuated by failure after failure after failure. His military career ended with an undesirable discharge. His attempt to defect to the Soviet Union ended with the Soviets rejecting his application for citizenship. And his attempt to defect to Cuba ended with the Cuban consulate guards escorting him out of the Cuban embassy, telling him he was wasting his time and should never come back. Oswald failed in his first attempt to make history; trying to assassinate far-right ex-General Edwin Walker. Oswald failed in his attempt to secure a stable job to provide for his wife and two children. And Oswald failed to even keep his marriage intact, with him and his wife living separately and growing further and further apart.
But on November 22, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald finally did make history. Armed with a $12 mail-order Italian Carcano rifle and a cheap scope, and with little more than a day's worth of planning, Oswald fired three shots at President Kennedy's motorcade as it passed by his place of work at the Texas School Book Depository in downtown Dallas, Texas. In the space of 8.4 seconds, Oswald went from a nobody with no future to the most infamous criminal in American history - striking down the most powerful and beloved figure in the entire world.
Oswald's glory would be short-lived. Two days after the assassination, as he was being transferred from Dallas Police Headquarters to the Dallas County Jail, Lee Harvey Oswald himself would fall to an assassin's bullet fired by Jack Ruby, a mentally-unstable nightclub owner who was distraught over the killing of President Kennedy.
Jack Ruby - like Oswald - changed the course of history immediately. By killing Oswald, he deprived the American people of the chance to see justice done. The overwhelming evidence against Oswald would never be presented before a jury in a court of law. A verdict of guilty would never be handed down. And the inevitable execution in Texas' electric chair that would have followed that verdict - and which would have forever closed the books on one of the darkest parts of US history - never occurred.
Even today, sixty years later, it can be hard to fathom how Lee Oswald - an unremarkable nobody and a loser with no future - was able to singlehandedly alter the course of history so drastically and so quickly. It speaks to a condition rooted in the human psyche; something known as "Proportionality Bias".
Proportionality Bias is something that is evolutionarily hardwired into our brains. When big, drastic, and traumatic events happen, we tend to assume that they must have big, drastic causes. How could a nobody like Oswald manage to strike down an American success story like John F. Kennedy? How could such a powerful idol be brought low by such an unremarkable man? Surely there must be more!
So it's no surprise that even now, sixty years later, some 65% of Americans believe that President Kennedy was assassinated as a result of a sinister conspiracy, perpetrated by an endless number of potential suspects. Everyone from the CIA to the FBI, KGB, Military Intelligence, Mossad, South Vietnam, Castro, Texas Oilmen, the "military-industrial complex", the Secret Service, the Dallas Police Department, aliens, Nazis, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon - basically anyone who isn't Lee Harvey Oswald - has been accused of being behind or otherwise involved in the assassination.
In May, I published an article on the Kennedy assassination, entitled "Eight Seconds in History". In it, I lay out the facts of the assassination and reveal the overwhelming, incontrovertible, and insurmountable evidence against Lee Harvey Oswald. There is no question that Oswald is guilty. He is guilty. He absolutely is guilty. He is as guilty as guilty can possibly be. Not just beyond a reasonable doubt, but beyond ANY doubt. If anything, it would be practically impossible to find any other criminal defendant with as much evidence against him - physical and circumstantial - as there is against Lee Harvey Oswald.
And indeed it's quite frustrating to see the popularity these conspiracy theories enjoy. Not only a plurality, but a MAJORITY of Americans still think that President Kennedy was murdered by some vast, sinister conspiracy, despite all available evidence pointing to the contrary. Elected officials in Congress - even extending to the former President of the United States, Donald Trump - have entertained these outlandish conspiracy theories and given them legitimacy, and in doing so they continue to lie about one of the most consequential events in American history.
It's obscene, in some ways. It strips the humanity away from what really happened. John F. Kennedy wasn't just an American president. He was a father. He was a brother. He was a son. He was a husband. He was a war hero who sacrificed a great much for his country in combat. He was an ardent activist for human rights, giving a voice to those who had none. He was a beacon of hope and inspiration who saw the best in America, leading her and her people through some of its most trying times.
And yet through all of that, he remained, fundamentally, just as much a human being as anyone else, with the same flaws, vulnerabilities, and weaknesses - and he was struck down by another human being with the very same flaws, vulnerabilities, and weaknesses. Lee Harvey Oswald and John F. Kennedy may have been polar opposites in life, and yet, fundamentally, they were the same in death.
It does no good to spin the story of President Kennedy's untimely end into something it is not. Real life is not a Tom Clancy novel, full of dark conspiracies, sinister intrigue, and elaborate psyop plots. John F. Kennedy wasn't a pawn in some cheap thriller film, some asset to be used by vaguely-defined "powers that be" in a vast conspiracy for global domination, endless wars for profit, or whatever other outlandish, stupid, or ridiculous scenarios the conspiracy theorists have spent the past six decades dreaming up while strung out on God knows how many drugs.
The truth is as simple today as it was sixty years ago. President Kennedy's assassination showed the entire world that nobody is fundamentally more of a human being than anyone else. We all are capable - as individuals - of changing history, be it for better or for worse.
For President Kennedy, all he required was determination and resolve to bring out what he saw as the best in Americans, get Americans to see it in themselves, and work to bring about a better future for America and the world.
And for Lee Harvey Oswald, all he required was to use that same determination and resolve to strike down John F. Kennedy as he passed by his place of work, seizing his opportunity in a brief window in time to secure his eternal place in history beside him.
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