40 Years Later
Kennedy, Presley and McCartney
by Chris Volkay (e-mail: [email protected]) [November 10th, 2003]Forty years after that gloomy Friday in Dallas, JFK is still the victim of a massive conspiracy, Elvis Presley is still alive and presumably eating fried chicken somewhere, and Paul McCartney is still dead. What got me started along these lines was a website that stated that McCartney really did die all those years ago.
For those that don�t know, Paul was supposed to have expired in an automobile crash in 1966 and was replaced by a double. The new Paul or Faul (fake Paul) has been impersonating him for lo these many years. There is a website that reports of all the usual clues from the Beatles albums and music, but now they are comparing voices, comparing and super-imposing pictures of Paul at various times during his career, comparing noses, chins, bone structure, etc. And, I have to tell ya, there really is a lot of evidence to support this theory. The idea is presented cogently and backed by mountains of evidence. Like so many theories, it is neat, plausible, but nonetheless wrong. I�m not going to debate it here, but the original Paulie lives! Yeah...yeah ....yeah.
�What I would like to say here however is that anything, anywhere, anytime can be made to look like a conspiracy if that is what your agenda is at the onset.� The reason this subject is important is that we exist in a world awash with virtually endless conspiracy theories. Kennedy, the origin of the AIDS virus, our supposed faked moon landing, the death of almost anybody famous (Lennon, Princess Di, John Kennedy Jr., Elvis, etc.) the government being involved in inner city drug conspiracies and on and on it goes.
But some might inquire, what difference does it make if people believe falsities, fairy tales? We obviously dwell in a world where fairy tales and fictions are already the norm. According to articles I�ve pulled from the Internet, 70% believe that there was a vast conspiracy to kill JFK, 80% believe in the existence of UFO�s, and some 95% believe in supernatural beings such as ghosts, gods, devils, angels, poltergeists and presumably werewolves.
In effect whatever is, isn�t, in the world of conspiracies. Everybody saw JFK die so you can�t say he�s alive, so they go for the next best thing: massive conspiracy. McCartney, who�s really alive is dead, and Elvis, who�s really dead is alive. Whatever is, isn�t. Whatever reality you don�t like, you�ve got a handy eraser on the end of your pencil to take care of it.
So what difference does it make? I would maintain that one of the reasons the world is in the jolly shape it�s in is that we have liberal amounts of the population believing in and, more significantly, acting upon, things that are simply not true, like killing infidels, bombing towers, wars, and fighting for �holy� lands. When we believe in fairy tales we keep ourselves timorous little children afraid to grow up. We weaken and de-empower ourselves. We lose our individual strength and begin looking to other things outside of ourselves for strength and guidance, when we are the ones that should be making decisions for ourselves.
Or we spend literally billions of dollars and collective man-hours chasing after the paranormal and supernatural salvations when real, tangible solutions are available to us right here and now.
Or we simply accept various theories because they provide us with comfort and absolution (blaming inner city drugs on the government) or they help to assuage our fears (the government started AIDS, and thereby targeted certain groups, since I�m not in that group, I�m safe). Conspiracy theories, superstitions, and the paranormal are really all simply variations on the same theme. We invent them to in some way bring us comfort, assuage our fears, or bring us understanding where we are otherwise lost.
Let�s look briefly at the most famous conspiracy theory, JFK assassinated in Dallas. 70% say it was a conspiracy. To not believe it is to seem naive, gullible, well lets face it.. downright stupid. Well......
Much is made of the grassy knoll, the place that was to the front and to the right of Kennedy. Many people have opined that shots came from there. Oliver Stone in his movie �JFK� intimates that the shot that killed Kennedy, the horrific head shot, came from there.
Eeeehh..wrong. As a young boy my father took me out hunting probably hundreds of times. I shot hundreds if not thousands of animals. Of the animals that met their deaths from my gun (deer, rabbits, squirrels, birds) died the same way, small little holes where the bullet entered, perhaps a minuscule trickle of blood, and, if the bullet hit bone, massive crater like holes in their bodies where the projectile exited. Simple physics. No bullet ever made has the ability to tear large holes where it enters, only where it exits, because the bullet is intact when it enters and then explodes or fragments upon hitting bone.
And the same is true with JFK. As anyone that has ever hunted extensively could tell you, the head shot that took the front right part of Kennedy�s head off could only have come from behind. There is no other possibility. That head shot had to have come from behind. Scratch the grassy knoll.
The second thing I would like to broach is the following, which I have never, by the way, seen addressed or answered in all my years of reading about the Kennedy case. Stick with me here, I�ve got a short one-act play:
Me: (entering the room) Okay gentlemen, what�s your pleasure?I have never read or seen the above question addressed. If Oswald was part of a grand conspiracy, and was ordered, commissioned, paid to execute the president, is the method of getting a job in a building and then hoping you get lucky with the target actually driving by, a viable hitman plan? Obviously Oswald didn�t go to Kennedy as all other hitmen do. Kennedy came to Oswald. Does this really sound like a conspiratorial hitman plan to you? Or does it sound like what it was, not a crime of CONSPIRACY but a crime of OPPORTUNITY.Them: Chris, we�d like ya ta kill someone.
Me: (Being a ruthless sociopath, I ask) who and how much? (I have a way of getting to the point)
Them: We�ll get ta the dough later....we�d like ya ta whack that sumbitch Senator Bill Jones. (Don�t worry, purely fictional) Need it done now.
Me: Okay, I�ve got a plan, here�s what I�ll do. I�ll go to downtown L.A., get some menial job somewhere up high in some high-rise building, let�s say on Wilshire Boulevard, and then I�ll just wait for the Senator to drive by and when he does I�ll drill him. That will be one hundred G�s, half now, half later.
Them: Wait a gaddamn minute here! Dhat�s da big plan? Ya just gonna wait round hopin� he just happens ta drive by! Ya know how many towns dere are in dis cun-try? What hunnerds, thousands, millions, who knows? How many streets? Millions and millions. What makes ya think he�d even drive by dere? He�s never driven by it before, problee never will. Wait til he happens ta just drive by? You could be waitin� dere a hunnerd years, maybe more? Makes no damn sense! It�s just plain ridickalus!
Me: Worked for Oswald.
[Fade to Black]
Thank you, thank you. Oh no really, you shouldn�t, you�ll make me blush.
By the way, Kennedy wasn�t scheduled to go to Dallas until just a couple of days before. His staff made a last minute change for him so he could go stumping (helping democratic congressional candidates). Nowhere in the years since the shooting have I ever read or heard that anybody has ever suspected his own inner staff of setting him up. They question every other aspect of the case, from A to Z, but I�ve never heard or read that anybody, official or unofficial, has suspected his own inner staff within the White House of setting him up or being part of a grand conspiracy. His being rescheduled to Dallas was just one of those things that comes up all the time in partisan politics.
The thing that caught my attention about the McCartney conspiracy case was that it did, in fact, have so much detail, just like the Kennedy case. There are literally hundreds and hundreds of pieces of �proof� that McCartney is dead. His height changing in different pictures, voice analysis, picture analysis and on and on. The same with the Kennedy case, there are endless pieces and tidbits here and there that can be combined to make it look like a strong case.
What I would like to say here however is that anything, anywhere, anytime can be made to look like a conspiracy if that is what your agenda is at the onset. There is such a thing as inductive and deductive reasoning. In deductive logic you start with a premise or hypothesis, like Kennedy was the victim of a conspiracy, and then you look for and modify all the information that suits your hypothesis and throw out all that doesn�t.
It�s what we have in our adversarial legal system. One side scours for what they want to find, and so does the other, to support their diametrically opposed theories of the case. What it really comes down to is modern day sophism, where you have parties spinning theories and then finding, spinning or cooking up evidence that supports what they want to believe. It is, in my always humble opinion, one of the principal flaws in our legal system.
Deductive logic is one way of thinking, by far the most prevalent in our society. The other method is using inductive logic. Withholding judgment or theory, looking at all the evidence and then formulating your belief or theory on all of the available evidence, regardless of what you may prefer the evidence to say. This is actually scientific method.
Our society as a whole is built upon labyrinths and webs in varying degrees of lies and fictions. It is how our whole world functions. We decided long ago that reality was just to painful and so we began spinning a world of endless fictions and tales to ease our pain and soothe our psyches. Conspiracies are just another part of this legerdemain that we cling to so desperately.
So in closing here�s the woebegone laundry list. Of course I can�t cover them all, because they really are perpetual, but here are a few. Kennedy was shot by Oswald acting alone. We did go to the moon, inner city drugs were not the result of a massive government conspiracy. Lennon was murdered by a lone religious nut -- Crazy but nonetheless, religiously motivated by Lennon�s remark about being more popular than Jesus. Princess Di died in a drunken car crash (happens all the time folks). JFK Jr. died when he bit off more than he could chew and flew into dark cloudy skies without being instrument rated. Elvis died from too many pills and too much fried chicken. No the government didn�t start infecting us with AIDS on purpose. Ya see it could easily spread to their own children. There is no �secret� cure for cancer the government is sitting on. Aagain remember, their own children can die from cancer.
And while I�m on this subject of �government conspiracies� let me add this. We have spent our lives watching James Bond and hundreds of spies and secret agents battle the forces of evil. We�ve seen hundreds of detectives and cops and P.I.�s crack cases. We�ve seen government agencies operating flawlessly. We have probably witnessed thousands of screen and TV bad guys being nailed by super sleuths running around solving crimes. Currently on TV we see it many times every week, alias Threat Matrix, The Agency and the mother of all conspiracy shows, the X Files.
Folks....it�s all fiction, make believe, TV. I don�t say that all spies and agents are incompetent, because they�re not, but many are. Government agencies? Think Waco, think Ruby Ridge, think about the fact that all of these brilliant James Bond-like agencies combined didn�t have a clue as to the 9-11 attack. Well actually they DID have some clues, but they were overlooked. Think about that for a minute. Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein are still at large. They couldn�t find the Unabomber for 18 years. 18 years! Not all but many of these agents are closer to being the gang that couldn�t shoot straight. This is why I find it hysterically goofy when I hear and read about these great conspiracies that presumably include hundreds of people over the span of many decades. They�re going to keep hundreds of witnesses, investigators and agents �quiet� about the Kennedy case? Kill the info about UFO�s? Hundreds of people over decades? There are no James Bonds here. No Moriarty and no Holmes, not even any Watsons. Or Goldfingers. This is the gang that said security guard Richard Jewell was the Olympic Park bomber. Folks, grand conspiracies? HaHahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
In point of fact, my only �concern� involving the government in this area is that someone will plant a bomb right on top of the Statue of Liberty�s noggin and the �agencies� will mistake it for an alarm clock.
Of course....what if I�m actually an �op� of the government hired to write articles like this to throw people off the scent? But I bet I didn�t fool you one bit, did I?
One final caveat. Lest I start sounding like a conspiratorial theorist too, I actually do believe THERE IS something to the whole Paul being dead scenario. Let�s face it, there are to many clues and messages to just be a coincidence or a mistake.
For instance, you can hear them saying �I buried Paul� at the end of Strawberry Fields. The cover of Abbey Road does have the license plate saying �28 IF�, which would have been Paul�s age at that time had he not supposedly been killed. What are the chances of that just happening out of the blue? And many many other very clear clues and messages. Just pure coincidence? Nonsense. The messages these people talk and write about WERE put there. But only as a joke. The Beatles having a joke on the world. It has long been my belief that the Fab Four decided to put on the world and so created this myth as an inside joke.
So, in summary, yes folks the clues are there, but they only add up to one big gag. And finally, this is what Lennon said in the Beatles Anthology, �We�ve always done dirty little things on records. In Girl the Beatles were singing 'tit-tit-tit-tit' in the background and nobody noticed.� Who knows, maybe someday one of the remaining Beatles will actually admit to the death-of-Paul gag.
Resources and Avenues for Further Study
Uberkinder: Paul McCartney Really Is Dead: The Photographic Evidence You Gotta Read This: Is Elvis Presley Alive? Google Directory: Society > History > By Region > North America > United States > Presidents > Kennedy, John Fitzgerald > Assassination > Theories Google Directory: Society > Issues > Conspiracy