Sixty years on (this Wednesday) and they’re still handing us the same old line.
I retain my doubts about the prevailing narrative. And I suspect I’m not alone. A marginalized nut-bag who defects to/un-defects from the Soviet Union and spends his other free time advocating for Castro, takes a menial job located on the 6th floor of a building where he can draw a direct bead on a presidential motorcade, and he nails two kill shots, at an open, moving car, over 100 meters away.
He then strolls out of the building — unnoticed amid the chaos, hops a city bus, murders a misanthropic Dallas beat walker (the insufficiently lamented J.D. Tippit), saunters into a matinee at a downtown movie theater, and is promptly arrested for the Crime of the Century.
Two days later, perhaps the most prominent suspect in American criminal history, held in custody by the notoriously ferocious Dallas Police Department, along with swarms of units from the FBI, CIA, U.S. Postal Service and God knows who else, is plugged in the stomach on national live television by a local putz, known around town for his meshugana tendencies, and dies on the way to the hospital.
A week after, the newly installed president forms an investigatory committee, chaired by the sitting Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and featuring a future U.S. President (Gerald Ford), a former CIA Chief (Allen Dulles) and a few other dignitaries, which, ten months later, releases a report that adds nothing to what everyone saw with their own eyes. Oswald killed JFK and acted alone.
Nothing to see here folks, sayeth the Warren Commission.
But it certainly was an unsavory conclusion to one of the saddest sagas in our collective awareness.
In result, ever since that horrible week sixty years ago, the world has poured untold resources into calling bullshit. Theories, too numerous to recount, have abounded, among the most prominent of which is the existence of a second shooter from a spot forever enshrined as the “Grassy Knoll”:
I have several reactions to this, the first of which is that the Grassy Knoll is not much of a knoll, and that it is largely bereft of grass. Beyond that, the guy in the lower right looks highly sus, and nobody has ever explained the presence of the heat-packing green avatar in the center/right of the image.
However, while I am willing to accept the hypothesis that Oswald was the lone shooter, I refuse to believe he acted alone. The Kennedy Assassination has the stubborn look and feel of a mob hit, as most prominently evidenced by the shooter himself being taken out before he could sing like a canary.
The Syndicate certainly had its beefs with the Kennedy clan, dating back to unsettled scores from their Prohibition-era bootlegging partnership with Papa Joe. They worked hard to elect Jack, who placed his whacko brother Bobby in the AG’s slot, whereupon he pursued the Mob with a vengeance. And all of this is to say nothing of the problems that arose from the presence of multiple shared side pieces.
So, I reject the Grassy Knoll but not the Conspiracy, and I reckon that it’s all exemplary of much of what we experience in this life: conspiracies abound, but not the ones we envisage.
And all this makes me wonder about the possibility of a great conspiracy being perpetrated in the Capital Economy. Which is showing astonishing signs of health and resiliency entirely inconsistent with the economic transgressions it has committed. We over-borrowed. Overspent. Printed new wealth out of thin air. We idled the workforce for several quarters and made up the difference by awarding various forms of handouts – generous subsidies for the empowered, direct cash giveaways to everyone else.
Two nasty wars ensued that do not present encouraging prospects for tidy resolution. In the latest, the world erupted into victim-blaming protest. The populace is restlessly unsatisfied – all with an election pending that features two of the most disfavored frontrunners in the history of national politics.
Against this backdrop, the capital economy is surging. Equity indices on a double digit run over less than a month. 10 year yields down more than 0.5% over roughly the same time period. Inflation statistics were nothing if not encouraging.
The long-anticipated Recession is nowhere on the horizon, with Q4 GDP estimates now exceeding 2%. Earnings and guidance have been encouraging. The Feds can now miraculously fund themselves into ‘24.
Crude Oil is trading in a range last observed prior to the start of Russian/Ukrainian war.
So, maybe we should just lock everybody down again, print more money, and give it away.
Not gonna lie – it all makes me very nervous – perhaps in part because it goes against all my graduate school training, funded as it was by student loans that it took me a decade to repay.
Perhaps I should ask for a tuition refund.
I also must admit that I wrongly proclaimed the early-4Q relief rally should have run its course by now.
But there’s some statistic, the specific details of which escape me, that when the Gallant 500 is up (I think) > 5% on November 15th, it has always closed out the year at incrementally higher levels, so my latest call is looking iffier by the minute.
And, in perhaps the most telling sign of the times, Jim Chanos, arguably the most prominent short seller around, and the guy who catapulted to fame by taking out those d-bags at Enron, is shuttering his iconic Kynikos (the Greek word for cynic) Asset Management Fund at the end of the year.
I would therefore very much like to jump on the current bandwagon. But. I. Just. Can’t.
Because I think there’s a conspiracy afoot. I can’t quite put my finger on the details, but this all just seems too good to be true.
So, it all boils down to what you want to believe: me or your lying eyes. Harbaugh caved to the B1G suspension, and I would’ve bet against that as well. But then again, I didn’t think that the country that suffered the slaughter of 1,200 innocents and which drops leaflets in advance of retaliatory action would be the one accused of genocide.
Or that Bin Laden propaganda would lead the trending TikTok streaming parade.
But, then, what are the chances of a poor local cop getting plugged one sunny afternoon by a guy who had, not an hour earlier, had successfully, and allegedly without help, murdered the Leader of the Free World? Or that the shooter could be murdered while in custody with the cameras rolling.
Or that a grassy knoll can take its place in history despite having not much grass and barely rising to the dignity of a knoll.
But hey, that’s where we are, and I continue to urge caution in your risk deployment.
Today, though, on the threshold of Thanksgiving week, my thoughts turn to Tippit. Helluva a shame that Oswald (and of this we can be pretty sure) did him. He survived as a paratrooper in the wake of the Battle of the Bulge, was injured and awarded the Bronze Star. He had longevity in his genes. His father Edgar died at age 104, and his mother May Bug (not kidding) reached 85.
J.D. only made it to 39. His widow died a couple of years ago, at 92. He left three children.
Kennedy – also a decorated WWII hero, and Oswald, who received a hardship muster out of the Marines, have been consigned to their places at the opposite ends of history, and my own theory is that the country was saved from abject depression from the assassination of the former in large part by the contemporaneous emergence of the Beatles.
The Grassy Knoll remains at its post adjacent to Dealey Plaza – apparently neither grassier nor more knolly that it was sixty years ago.
Somewhere, somehow, somebody knows something about what happened that day. But they ain’t sayin’. So, I’ll reckon we’ll keep askin’.
If I hear anything, I’ll be sure to let you know.
TIMSHEL