Simplicity

Simplicity

Can something that happened sixty years ago teach anything new? I'm still reading Bugliosi's book about the assassination of JFK. The interesting thing that jumps out at me is that they had all they needed to convict Lee Harvey Oswald of the assassination within 24 hours of the event. Yet, sixty years later, there's still people out there who doubt what actually happened, and believe what didn't happen.

At this point, I'm reading about the Warren Commission. While reading, I decided that the Commission was totally unnecessary. Everything they needed to know was already known. Actually, the creation of the Commission may have done more harm than good. There's nothing that came from the Commission that silenced the people who wanted to believe that there was a conspiracy. There's nothing can ever satisfy these people. That's really the whole point. The creation of the Warren Commission was to end the talk about conspiracy. Instead, it seemed to add to it.

So, is there anything new to learn from it? I decided that simplicity was the only thing. If you've got the evidence you need to supply the facts of the event itself, that should have sufficed. The rest is left in the hands of God or fate, or whichever you believe guides the destiny of the human race.

Reading this far into the book, I think that there shouldn't have been any Warren Commission. If Earl Warren had his way, he wouldn't have been on it. J Edgar Hoover didn't want one. Chance are that nobody wanted one, except Lyndon Johnson.

Despite all this, the Warren Commission did a good job. But it made no difference to these people. As far as the investigation of the assassination itself, the Dallas Police did a good job. But that didn't seem to be enough. If you don't believe the facts in front of you, then what could possibly satisfy you?

I really don't need to read this book, but why am I? There has to be a reason for it. The reason is to determine why the obvious is constantly being denied. Is there something in the human race that won't allow people to see what is actually there, and insist upon believing what isn't?

Occam's Razor is about simplicity. The simplest explanation is the most likely one to be correct. The simplest explanation is that Lee Harvey Oswald did it, and he acted alone. The quest for the conspiracy leads nowhere. There is a lesson that can be applied across the board, it would seem. Not that people would actually follow that rule or anything. People wouldn't be people otherwise.

Bugliosi's book wasn't necessary either, nor is my reading of it. Or for that matter, my writing about it. So why write about it? A quest for something greater. Funny how the "greater" thing leads to the lesser thing like a principle of simplicity.