As a child, I heard about the Vietnam War. A television program told me that the United States lost the war. Because I had believed my country always won, I disbelieved what the program said for quite some time.
Instead I went to a trusted source: my grandmother. She would never lie to me. She told me that we had, in fact, lost the war and why. Because I trusted her, I reconsidered the subject and later researched it and ascertained facts which confirmed what she said.
It could be said that my analysis of whether we won the war became a contest of trust in my grandmother's logic and honesty versus trust in my prior belief. My belief simply gave way to the facts.
This same battle between logic and conviction divides the public and keeps us from understanding the society in which we live and its history.
In the debate over the John Kennedy assassination, facts emerge. Lee Harvey Oswald could not have been at the alleged crime scene because he did not have the time to run from there to where he was positively seen soon after. No one saw him bring a rifle to work that day and the rifle allegedly used was not the same size as the one he allegedly ordered. The only witness who claimed to have seen him shoot a rifle at the president, Howard Brennan, changed his point of view several times and was not thought a reliable witness by the Warren Commission.
I could go on. This set of facts (and others) makes for a completely different story than the official one given by the Commission. But others with whom I discuss this matter cling to their belief in the official version of events and look for ways to explain my facts to suit their conclusion. It seems they cannot bring themselves to believe that our government lied to them about who murdered a president.
Belief can assist a person in feeling better about themselves and their future. But belief itself is not the same as the truth. The truth is like a set of dominos that will fall only in one direction when all relevant facts are known.
The battle between belief and truth continues today. There is a wall of belief that our government would never do anything as horrible as murdering anyone or lying about reasons for starting a war or rig a presidential election. This wall is really one of denial.
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