When people say he was a nut, are they meaning, like, a peanut? Because if so I’d like to point out that a peanut isn’t a nut; its actually a legume.
More like a walnut: hard to crack and very convoluted.
Jodie Foster was 19 years old when Hinkley tried to assassinate Reagan. Or am I getting wooshed here?
We’re talking about JFK in Nov 1963, when Jodie Foster was 1 week old and presumably still using her given name Alicia.
He killed JFK because he climbed the steps in a nearly deserted building, loaded his rifle, used his sharp-shooter training to aim it and adjust for conditions/movement, and he pulled the trigger. That is why JFK is dead.
The number of nuts is very large and the number of political assassinations is very small, so that by itself doesn’t sum up the answer. Every political assassination has a nut behind it, from Caesar to Saddam.
This is part of what I’ve tried to say. Yes, these guys (and a few gals) are all “nuts” by popular and often clinical viewpoints. But we’ve got a lot of nuts around us, most of whom never do anything stranger than mumble to themselves in public.
Yes, LHO was a “lone nut.” But to say that as an explanation, rather than a label, is to oversimplify and obscure even what sketchy understanding we have of him.
Calling him a nut fits here. It’s just saying he was irrational, and we can’t provide a rational explanation for his actions because of that. It doesn’t offer an answer, just the reason an answer can’t be provided.
He showed all sorts of signs of mental illness, but just like nuts, plenty of people suffer those same problems and don’t kill anyone.
So all you did here was restate the same contradiction as several posts above.
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“He was just a nut, and we all know what nuts are.”
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“But most nuts don’t do what he did. Huh.”
“Lone nut” is a good label. It’s not an explanation, if for no other reason than that any given million people have about 1.5 million notions of what a “nut” is.
“Nut” means “someone whose motives for his actions appear unreasonable to non-nuts”. This is not limited to violent actions, but many different kinds of actions. So in that sense most nuts do do what he did - they do things for motives that appear insufficient to the rest of us.
Some few nuts shoot at Presidents, and it is hard to understand their motives. Other nuts wear tinfoil hats, and it is hard to understand why.
Others rant on messageboards and then sign their posts, but that’s different.
Regards,
Shodan
<fx Cliffie voice on> I’m not so sure about that. </fx>
I don’t often agree with you %100 but this time, you got it right.
The real answer is a simple one: LHO was a* white guy*.
For real–although I take your point–, all I, and a zillion other Jews can say, is Thank God he wasn’t a Jew. DNA fear of group retribution and responsibility.
It’s one of the first questions a Jew will ask another after an assassination or some such.
My theory:
After defecting to the USSR, Oswald was disappointed to discover that it wasn’t the Marxist utopia he had imagined in his mind. Cuba, though, was surely a tropical communist paradise, and one that would welcome him (an American defector) as a key player in the new power structure. Thus, his actions in the months prior to the assassination (i.e. his political activism in favor of Cuban autonomy; his picture holding a rifle and lefty leaflets; his intended assassination of General Walker) were meant to establish his credentials as a genuine revolutionary.
Then, he went to Mexico, fully expecting to be embraced at the Cuban embassy (after all, getting into the Soviet Union had been easy). His rejection came as a shock, and sent him into a depression.
What pulled him out was the fortuitous discovery that the President was going to be driving by his job. As a person who long believed that he was destined for “great things” (notwithstanding the reactions of those he came into contact with), this must have seemed like fate smiling upon him. He only had days to prepare, so contingencies like an elaborate escape plan weren’t really feasible, (although he had been able to just walk away from Walker’s attempted murder, so maybe this didn’t seem all that important), but surely nothing could make him a hero to the revolution like killing its biggest adversary, JFK.
And the reason this delusional plan made even an iota of sense: he was nuts.