New Zogby poll:22% of likely voters believe in Warren Commission

[jokerswild]

78% of likely American voters are conspiracy theorists!

[scalf]

/images/graemlins/blush.gif.. but not john cole...who heartily agrees with warren comm.

can you believe john cole could be so simple-minded?

gl /images/graemlins/confused.gif /images/graemlins/diamond.gif

[John Cole]

/images/graemlins/blush.gifI can. Simplemindedness has always been my strongest virtue. /images/graemlins/grin.gif /images/graemlins/heart.gif

[Cyrus]

Thanks for the pointer. Some interesting/funny tidbits from the Zogby poll (http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=758) : Catholics are the most suspicious among religious groups because conspirators offed their President. Also, Jewish-Americans are the most paranoid of all, with 64% of them certain there was a conspiracy. (I wonder how this kind of poll would correlate with world events. Would the poll's percentages fluctuate significantly between times when a Middle East peace agreement is signed at the White House lawn and times when war breaks out in Afghanistan? Should be interesting to see.)

FWIW, I'm solidly with the 22 percent's lone-gunman opinion. But I see an inherent and very distorting bias in the question itself, no matter how one tries to phrase it. It boils down, inevitably, to this : Do you trust your government to tell you the truth about something important?

--Cyrus

PS : I would speculate that if the American administration had come out in force at the time and proclaimed that there was a conspiracy and that no stone would be left unturned and that a lot of wars would be unleashed till all the conspirators were apprehended, the people's opinion would be significantly different.

[jokerswild]

If you trust the Pentagon, or Allen Dulles, to tell the truth, then G-d help you.

Your views about Catholics and Jews smack of ethnocentrism.

I doubt that you have seriously read the Warren Report. I doubt that you have read the many respected critics of the report.

I'll side with the 78% that doubt the government would tell the truth. I bet that you defended Nixon during Watergate. I'd bet that you believe the Pentagon Papers were made up by Daniel Ellsberg. I'd bet that you believed J.Edgar Hoover when he said that there was no Mafia.

Politicians lie. The majority of the American public takes this for granted. They show some common sense.

[Cyrus]

"If you trust the Pentagon, or Allen Dulles, to tell the truth, then G-d help you."

That will be one tough mother, cause I don't believe in "G-d", sorry!

But, rest assured that I do not believe so easily any Pentagon or Cold Warriors' claims either. At least not before due scrutiny and even then I reserve easy judgement. But does this mean that they never tell the truth?

"Your views about Catholics and Jews smack of ethnocentrism."

No, I'm merely pointing out the little statistical tidbits of Catholics believing more in a conspiracy that killed a Catholic President than others (which would be equally true as well with any other non-mainstream religious affiliation). And of Jews being instictively more suspicious and paranoid about government conspiracies than other groups! I salute that quite healthy attitude and find it very justified for them, as Jews. Wouldn't you?

"I doubt that you have seriously read the Warren Report. I doubt that you have read the many respected critics of the report."

You're right on the first part. I did not read the whole, original, unabridged Warren Commission Report, the task proved to be daunting (thousands of pages!), but I did read extensive summaries of it, in many occasions.

You're wrong on the second part : I did read most, if not all, of the "serious" conspiracists' tracts and books, Mark Lane's et al. I will confess that I was once quite taken with the conspiracy theory and actually believed in those guys' version of events.

I slowly started to trust my own logic and stopped taking for granted what intuitively seemed far-fetched or just plain wrong. So, I started seriously studying the opposition, whose case I discovered had more Occam's razors than the Occam barbershop.

"I'll side with the 78% that doubt the government would tell the truth."

Good for them -- and good for you, seriously! So what if you're wrong about the Kennedy assassination? The Kennedy thing is a Trivial Pursuit moment; not trusting your government is for life.

"I bet that you defended Nixon during Watergate. I'd bet that you believe the Pentagon Papers were made up by Daniel Ellsberg. I'd bet that you believed J.Edgar Hoover when he said that there was no Mafia."

You're wrong in all those calls. Perhaps you are more careless in analyzing other people's character or attitudes than you realize. I recall, for instance, that you have accused me recently of having biased attitudes about South African people when I have never posted anything about South Africans. Perhaps you should work a little on that aspect of your people analysis.

Take care.