(10-01-2014 08:48 PM)Smaug Wrote:  He's also exactly the kind of person who'd wake up one morning and decide to shoot the president.

I think the appeal of the conspiracy theory is that it frightens people that some random nut can kill a president. There's an odd comfort in believing it was all part of some sinister plot.

Hell, if it were just a random nut, then none of us is safe.

Well said.

Without getting into the weeds of official membership in political parties or organizations, suffice to say that Oswald was pro-Soviet, pro-Marxist, pro-Communist, and decided to kill the leader of the world's leading anti-Soviet, anti-Marxist, anti-Communist nation and military power.

Little known anymore, but Oswald had earlier in 1963 taken a shot (with the same Carcano rifle, IIRC) at a leading rightwing figure of that era named Edwin Walker, who lived in Dallas. Oswald also told his wife he wanted to shoot Richard Nixon, who was in Dallas for a Pepsi-Co shareholders meeting on November 21 and actually left Dallas on a commercial flight to New York at almost the exact moment that Kennedy arrived in Dallas. Oswald's wife had to persuade him not to shoot Nixon. As far as we know, he never confided to Marina, his intent to shoot Kennedy.