Lessons From History

I'm 80% finished with a(nother) book on the JFK assasination. It's 1500 pages long and I can't imagine it being any more detailed...and it's detailed on everything and everybody. I mean, anything you want on the major players, like Ruby, Oswald, Zapruder, Tippet, the secret service agents, all that stuff...and anything you want on the minor players, like folks at work in the book depository that day or everybody in Dealey Plaza watching, those that interrogated Oswald, newspaper reporters, medical examiners, etc.

And the detail is staggering.

For example, when Oswald lived in the Soviet Union and married, the KGB (spy network) actually bugged their apartment (trying to discern if Oswald was an American spy)...and they even RELEASED THE TAPES to investigators. And, what was on these tapes? Every conversation the couple had in that apartment for the better part of 8 months.

Now think about that for a second.

What if, unbenknownst to you, every conversation you had with your spouse was recorded? The stuff about the kids. The stuff about each other. The finances. The fights. The silence. The sex. The stuff about work. The stuff about those people who just came over and visited. The stuff about your hopes and dreams and fears and failures...

...well...everything.

And, then those tapes were turned over to the House Select Committee on Assasinations and transcribed and put into the public record.

Manalive.

Or, like in Jack Ruby's case, both the Warren Commission and the HSCA interviewed every single person that ever bumped into Jack Ruby. In Chicago. In San Francisco. In Dallas.

Friends of his parents. Teachers. Social workers. Bosses. Employees. Brothers. Sisters. The guy who sold him ad space in the newspaper for his business. His rabbi.

And then all those people discussed in detail the type of person he was and the kind of life he lived.

And then it became a matter of public record.

Now, granted...very very few of us will ever be in a situation of historical importance where that kind of investigation is set forth. We'll just live our lives and do what we do.

But I wonder what we'd all do differently if we knew that every word we said (or didn't say) and every action (or failure to take action) would be written down and put out there for everybody in future generations to know.

Manalive.

*somedays, I wish I had deep substance on my blog like the other pastors listed on the links on the left...but I'm not feeling very deep or substantive these days...*