Tag Archives: politics

Free to disagree on the word “cult”

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www.mattkprovideo.com/2025/12/05/free-to-disagree-on-the-word-cult/

There was a post responding to criticisms of Fred Litwins blog post of November 24, 2025.

this is my response to that response:

I think anyone who follows Judith Vary Baker could be considered a “cult” in that they are following a single leader- her.
Although it seems to be a benign cult in that I don’t think Baker exerts any control over their lives. They may have bought her book and might follow her writing online, but she isn’t trying to control them in any other way- its not a high control group like Scientology or Nexium or the followers of some Charlie Manson/Teal Swan character.
Does this “real JFK Jr.” person lead a cult? I’ve never heard of him before so I am going to assume he doesn’t have a cult following ( or am I wrong about that?)
Hardcore conspiracy believer Dick Gregory described the critics of the Warren Report as “a kind of a cult” although its a cult he eagerly wanted to join.

I’m not sure the word “cult” is the right word to describe believers of a certain thing in regards to the Kennedy Assassination . At least not compared to actual high control groups like Scientology/Nexium etc..
Maybe the right word might be “camp” or “movement” or …… I dunno- somebody help me out on this one- whats the right word for this?
Its overly simplistic to say that Conspiracy believers are all in one cult, while Lone Gunman believers are in a seperate rival/competing cult.
There is NOT a single person or ideology at the center of these groups.
Whats the difference between a religion and a cult?
Comedian Joe Rogan joked that “in a cult, theres one guy who knows this is all made-up bulls–t, in a religion, that guys dead”
Is judaism a cult? No. There are numerous different offshoots of Judaism: orthodox, reform, modern reformed, etc. Although I would argue that some of the extremely Orthodox Judaism meet most medical definitions of a cult in that the group controls where the members live, how they dress, what they can read, who they can marry, what they eat, etc..
Is Christianity a cult? No, but some Christian groups like Jehovahs Witness, extreme mormonism, the Catholic “Opus Dei” group (among others) definitely fit the definition of a cult.
If you watch all the episodes of “On the Trail of Delusion” you will see that Fred Litwin found a long list of people who are on the Lone Gunman side BUT if you listen closely, have a disparity of opinions on specific matters.
For example:
In Episode Two we hear from Robert Wagner (author of the book, JFK Assassinated) who doesn’t think there was a second shooter, but he disagrees with the Warren Report in that he thinks there was a fourth show. (Most Lone Gunman types DON’T agree with him on that.)
In Episode Six, we have Gus Russo, who thinks Lee Oswald acted alone, ( no second gunman) but he believes that Cuba might have provoked him to act.
Episode 7, has Dave Perry, who has spent years dubunking many theories, but he still believes there might have been some kind of conspiracy.

On the Conspiracy side there are dozens, if not hundreds of seperate competing ( and completely contradictory) ideas about what happened. One shooter, two shooters, three shooters, a dozen shooters…. a shooter in the sewer drain, a half dozen different and contradictory shooters on the knoll, a shooter from the other side of the street, the limo driver shot JFK, a secret service agents rifle accidentally discharged, a shooter somehow right next to railroad workers on the overpass, a second shooter in three different windows on the 6th floor, a shooter on the 5th floor, a shooter on the seventh floor, a shooter on the roof etc etc etc the list is almost limitless. (Almost) every conspiracy book has the position that THEY are right and all the other conspiracy books are either wrong or lies.
Whenever I go to “JFK Truth Be Told” meetups I often have to bite my tongue when someone says something I disagree with, but we all still (more or less) get along. There is no one all powerful group leader telling us what to think.
Neither side has a uniformity of belief, and thus, in my mind, shouldn’t be called a high controlled cult.

So maybe the word “cult” is too extreme, and I think perhaps the word “camp” or “movement” might be a better word, However, using the word “cult” or “cults” to describe competing schools of thought coming up against each other isn’t exactly wrong either.
I don’t think ONE (possibly) mis-chosen word in Fred Litwins essay/travel blog undermines his overall premise. That on November 22, 2025 ( in my words) the harbor of Dealey Plaza was clogged with competing armadas of boats full of conspiracy theorists and Fred had an amusing time navigating through them. It is HIS blog and in HIS opinion these groups look like cults.

You are free to disagree.

Countdown to Dallas, Episode 1, New Channel

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http://www.mattkprovideo.com/2025/06/05/countdown-to-dallas-episode-1-new-channel/

Transcript

The President’s car is now turning on to Elm Street and it will be only a matter of minutes before he arrives at the trademark

[Music] On October 14th, 1963 Lee Harvey Oswald applied and got a job at a place called the Texas School Book Depository

Here’s how it looked at the time
A nondescript red brick building perched on the southeast corner of Houston and Elm Streets
It offered a magnificent view of a place called Daily Plaza.
Here’s the building today
Now the question of just how Oswald got the job just 5 weeks before President Kennedy’s motorcade drove right by has been a longstanding question for those studying the assassination
Some think it’s fishy
Surely they say proof of a conspiracy
I’m Paul Brandus a longtime White House-based journalist speaker at seven presidential libraries
My latest is Countdown to Dallas.
In Countdown to Dallas I tell the rest of the story about Oswald and the depository
And for one surprising twist you might not know about stick around to the end of this short video
That mid-October 1963 story starts here in the Dallas suburb of Irving where Oswald’s wife Marina and their 21-month-old daughter June were living with a woman named Ruth Payne.
Marina was also days away from giving birth to her second daughter Marina the young Soviet

Immigrants a woman she met through the local immigrants

Marina was the victim of spousal abuse
Lee was a wifebeater hitting Marina on a regular basis
Ruth who wanted to improve her Russian took Marina in

That’s the backdrop
Oswald living on his own was also unemployed
He had just gotten back from Mexico City after a futile effort to get a visa to travel to Cuba
He needed a job badly
On the 14th Ruth Marina and some other women in the neighborhood were having coffee and the subject of Lee’s unemployment came up
Oswald had several job prospects
One was at a bakery
the other driving a truck but Lee didn’t know how to drive
One woman at that coffee Lenny May Randall mentioned that her brother Wesley Bule Frasier had just gotten a job at the Depository in downtown Dallas
She thought they might need an extra man
Now Marina Oswald’s English was poor
Lee did not allow her to learn it
So Ruth Payne called the depository and spoke with a boss there
His name Roy Truly
Truly said yes he could use another man to fill orders for school books
Tell Oswald to come down and apply
Now you have to remember what a pathetic work record Oswald had.
He’d been fired from two jobs in just the past 6 months
And a potential third employer checked on a reference who said Oswald was not a good employee
Oswald was unwanted
His skills were minimal
but a menial job filling boxes with books Oswald filled out this job application
His address was a lie
Said he’d lived in Dallas continuously
That was a lie
he had just gotten out of the Marines and was honorably discharged
Two more lies
that he had been on his last job for three years
Another lie
Five lies on one page
It’s a reflection of Lee Harvey Oswald’s habit of lying about well just about everything
But unlike other potential employers Roy Truly did not check on any of this
It was just a menial job after all
So Oswald lucked out
So that’s how Oswald got his job at the Depository
A group of suburban women having coffee
lacking the skills to work in a bakery or drive a truck
having poor references that might have resulted in work elsewhere
on and on
It took a series of small things for this job to work out
Now I mentioned one final twist to this story that may surprise you
I’ll get to that in a second
But it’s also important to remember this
When Oswald got the job President Kennedy’s visit to Texas had not been finalized
A trip had been announced but the final decision on Dallas would not be made until a month later
November 14th when the location for Kennedy speech at the Trademart was set
That decision that location was made by none other than Ken O’Donnell the president’s top White House aid
The Secret Service had recommended other locations
Other parts of town which would have meant different motorcade routes
Conspiracy theorists who are sure that Oswald’s job was some kind of setup
that he was somehow placed in the depository can never explain how all of these little things unconnected ranging from suburban women having coffee to President Kennedy’s own right-hand man picking that final location occurred
And here’s the final twist to this story
You might not know that in 1963 the Texas School Book Depository had another location at 1917 North Houston Street.
Roy Truly the boss nearly assigned Oswald to that location.
Had he done so Lee Harvey Oswald would have been nowhere near Dealey Plaza on the day of the president’s visit.
Great tragedies often take a series of small and seemingly unconnected events to occur
This was one of them
There are other stories to tell about Oswald his life
that very different era
decades of presidential security and the attitude of numerous presidents towards it
And also the science of cognitive dissonance
why humans are wired to think and process information and data the way they do
and why this fuels the beliefs that so many people have in assorted conspiracy theories
Not just the Kennedy assassination
but everything from Pearl Harbor to the moon landing to 9/11 even Princess Diana’s car crash
The science behind our beliefs that’s also explored
All of this and much more can be found in my latest book Countdown to Dallas and in a podcast of the same name Both are available everywhere

The Warren Report was imperfect, and that makes it authentic

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www.mattkprovideo.com/2024/09/23/the-warren-report-was-imperfect-and-that-makes-it-authentic/

Some thoughts on the flaws and imperfections in the Warren Report.

Some conspiracy theorists say they think that Lee Oswald was some kind of intelligence agent, maybe for the FBI or the CIA.


They also point out to many of the flaws, contradictions and overall imperfections of the story told in the Warren Report as evidence that it is false.


I’ve never been an FBI agent and neither have any of you, so I can only go on second hand reports of what its like to be one.


I really liked the movie “Donnie Brasco” and then I read the book. Agent Joe Pistone ( aka Donnie Brasco) tells what I can assume to be a true story of his time as an undercover FBI agent.


In the opening scene of the movie, Donnie Brasco takes a jewel from gangster Lefty Ruggiero and examines it with a “jewelers loupe.” A loupe is a handheld magnifying glass. After just a brief peek at the jewel, Brasco says to Ruggiero “this jewel is a fake!”

How could he tell that?

I read up on it and learned that a trained/prepared person can look at a jewel and tell if its real or fake because… real gems/jewels are organic natural things and are composed of crystals and such. A real organic jewel is authentic because you can see all of the naturally occurring flaws and imperfections that ALL natural authentic things have.
How can we tell the difference between a department store mannequin and a real human person? The mannequin is smooth and “perfect” and a real person has thousands of wrinkles, flaws and naturally occurring imperfections.

If you go into a furniture store and look at displays of kitchen furniture…
There will probably be a bowl of fruit on the table.


Fake fruit.


Whoever makes fake fruit have really upped their game. As a kid fake fruit looked ridiculously artificial. It looks more believable nowadays, but you can still tell its fake fruit because…. it looks too perfect. No flaws, no dents, no spots or imperfections. And even if its world class fake fruit that looks 100% real, as soon as you pick it up it feels fake and it has no smell.


Hundreds of books have picked apart the Warren Report and found many flaws. Some of these supposed flaws are exagerrations or outright lies from the conspiracy authors, but not all of them. There ARE imperfections in the Warren Report.

Which is all the more reason I think we should believe it.

Different witnesses describe the same thing vastly differently.
Does that mean one of them is lying? No, it means one or all of them brought their own personalities and emotional baggage to their memories of an event.

Different witnesses describe the rifle found as either a Mauser or a Mannlicher Carcano. Both conflicting reports are in the Warren Report.

Different witnesses describe the origin of the shots as coming from vastly different places. The conflicting testimonies are all included in the Warren Report.
Even the witnesses who said the shots came from the Book Depository disagreed as to which window the shot came from.

The paraffin and fingerprint evidence is less than perfect. These facts are are included in the Warren Report.

Some witness testimony seems to make it seem it couldn’t have been Oswald. These testimonies have not been suppressed.

Frazier said Oswalds package was only 2 feet long. His sister says it was between 2 or 3 feet long. A man at the door of the depository says he didn’t see Oswald with any package at all.
These 3 stories contradict each other and go against the official Lone Gunman narrative. But they are all included in the final report.

The witnesses of the Tippet shooting almost universally disagree on the details. They give different descriptions of of the time, Oswald/s hair, the color of his jacket, even the color of HIM ( his skin). They give different descriptions of the direction he was walking in. All of these conflicting testimonies were included in the final Warren Report.

The Dallas cop who knocked on Ruth Paine’s door said she said “come in we’ve been expecting you”
She says she didn’t say that.


Explanation?

One of them is lying? Both of them are lying?

One or both of them “mis remembered” the incident?


These 2 contradicting statements are both in the final report.
(By the way fellow JFK buffs….. Surely Ruth Paine had numerous visits from law enforcement after November 22. Did she maybe say that on a different visit from the cops? Im not saying she DID, I just wonder if….. maybe???)

An FBI rifle expert test fired Oswalds rifle and found several flaws with it. The scope was off, it sometimes jammed and it often fired “high and to the right.” These flaws were all included in the Warren Report.

Some witnesses went from being “Maybe I saw Oswald” witnesses to “It was definitely Oswald” witnesses. Someone got them to change their story?

One of the autopsy doctors burned his original bloody autopsy notes and turned in a cleaner, bloodless copy. Conspiracy Theorists think there was something different, perhaps incriminating in the original notes.
If that were the case, then WHY do we know about the original notes? If the second version of the notes were a part of some kind of deception, why do we KNOW that they are a second version? If I were that autopsy Doctor and and some gun wielding agent of “The Conspiracy” had threatened me and coerced me into writing up a second autopsy report with different information, then ordered me to burn the original, I would be too terrified to ever ever EVER tell anyone what I had done.


Whats the best way to keep a secret?


Don’t tell anyone.


Why did the autopsy Doctor TELL us he burned his first version of the notes??? If he were (forced to be?) in on a cover up, wouldn’t he just tell us the second notes were the first notes?

How would ANYONE ever know about the first notes if he didnt tell us?


Doesn’t everything, (EVERYTHING!) ever created in this world have a first draft?

A first version that ends up night and day different from what eventually gets released?

A company like Microsoft probably has many people working on a new software before it gets released. They probably create dozens, if not hundreds of revised versions of the software before they THINK they’re done? And even then, isn’t it all but expected by both the company and the customers that there is a 99.9% chance there are flaws and imperfections in their “final” version, and we should expect them to release Version 1 point two, version 1 point two, 1 point three in the weeks after we buy the software?

And of course there are the theories of The Mysterious Deaths and the suppressed/altered evidence.


We’ve all seen the part of GOODFELLAS wherein DeNiro’s character Jimmy kills everyone who might slip up and expose the Lufthansa heist:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyAK1iXqxiQ


And there is the similar THEORY that the criminals who killed JFK then went and killed anyone who might expose them.


J. Edgar Hoover, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, all the members of the Warren Commission and President Lyndon Johnson were all supposedly afraid to speak up against “the conspiracy,” but various housewives, waitresses and other powerless nobodies were NOT afraid to speak up and appeared in various JFKA documentaries with no ill response to them.


We can easily disprove the “Mysterious Deaths” by seeing who WASN’T silenced. Ruth Paine and Marina Oswald are still alive, as well as several other witnesses who said things contrary to the Lone Gunman theory. And most if not most of all contrary witnesses lived for decades after the assassination and died of natural causes after telling their accounts to numerous magazine and book authors with no repercussions.

The official story of the Zapruder film and other autopsy materials was that they was suppressed (kept from the public) because they were too graphic and offensive. The CT story is that they were suppressed in order to hide the truth.
And yet the pictures and film(s) eventually leaked out anyway.

If the Warren Report really was one big lie, if it really left out/altered anything that might prove a conspiracy, why did they leave in all of these contradictions and imperfections?

If it was all a fake, they would have left out ALL of the contradictory testimony. In a fake Warren Report there wouldn’t be these one or two people who thought they saw a Mauser. In a fake Warren Report every witness would have seen Oswald’s Carcano and no other.

A fake Warren Report would tell us of perfect fingerprints on the rifle and boxes and a faked paraffin test would have found definite proof that Oswald fired a rifle (and pistol).
A fake Warren Report with coerced/altered testimony would have Frazier his sister, his mother and the door monitor seeing an over 3 foot long package in Oswald’s hand. They would have maybe even seen the rifle peeking out from the paper bag.

A faked Warren Report would have had all of the Tenth and Patton witnesses seen the same thing. Definitely Oswald, definitely at the right time for him to have walked from the rooming house.

A faked Warren Report would have the FBI rifle expert report that the rifle was perfect and absolutely capable of doing what the WC said it did.

A powerful conspiracy would NEVER leave outsiders/civilians alone with the photos and films and give them a chance to make copies/smuggle them out.

If the burning of the autopsy notes was in pursuit of keeping a secret, why do we know of the first version? We should only know about the second version, and not know it WAS a second version.
I know if I altered/forged something, I wouldn’t tell anyone about the first version. Its not like the autopsy notes were turned in, included in the final report and then years later someone put in a new/different version.

Oswald’s rifle is a few inches different than the one in the ad. Proof of a conspiracy?
Lee Oswald was the first, last and only person in the history of the world to get something through mail order that was a little different than what was advertised?!?!?
A high powered conspiracy wouldn’t make an error like that.


I read somewhere ( I can’t remember where) that Gary Shaw ( of the Sixth Floor Museum) bought a copy of the gun magazine that Oswald ordered his rifle from. AND he also bought the next months issue- and in THAT issue the same company ( Klein’s) was selling Carcano rifles that were the same length that Oswald got. So that explains the discrepancy, they ran out of 40.2 inch rifles and started filling orders with the second lot. I wonder if anyone at Kleins even KNEW that the second lot of rifles was slightly different. I wonder if Oswald himself even realized the rifle in his hands was a few inches off from what he ordered>

Lee’s mother and wife described the details and the number of backyard photos differently. Why didn’t the conspiracy alter their testimonies to make them match up?

The Dallas Police said they remembered finding a Minox spy camera in Ruth Paine’s house. The FBI said the same item was a light meter. Why include BOTH descriptions in the final Report?


And if Ruth Paine WAS some kind of spooky agent, and IF she WAS expecting the Police to show up soon, why would she SAY “We’ve been expecting you”?


If she were a spook and was expecting the Police to show up, why didn’t she get rid of any supposedly incriminating evidence from her house? The Minox spy camera, the “aluminum file cabinets of spy reports” and anything else that might tie her to a conspiracy?

Yes the Warren Report is full of imperfections. Which is proof that it was organic and real.

2 Bills. Cosby versus Clinton

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mattkprovideo.com/2018/05/01/2-bills/

Bill Cosby versus Bill Clinton.

I saw a meme floating around facebook asking why Bill Clinton is applauded while Bill Cosby is now a convicted rapist.

https://www.facebook.com/TheCSConservative/photos/a.572477586106380.1073741829.572064949480977/1840141096006683/?type=3&theater
There is a big difference. I don’t think Clinton used knockout drugs. I’m pretty sure most of his encounters were consensual. Inappropriate yes, but mostly consensual.

Consensually fooling around when you’re married, and when you’re a Governor and PRESIDENT, its also quite scummy. Rape is wrong. Just as wrong for liberals and conservatives.

But lets discuss the difference between Cosby and Clinton. Clinton was a powerful dynamic attractive man who forgot to say NO many many times when he should have known better. But in MOST reported cases these star struck women came to HIM. Cosby lied from the get go, told women he was going to audition them for his G Rated TV show and snuck them knock out drugs. I see a HUGE difference.

I don’t get why these millionaires who have a naughty itch to scratch don’t just call Heidi Fleiss?

I can’t say I’m “pro prostitiution” but better that than rape or sexual harrassment.

Heidi’s girls know from the get go whats what and know they have to shut up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Cosby

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Jones

https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/sex-and-relationships/sexual-consent

Bill Cosby routing about doping women with “Spanish Fly” on a 1969 Comedy Album

This routine appeared on his “Its True! Its True!” Album.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_True!_It%27s_True!

How ironic that in answer to the rumors that Bill Cosby was a rapist, he all but admits it on an album called “Its True”!