Signs

Multiple times throughout Libra, various people take advantage of Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby's strong feelings and ideas to convince them to do something. The most prominent examples are, of course, David Ferrie pushing Lee to kill JFK and Karlinsky pushing Jack to kill Lee. These characters are able to manipulate Lee and Jack using various methods, including playing on their egos and senses of duty, but a recurring theme -- especially for Ferrie and Lee -- is the idea of destiny. I want to talk about "all signs pointing to a certain decision" a little more, because not only is it effective for tying together all the ideas of "only you can do this," "you know this is the right thing to do," etc. in their arguments, but I think it also has some layers in the story, history, and I suppose life in general.

First of all, I feel like still in the modern day, we see a lot of people who believe in Zodiac signs or others ideas of fate/destiny, or at least have some fascination for those concepts, which on some level makes sense as people naturally try to make sense of the world. But one criticism of looking into signs too much that is pretty common (besides the whole "the universe has no meaning and we're all just flying through a dark void on a rock" mess, but let's table that) is that if you're looking for signs everywhere, you will see signs everywhere. Not only will you fit whatever "sign" you see into your experience, desires, and worldview, but you will make it a self-fulling prophecy simply by believing that that sign will become true. (Which I suppose you can argue means signs are real -- they're just signs of your own true desires, not the universe's, but I put this in parentheses so this whole post doesn't spiral into an entire signage debate. Back to the point.) The problem with Ferrie's "I believe in everything" ideology is that when he uses destiny-based logic (whether he believes it or is just using it) to convince Lee to assassinate JFK, I think he could have picked (almost) any Joe Schmoe and convinced them that fate wanted them to kill the president. Of course, that argument was particularly convincing for Lee since he is, by nature, susceptible to suggestion and his beliefs and experiences already lent themselves to the assassinatory (hush, it's a word) mindset, but the adaptability of Ferrie's argument is still a little irritating to me.

Looking for signs also I think applies to the plot of JFK's assassination on a meta level, particularly in the conspiracy theories about it and conspiracy theories being popularized because of it. The ambiguity of Lee and other characters' lives and motivations, not to mention the lack of clarity around the event of the shooting itself (exacerbated by the convenient-and-novelty-yet-grainy footage), lends itself very well to conspiracy theory culture. Connections can be made wherever you look for one, and signs can point to any wild theory. If you believe in one version of events, you can incorporate all sorts of evidence into your picture, while others can use that same evidence to point in a completely opposite direction. I don't believe the examination of evidence should be considered futile, nor do I not realize that some light conspiracy theorizing can be fun, but ultimately, people see what they want to see and if they believe that anything can be true and everything means something, other beliefs they hold can be easily molded. Of course, we can argue about the positives (e.g. imagination and innovation) and negatives (e.g. proxy murder) of that possibility, but regardless I consider it a big theme of this book. I'd be interested to hear what you all think?

TL;DR: If someone you're talking to starts a sentence with "wouldn't it be a shame if..." or "it can't be a coincidence that..." it doesn't mean you should murder someone.