{"id":33167,"date":"2013-07-25T16:36:50","date_gmt":"2013-07-25T16:36:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alternativejonestown.com\/?page_id=33167"},"modified":"2014-02-28T04:43:18","modified_gmt":"2014-02-28T04:43:18","slug":"lamonica","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=33167","title":{"rendered":"Leading to the Final Question"},"content":{"rendered":"

How were the great pyramids built? What happened to Adolph Hitler\u2019s body? Who killed JFK? Whatever became of the crew of the Marie Celeste<\/em>? History has many mysteries, many that can be resolved only\u00a0through the speculation of the observer and the conjecture of the believer.<\/p>\n

What about Jonestown? What really happened there on November 18, 1978? That question, like so many before us in history, may be answered only\u00a0in speculation and conjecture. \u00a0You see, those answers, like the truth and 918 souls,\u00a0perished that day, never to rise again.<\/p>\n

Like most of us over a certain age, we remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when we first heard the news. December 7, 1941; November 22, 1963; September 11, 2001. These dates are indelible etched into the American psyche, and in the minds of each and every one of us old enough to\u00a0remember these events.<\/p>\n

What about November 18, 1978? Where were you? What were you doing? I was not a member of Peoples Temple, knew of\u00a0no one who was,\u00a0nor did I have any idea as to who or what caused the events of that day. But like most of the rest of us,\u00a0I simply sat in front of my\u00a0television and watched\u00a0in absolute disbelief and shock\u00a0that such an event could happen.\u00a0\u00a0To Americans. In this century. On that scale.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0story unfolded slowly and with uncertainty. A US congressman machine gunned to death in a South American jungle, 300 suicide victims, 600 to 700 survivors lost in the jungle, many of them crazed zombies seeking revenge on enemies, real or perceived. A religious cult in Guyana. Jim Jones, Peoples Temple.<\/p>\n

This was not only\u00a0foreign to most of us in America, but down right nuts. Where is Guyana, who was Jim Jones, what was Peoples Temple? Suicide. Cyanide.\u00a0Hundreds of Americans dead. Zombies in the jungle.\u00a0This made no sense then, and to me, it still doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

At different times in the next days, weeks and months, we each realized that we were witnessing one of the biggest, most tragic and least understood news stories of the 20th century. Even as the facts began to emerge, to separate themselves from fiction \u2013 there were no machine guns, you could count the number of survivors on both hands, there were no death squads, the Jonestown tapes belie the image of zombies \u2013 the horror of Jonestown became all too clear, all too real.<\/p>\n

What do we know? Aside from U.S. military campaigns, and very few non-military events \u2013 such as the\u00a0San Francisco earthquake, 9-11 and the Galveston,\u00a0Texas flood of 1900 \u2013 we know more Americans died in Jonestown on November 18, 1978, than any other\u00a0single day event\u00a0of the 20th Century.<\/p>\n

But the understanding still eludes us. As tragic as natural disasters are, we understand our vulnerability to them. As tragic as the events of December 7, 1941\u00a0or September 11, 2001 were, we realize that our enemy can strike. As tragic as November 22, 1963 was, we know that the leader of any country can be cut down by an assassin\u2019s bullet if someone was so inclined.<\/p>\n

Somehow trying to\u00a0reconcile how 900 Americans could extinguish their own\u00a0lives, at the order of a madman, bent on self destruction? That\u00a0will never be understood.<\/p>\n

Of course there is one final question that also leads back to speculation and conjecture: Will there ever be another Jonestown? If George Santayana was right in his most famous quote as prominently displayed in Jonestown \u2013 \u201cThose who forget the past are condemned to repeat it\u201d \u2013\u00a0I fear the answer to that will be, yes. We just don\u2019t know who will lead it, or how many will join, or whether it will involve a relatively small group, an entire community, or a nation.<\/p>\n

(Phil LaMonica can be reached at datafax@sbcglobal.net<\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How were the great pyramids built? What happened to Adolph Hitler\u2019s body? Who killed JFK? Whatever became of the crew of the Marie Celeste? History has many mysteries, many that can be resolved only\u00a0through the speculation of the observer and the conjecture of the believer. What about Jonestown? What really happened there on November 18, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"parent":33245,"menu_order":10,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-33167","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/33167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33167"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/33167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52038,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/33167\/revisions\/52038"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/33245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}