Ch: Make Lee Harvey Oswald a good guy

He cant do anything that would make him famous for good or ill. He cant leave the soviet union.pod has to start at age 14.His brother wrote a book and said that was the age he started to go bad.
 
So, per your guy lines, he can't become famous to any degree? And he can't leave the USSR (meaning he must go there in the first place)? I think those are too constricting of guidelines, since we need the freedom to have him do something and to avoid Russia or leave it. Likewise, they don't make him very interesting, but that's another matter.

Oswald wasn't likely going to be anybody, and that's his problem. He was a loser, because he didn't act like a normal person and always wanted to be something. That lead him to become a Communist, so he'd stand out. That lead him to go to the USSR, so he'd stand out. That lead him to attempt to killed Walker, and to kill Kennedy, so he could see himself as a warrior for his ideology and so he'd be remembered. To be a good person, he'd have to stop being such a jerk. You can prevent that in childhood or adulthood. In adulthood, have him not fall into such depths of selfish hate as his lack of fame that he became abusive and murderous. In childhood, give him a better home life, or have him pull himself above where he was. His mother told him and his brother they were a burden, and I believe she was a single mother. Maybe that home situation could have been different, or maybe he could have taken the initiative to make himself something; plenty of other people from abusive environments do.

Or, maybe he could go to Cuba and become a Che Guevara, or try to be one, and become as much a hero as Che is to some people.
 
He was a disturbed individual, dangerous, angry, confused, traumatized maybe. Quite enough potential for a serial killer.

Could become a good guy if he stayed in the military and fought in Vietnam.

Could make him defect too the North-Vietnamese and join in the victory when the USA was beaten. He would be the silent hero of the Vietnam war.:confused:

I'm just throwing stuff out there.
 
He was a disturbed individual, dangerous, angry, confused, traumatized maybe. Quite enough potential for a serial killer.

Could become a good guy if he stayed in the military and fought in Vietnam.

Could make him defect too the North-Vietnamese and join in the victory when the USA was beaten. He would be the silent hero of the Vietnam war.:confused:

I'm just throwing stuff out there.

sounds like reasonable to me. you won best answer!
 
It wouldn't fit the rules you specified, but I suppose if he succeeded in assassinating Edwin Walker and was then shot by the police or otherwise incapacitated, rendering him unable to kill Kennedy, he'd be seen as a hero to certain people. Walker was, after all, a worryingly racist and fascistic political figure.

Of course, this wouldn't make Oswald personally a nice or pleasant man, but it'd change history's perception of him.
 

Hyperion

Banned
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_harvey_oswald#Marine_Corps

When he was in the Marine Corps, he was court martialed three seperate times. Once for accidentally shooting himself with an unauthorized gun, once for arguing with the Sergeant who charged him with the shooting, and once for accidentally shooting his rifle into the jungle in the Philippines.

I've no idea about the last one, but only thing I can think of is if he acts more carefully and doesn't shoot himself, or have an unauthorized weapon. That would automatically butterfly away the second court martial. Don't know about the Philippines accident, but perhaps if he's got a better record and has a chance to move up, maybe he'd have a different task than guard duty at the time.

Have a clean record his first enlistment and allow him to move up the ranks, Corporal, or possibly even Sergeant, who knows, he might reenlist for another four years. May not be officer material, but if he keeps his nose clean, he could well end up moving into the upper enlisted ranks. If he did good and was really lucky after a decade or so and maybe some college training or something on the side, maybe he could look at moving going for the warrant officer track.
 
I think this depends on the definition of "good guy." Based on what he was doing in New Orleans, I think there's a slim possibility that, presuming he could avoid some other act of political violence in the early-mid sixties, that Lee Oswald could end up this obscure American Leftist gadfly figure. If he does something similar to his "Fair Play For Cuba" thing, in 1968, he might be seen as a heroic leftist figure by other people who know of him. The big problem with that is that he's in Texas, of all places, which makes that harder. So how about, he lives for a few more years, he tries to do what he did in New Orleans, probably with a new focus, or not such an all consuming focus on Cuba, he angers some equally troubled conservative, and is killed in some kind of scuffle. The story of the murder of Lee Oswald spreads outside of Texas, and people who didn't really know him, and obviously don't know what he did historically, think of him as this heroic figure who tried to bring the New Left/Yippie movement to Dallas and hence, they see him as a good guy. Of course, even here he's still a wife beater so he's not really a good person.
 
It wouldn't fit the rules you specified, but I suppose if he succeeded in assassinating Edwin Walker and was then shot by the police or otherwise incapacitated, rendering him unable to kill Kennedy, he'd be seen as a hero to certain people. Walker was, after all, a worryingly racist and fascistic political figure.

Of course, this wouldn't make Oswald personally a nice or pleasant man, but it'd change history's perception of him.

Only in the sense he would be an absolute nobody forgotten by nearly all within 20 years or less. Walker was semi-famous but he wasn't a rock star or president of the US or anything anyone would remember. Without the Kennedy assassination connection he would be just another semi-popular racist political leader. He was far from the only one but he is the only one that people outside of experts or those directly involved have a ghost of a chance of knowing. He isn't well known by the public at large even with the connection. Without it he would be just another forgotten racist.
 
I think this depends on the definition of "good guy." Based on what he was doing in New Orleans, I think there's a slim possibility that, presuming he could avoid some other act of political violence in the early-mid sixties, that Lee Oswald could end up this obscure American Leftist gadfly figure. If he does something similar to his "Fair Play For Cuba" thing, in 1968, he might be seen as a heroic leftist figure by other people who know of him. The big problem with that is that he's in Texas, of all places, which makes that harder. So how about, he lives for a few more years, he tries to do what he did in New Orleans, probably with a new focus, or not such an all consuming focus on Cuba, he angers some equally troubled conservative, and is killed in some kind of scuffle. The story of the murder of Lee Oswald spreads outside of Texas, and people who didn't really know him, and obviously don't know what he did historically, think of him as this heroic figure who tried to bring the New Left/Yippie movement to Dallas and hence, they see him as a good guy. Of course, even here he's still a wife beater so he's not really a good person.


That makes him just another New Left Hippie type forgotten with all the others.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_harvey_oswald#Marine_Corps

When he was in the Marine Corps, he was court martialed three seperate times. Once for accidentally shooting himself with an unauthorized gun, once for arguing with the Sergeant who charged him with the shooting, and once for accidentally shooting his rifle into the jungle in the Philippines.

I've no idea about the last one, but only thing I can think of is if he acts more carefully and doesn't shoot himself, or have an unauthorized weapon. That would automatically butterfly away the second court martial. Don't know about the Philippines accident, but perhaps if he's got a better record and has a chance to move up, maybe he'd have a different task than guard duty at the time.

Have a clean record his first enlistment and allow him to move up the ranks, Corporal, or possibly even Sergeant, who knows, he might reenlist for another four years. May not be officer material, but if he keeps his nose clean, he could well end up moving into the upper enlisted ranks. If he did good and was really lucky after a decade or so and maybe some college training or something on the side, maybe he could look at moving going for the warrant officer track.

He keeps his nose clean and channels his energy into being a Marine. Goes to Vietnam in 1965. Throws himself on a live grenade, wins the Medal of Honor posthumously. Then he would be remembered as a hero.
 
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