An Experiment for Conspiracy Lovers

It was probably the assassination of JFK that sent conspiracy theories into the mainstream. Kennedy, a staunch anti-Soviet Cold Warrior, was murdered by a Communist nutcase who had once tried to defect to the U.S.S.R. Within hours of the killing, the news media — biased to the left back then as opposed to now when they are utterly corrupted by leftism — began selling the public the notion that right wing “hate” had somehow killed the president. Rather than accept the fact that their beloved socialism routinely, almost inevitably, produced oppression and murder, they ignored the simple facts and began selling ever more complex and mysterious conspiracy theories.

These theories culminated in Oliver Stone’s Oscar-nominated film JFK, the based-on-truth story of loopy New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison who put a local businessman on trial for being at the center of an imaginary right wing coup d’etat that ended with Kennedy’s assassination. In real life, the jury tossed the case out after an hour of deliberations, but in the movie Garrison is portrayed as a hero by the handsome and dynamic Kevin Costner at the height of his stardom

This happens a lot in Hollywood, by the way. Some guy will cheat on his wife then rewrite his sleazy affair as a glamorous love story populated with attractive movie stars. Now, instead of being just another dishonest schmuck, Cheat Boy is suddenly the hero of a high romance.

But use your imagination. Take a look behind the veil for a moment. The vid above is the climax of JFK, the prosecutor’s impassioned summation to the jury. Watch it — and forget for a moment what a glamorous star Costner is, how beautiful and noble-looking Sissy Spacek is portraying his wife. Just listen to what he says. The grandiosity, the faulty logic, the sense of paranoid helplessness, the distortion (since when did JFK become a king???), the fear of sinister and universal powers. What you’re watching is a display of mental illness — maybe Garrison’s, maybe Stone’s, I don’t know. Once you see it that way, it’s hard to stop seeing it — because it’s the truth.

From leftists defending communism with Kennedy conspiracies to multiculturalists defending moral relativism with 9-11 Trutherism to fear-driven Obama-haters refusing to acknowledge the existence of bad luck in the death of Antonin Scalia, conspiracy theories are a way of rewriting history in order to defend a cherished point of view from the facts.