Conspiracy

Over the past, say, twenty years or so , the concept of “conspiracy” has taken a beating. Unfairly, I might add. It’s kicked into overdrive the past eight years or so, partly due to the intense Bush Derangement Syndrome that’s infected a statistically significant portion of the population. But blame can’t be completely laid at the feet of the Far Left; the Right is guilty of it, too. A prime example of left-wing loonism are the 9/11 Truthers: “Bush did it!” or “The Jews did it!” Its ultra-conservative counterpart would be the Vince Foster suicide: “Another one of the hundreds killed because they got in the way of Bill Clinton!”

Anyone who even entertains the notion of conspiracy is immediately held to ridicule first, intense ridicule second, and maybe scorn a distant third. It’s built into the fabric of our society, especially pop culture, and grew in earnest exponentiality in the 90s. Remember the movie Conspiracy Theory, with Mel Gibson as a nutty cabbie-conspiracist? No? Then you must remember the X-Files, with nutty FBI agent Fox Mulder on the trail of just about every conspiracy known to late-twentieth-century man. It’s short-lived spin-off, The Lone Gunmen, took it to the extreme, featuring three even nuttier nuts muttering about the nuttiest of conspiracies out there. “Tinfoil hat brigades,” the first example of which I believe was seen quite humorously in the movie Signs, is a more recent example.

But in fact there is a solid historical foundation for conspiracy. If one examines the most well-known and important (in the sense of far-and-wide-reaching effects and implications) assassinations in history, most major mainstream scholars are in agreement that conspiracies were involved. A cabal of Southern sympathizers did Lincoln in. A cabal of power-hungry senators did Julius Caser in. Numerous conspiracies, as many as fifteen according to some historians, attempted to do away with Hitler, as we’re seeing on the big screen this winter cinema season. Other more-than-likely conspiracies resulted in the deaths of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Charles DeGaulle (unsuccessful attempts), Anwar Sadat, Pope John Paul II, Czar Alexander II, and more than a handful of inept Roman emperors.

So why do we automatically ridicule those that think something similar befell John Kennedy?

Absence of evidence for the existence of a conspiracy can simply mean that no such thing was involved in an assassination. Or, it could mean the existence of a conspiracy that was very, very successful.

Hmmmm. Oh, I have to go now. There’s some men in dark suits knocking on my door.