I remember the single moment I heard that John Kennedy was shot.\u00a0 Lots of moments followed in the years ahead thinking and talking about who was responsible for that assassination.<\/p>\n
Seventy minutes after shots were fired in Dallas on November 22, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested.\u00a0 Two days later, Jack Rubey killed Oswald.\u00a0 That happened on live television, seared in our memories.\u00a0 It was a bizarre couple of days, for sure.<\/p>\n
The Warren Commission in its 888-page report concluded that Oswald and Rubey acted alone.\u00a0 Both floated in groups that had reason to loath John Kennedy.\u00a0 Multiple other investigations followed, some leaving open the possibility that one or more of those groups was involved, even that there was another shooter.<\/p>\n
A cottage industry grew up around \u201cWho shot JFK?\u201d\u00a0 There were articles, books, and however it was we spread conjecture before social media.\u00a0 Theories put forth involved the Soviet KGB, the Mafia<\/a>, Vice President Johnson<\/a>, Cuban President<\/a> Castro, the FBI<\/a>, the CIA<\/a>, and the U.S. military.\u00a0 Some of them were plausible; some were on the cover of National Enquirer.<\/p>\n I can picture being in a dorm room in college, all of us speaking in hushed tones about the counter-theories.\u00a0 It was as if we needed to be secretive, lest the people who killed Kennedy know we were on to them.\u00a0 It was fun, feeling like we were on to something big, like we knew more than we were supposed to.\u00a0 We may or may not have been under certain influences.<\/p>\n It was the conspiracy theory of my life.\u00a0 Decades later, if I search \u201cWho shot Kennedy?\u201d, I could spend the whole day reading.\u00a0 My thought is that the Warren Commission had it right.\u00a0 Despite the frayed and loose ends to the story, it\u2019s hard to believe something could have remained hidden with all the light shone on that event.<\/p>\n That was the conspiracy theory of my life.\u00a0 Until now. \u00a0Recently, a significant number of people came to believe that our presidential election was fraudulent, that the loser really won in a landslide.\u00a0 Only it wasn\u2019t whispered in hushed tones.\u00a0 It was bellowed from the White House and shrieked across social media.<\/p>\n A subset of Americans believed that our country was home to one of the greatest deceits in history.\u00a0 The United States, the leading democracy on Earth, a model of voting integrity and stable governance for two centuries, had been rolled like some drunk in a gutter.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t true.\u00a0 It just wasn\u2019t.\u00a0 I know there are still people who believe \u201calternate facts.\u201d\u00a0 Facts didn\u2019t used to have alternates.\u00a0 Sadly, it seems the notion of truth has become nothing more than a talking point.\u00a0 Truth has gone from rock solid to Jell-O smooshie.<\/p>\n For a few weeks in November, one of the conspiracy patrons sent me messages about how the voting had been manipulated.\u00a0 They came in waves.\u00a0 Each message was followed with, \u201cWhat about this?\u201d\u00a0 In each case, a minimal amount of searching on my phone showed where the latest false claim had originated.<\/p>\n No, there weren\u2019t overcounts in counties in Michigan.\u00a0 No, there weren\u2019t dead people voting in Wisconsin.\u00a0 No, there weren\u2019t boxes of ballots being added or subtracted in Georgia, depending on which conspiracy you believed.\u00a0 No, voting machines weren\u2019t being manipulated from Venezuela or Germany.<\/p>\n Those weren\u2019t even the crazy theories, like the bombing in Nashville set up to destroy evidence of the big steal.\u00a0 Irrefutable refutations didn\u2019t matter to the conspiracists.\u00a0 It shifted from \u201cProve the election was stolen,\u201d to \u201cProve the election wasn\u2019t stolen.\u201d\u00a0 It was like swatting away fog with your hand.<\/p>\n