Tens of thousands of documents about President John F. Kennedy’s execution were released by the Trump administration this year. As of November 2023, a Gallup poll found that 65 % of Americans believe that people different than Lee Harvey Oswald were involved in the murder, making the “real reason” for JFK’s death a thriving house industry. A majority of Americans have never believed the fact, saying that Oswald was a lone shooter, since the death.
Advertisement
Maybe that’s because the idea of a lone gunman killing someone in a major shooting incident in the modern era seems so inconceivable. However, it isn’t: William McKinley was killed by a wayward gunman in 1901, Teddy Roosevelt was shot in the chest in 1912 while campaigning for president, FDR was on the verge of death when Giuseppe Zangara shot him five times in three days, Ronald Reagan was shot just a few days into his presidency in 1981, and of course, Donald Trump was nearly killed during a campaign statement last month. In other words, they are surprisingly common in presidential assassinations.
So why are so many Americans adamant that others were involved in the murder of JFK despite all the available evidence? The American government has experienced a rapid decline in trust in large part as a result of this since the 1960s. By 1976, the percentage had increased to 81 % from the same level as it was only 52 % of Americans who had been convinced of a JFK conspiracy theory in 1963, which was supported by legacy media, which claimed he had been killed by right-wing “hate.” That trend is in line with a dramatic decline in general distrust of government: in 1964, 77 % of Americans said they trusted the government to do the right thing always or most often, but by 1976, that percentage had fallen to 35 %. ( As of 2024, by the way, that number is 22 %. )
Advertisement
Now that American politics have been around since the founding, distrust of government is a perfectly normal and even admirable trait. The founders sought checks and balances to stop it from occurring by attempting to stop it from happening because they were afraid of government and not to violate the rights of people. However, a significant expansion of governmental intrusion has been accompanied by American distrust of government since the 1960s. All of which suggests that the modern distrust of government has a distinct flavor: that of the conspiratorial. Today’s Americans instead think that the problem is that our government is made up entirely of bad men, as the founders believed that ambition was a common trait of all men and that ambition had to counteract ambition.
The founders were correct in saying that the extent of corruption in government is innately related to its nature. Instead, today’s Americans assume that the government’s corruption is merely a result of the wrong people in charge. A government ruled by enemies is not the issue, but rather one with excessive power.
There are undoubtedly some awful people in government. And certainly there have been conspiracies between such bad actors within the government ( see, for instance, the career staffers ‘ Anthony Fauci-led attacks on those who opposed Covid-19 lockdowns ). However, if we ignore all the available evidence and mistakenly attribute broad and endemic problems of government to these conspiracies, we miss the point: We continue to control the size and scope of government while pursuing shadows and developing our own distrust in the process.
Advertisement
Conspiracies exist. However, proof is required. Otherwise, they’re conspiracy theories. And a nation that accepts conspiracy theories without any supporting evidence is ripe for demagogues to plagiarize it from all sides.
