There is, let’s face it, a conspiracy theory for every occasion. One for everyone in the audience, whether they want it or not. It has always been thus but they have hardly ever been as prevalent as they are in this era of social media.
Even before then, though, there was dubious conjecture such as the theory that the moon landings were all staged in an Arizona desert by Nasa so the Americans could have one-up on the USSR/Russians in the space race.
In 1980, the Flat Earth Society (spoiler alert!) went further and said the moon landings were staged by Hollywood with Walt Disney support, and other such Mickey Mouse (Goofy?) assertions.
Then there are all those claims that Pope John Paul I was murdered in 1978, just 33 days after becoming pope, and for which there is not a shred of evidence but lots of proposed motives.
READ MORE
More seriously and more recently we had all those theories about fake Covid and other vaccines designed merely to enrich the big pharmaceutical companies and to control people through microchips, as claimed by Robert F Kennedy jnr. Now the US secretary of health and human services. Need we say more?
But there are also extraordinary coincidences that would easily fit the template for a convincing conspiracy theory, except these are true. For myself one of the most fascinating involves another Kennedy, the late JFK, and a predecessor as president of the US, Abraham Lincoln.
Lincoln was elected to the US Congress in 1846; Kennedy in 1946. Lincoln was elected US president in 1860, Kennedy in 1960. Both were particularly exercised over civil rights involving black people. Both were shot in the head, from behind, in the presence of their wives, and on a Friday.
Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy who told him not to go to the theatre where he was assassinated. Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln who warned him not to go to Dallas.
Both assassins were killed before they could be put on trial. Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth, ran from a theatre to a warehouse while Kennedy’s believed assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, ran from a warehouse to a theatre. Booth was born in 1839, Oswald in 1939.
Both presidents’ successors were Democrats named Johnson: Andrew Johnson, born in 1808; Lyndon Johnson, born in 1908.
All so unbelievable, but true!
Crazy, from Middle English crasen, for “flawed or cracked”.
