Conspiracy theories can’t all be wrong, can they?, by John McGauley

I’ll admit, there’s a little bit of a conspiracy theorist in me.

A few years after the assassination of JFK, I began to read some of the many, many books published alleging that there was a grand conspiracy involved in the killing of the president. I even read the 700-page final volume of the Warren Commission Report, the official version of what led up to that fateful day in November 1963. Its conclusion is that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, fired the fatal shots.

I don’t know what to believe about what came about that led to the president’s death and after all that reading, I could argue with myself that any number of a hundred groups were responsible, or that Oswald acted alone.

Being a conspiracy theorist carries with it a tinge of dismissiveness, but I’m a dabbler. Area 51, UFOs, JonBenet Ramsey, Jimmy Hoffa, et al. — they are of enough interest to me that I’ll read a book or two about them. New conspiracy theories surface all the time, about any number of events. The origin of how COVID-19 arrived on the scene is a current one; the books are being published right now. So are ones about the 2020 presidential election.

Although conspiracy theories interest me, I’ve always thought that the concept is a slippery one. By definition, a conspiracy is, at a minimum, when two people collude to perform an act.

It’s fairly easy to imagine that two people can keep a secret. But when three, four, five — a hundred — people collude, it seems that the likelihood of the secret being spilled out into the open increases exponentially, us human beings so prone to blabber-mouthing and making mistakes.

Many conspiracy theories involve the United States government, that there are nefarious, odious, rogue elements operating sub-rosa, to our detriment. Or they involve monied interests or political parties. Big Pharma, OPEC, oligarchies, United Nations, Russian or Chinese security agencies, drug cartels. The Great Reset. It’s virtually unlimited.

Maybe some are true. But then there’s a cynical side of me that believes any group would have a very difficult time pulling off something so competently that the truth will never come out. I call it my Amtrak Theory of everything, that all human undertakings include some duct tape. Every year, the Social Security Administration issues checks to about a million individuals who are dead, and have been for years. I’m tempted to soon swap out the name Amtrak for the CDC.

But having said that, there is also a converse theory that conspirators have an effective way of dealing with those who claim to have uncovered their secret workings and agendas. Simple. Discredit them, call them “conspiracy nuts,” you know, those folks with tinfoil hats who cruise the web endlessly into the dark night.

Marginalize, stigmatize, cast aspersions on the mental state of those who cite evidence buttressing alternate scenarios. Or just muzzle them.

Shortly after COVID became a pandemic, several Chinese scientists claimed to know what happened — that it was a serious breach of security of a laboratory-created biological weapon. They didn’t get much attention; the Chinese government stifled such talk.

And now, the charge is gaining shape and substance as investigators outside of China are snooping around and citing evidence of just that — a leak.

Dr. Li Wenliang was a whistleblower in the early days of the pandemic in China, and started warning colleagues about a mysterious pneumonia-like illness in December 2019. He was reprimanded by police for doing so. Then he caught the virus himself and died on Feb. 7, 2020.

That’s wonderful grist for a conspiracy theorist.

I’m inclined to believe that all whistleblowers and conspiracy believers, whether they be called “theorists” or “nuts,” should be accorded the courtesy of having their claims substantiated or dismissed.

I want to see the evidence, or non-existence thereof.

For example, during the past six or seven decades, those claiming to have spotted UFOs were marginalized as kooks or delusional. Now, drip by drip, recent official reports from the military give credence that there are objects in the sky that defy description, with videos to illustrate their size and odd behavior.

Years ago, a friend of mine recounted a story of his seeing a UFO, with explicit descriptions of its size, lights, and motion that defied all logic and laws of gravity. He didn’t budge on his account, a reliable fellow who later became a college president.

I believed him, having no evidence to not believe him.

“Even paranoids have enemies” is the reply Golda Meir said to Henry Kissinger, who during the 1973 Sinai talks, accused her of being paranoid for hesitating to grant further concessions to the Arabs.

I can amend that. Even conspiracy nuts can occasionally be spot-on.