Yes, says Times of London columnist David Aaronovitch in an interview with Salon.
We want to believe theories that contradict the idea that young, iconic people died senselessly. If a story takes away the accidental from their death, it gives them agency. After the JFK assassination, it was unbearable to many people that they could live in a country where a lone gunman could kill a president.
This familiar trope has a general psychological cogency–yes, we all turn to History for meaning–but, in the particular case of Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963, it lacks a specific historical foundation. Aaronovitch is touting a book about conspiratorial thinking, with the appealing tag line “When smart people believe dumb things.” Yet his pitch neglects the disconcerting fact that there were plenty of smart people who concluded that Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy of his political enemies–and they did so rationally.
