As I've mentioned here before, there was a period in my life when I took a way-too-deep dive into the world of J.F.K. Assassination Conspiracies. I couldn't read all of the books because there were just too many but I read most of the books. My interest — and my belief that the conspiracy "experts" were on to something — was shattered one weekend when I attended a little convention of them down in (I think) Downey.
I found myself surrounded there by a hall full of men — all white, all male, all absolutely certain about everything — ostensibly devoted to proving who killed John Fitzgerald Kennedy. What's more, every one of them was determined to achieve that most fruitless of goals for this kind of thing: Settling the matter once and for all.
That might have been a noble, albeit unattainable goal but there was this problem with it: They were all determined to find the answer as long as the answer wasn't that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin.
That answer was off the table because it didn't get them anything. Didn't make them money, didn't advance any political agenda, didn't allow them to feel superior to the uninformed masses who believed what the government told them, didn't validate all their loudly-expressed suspicions. Every other answer was up for discussion but not that.
You were at best an idiot and more likely part of the conspiracy if you even had it on a list of maybes. Had you gotten up at that meeting and proclaimed that sentient avocados from Saturn had offed J.F.K., the assemblage would not have believed you. Each one of them had one or more theories of their own — some, equally batshit — and since theirs were unquestionably right, yours by definition could not be. But they would have at least treated your avocado conjecture with respect and a few "Nice tries!"
If however you'd said Oswald could have maybe, possibly dunnit by himself, they would have chased you through the streets of (I still think) Downey with tar 'n' feathers. I dared not so much as allude to the possibility. The truth about 11/22/63 was not to be found on that premises for two reasons, one being simple math…
There was one true answer to the question of who killed J.F.K. and how they pulled it off. We might not ever know what it was but whatever it was, there was only one. There were somewhere between 300 and 500 different theories in that building that weekend. Let's be generous and say there were 300 and that one of those theories was correct. That meant that at least 299 of them were wrong. How do you find the right grain of sand on the beach? Especially when you're not sure it's even there?
And the larger reason was that there were just too many people who had their lives invested in conspiracy theories some of which weren't much more feasible than the one about the sentient avocados. Some were advanced by folks making their livings off denying The Warren Report. Others simply loved the attention and/or took the position that if the government said it was Tuesday, that alone was incontestable proof that it was any day other than Tuesday.
In short, the search for The Truth was fatally compromised by so many people with emotional and/or financial reasons for wanting it to be a certain way. Which of course brings us, as you've already figured out, to last Saturday's alleged assassination attempt on You-Know-Who. A number of investigations and inquiries have been announced that will try to achieve that most fruitless of goals for this kind of thing: Settling the matter once and for all.
I don't know why they're bothering. The folks who want to believe what they want to believe are going to believe what they want to believe. If the facts lead to some other conclusion, it's a lot easier to deny — or simply ignore — the facts than it is to say "I guess I was wrong." An Alex Jones might grudgingly say that if/when he thinks his stubbornness will cost him a lot of money but not when there's no penalty.
Within an hour of last Saturday's incident, my e-mailbox and iPhone started filling with messages suggesting — to put it politely — that what was being reported might not be the truth. And some of it surely wasn't. The first "news item" I saw about it didn't mention a shooting at all and made it sound like Trump had tripped. Even now, there are aspects of What We Now Know that seem suspicious. You'll have no trouble finding people writing about them on the Internet…plenty of 'em, saying it was staged, faked, not what it was made out to be, etc.
I'm not saying anyone is right or wrong except maybe to think there is some truth everyone will accept. I'm just saying, for my own benefit more than yours, that I'm not plunging into that rabbit hole. There may someday be firm, inarguable facts but so what? There are firm, inarguable facts that Biden won the last election and there are still plenty o' folks who go with their guts and will insist 'til their dying days he didn't.
Back at that Assassination Buffs conference (which I'm less sure now was in Downey), there was one speaker who claimed to have viewed the Zapruder Film over a thousand times in search of the truth. I submit that if you watched any fuzzy 26.6 second video of anything a thousand times, by about a third of the way through, you'd be seeing any damn thing you wanted to see in there.
There's a lot of video out there of the supposed Trump shooting and right now, experts and non-experts are watching it and rewatching it and doing computer enhancement, looking for…something. Anything. There are other avenues of investigation being pursued and while they may lead to clicks and book deals, they won't lead to many (if any) changed minds.
Some of it may tell some of us something but folks who love Trump will continue to love him. Those of us who think of him as perpetually-lying slime will just figure he's so desperate to win this election that he'd willingly sacrifice a piece of ear for a great photo op. And maybe some of those studying the videos over and over will even spot some Saturnian sentient avocados armed with AR-pattern rifles.