More than any time in history, America is saturated in conspiracy theories. It seems almost every aspect of society and pop culture is touched by the idea of a conspiracy of some sort. There are the classics, such as the moon landing being faked, filmed in a basement by Stanley Kubrick, to more bizarre ones like the flat-earth theory and the claim that the Beatles never actually existed, to the dangerously delirious - the Sandy Hook shooting never happened, 9/11 was an inside job, vaccines contain tracking technology, and JFK Jr. will appear in Dealey Plaza to claim the Presidency for Donald Trump (despite the younger Kennedy being dead for 22 years).
The answer is disappointingly simple - they excite us, and they comfort us.
We can look to the biggest conspiracy theory in all of American history for the perfect example: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Theorists have long rejected the idea that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in shooting JFK, that the whole thing was a plot by the CIA, Vice-President Lyndon Johnson, or other powers that be. Many more far-out ideas have been posited, such as Kennedy was killed because he planned to reveal the existence of extraterrestrial life.
The facts are, unfortunately, much more boring - Oswald, a young Marxist loner with delusions of grandeur, shot the President to make a statement, to be somebody for once. I write "unfortunately more boring" because a great leader such as John F. Kennedy deserved a better end - a man of his accomplishments deserved a better assassin, as morbid as it sounds. Even a rogue government and/or alien-related conspiracy would have been a more fitting means to such a great man's tragic end: it's disheartening and disappointing to accept that one of our greatest Presidents was simply slain by a born loser - who in turn was slain by another born loser, with no mob connections, no secret CIA motive. The true backstories of Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby are too real - but the fantastical explanations, the intricate and complex, the convoluted, take us away from such a reality. A nice, exciting conspiracy overshadows the tragedy with grandeur. Therefore, aliens and the CIA.
The outlandish and wondrous, bluntly put, make us feel better. They give us a noble quest, to expose the truth. They add adventure and intrigue, put us in a James Bond-like role, a covert mission to gather intelligence and expose the Deep States and Pizzagates of the world. Conspiracies take us from our glum place as mourners to freedom fighters for truth. And when they send us on a spiral of violence and fanaticism, they make us martyrs - heroes even - when we storm the Capitol shirtless, wearing face paint and a horned helmet.
Meticulously compiled evidence that dashes these conspiracy theories brings us back to Earth. Back to the grind of the mundane and terrifying. It's terrifying to think that an ordinary nobody in our midst could take it upon themselves to kill the President - it's exciting to think it was the work of an ominous boss-level boogieman.
Inside, we're too horrified - and inconvenienced - to accept that there's a new virus beyond our control that's killed millions of people worldwide, that we don't have as much reign over nature as we think. So, the virus must be a hoax, one we have a duty to expose; if not a hoax, a plot by Anthony Fauci and his cronies to force people to wear masks, so they can receive hefty kickbacks from the big mask industry.
We're too delicate to consider that our candidate lost an election fairly. We're too dogmatic to learn the intricacies of elections, because that knowledge might prove us wrong. We hate being wrong. We don't like things that dash our narratives, so they must be false. It must all be fake news - "Fake news!" being code for "I'm too fragile to handle that."
Maybe my armchair psychology is my own way of romanticizing why we love conspiracy theories. Maybe the truth is even more humdrum than human insecurity -
maybe we're just bored. Maybe we can never be satisfied as the needy humans we are: not even a global pandemic satisfies our lust for action.
Or, maybe we've seen too many movies.
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