Every JFK-head knows deep down in their heart of hearts that there is no Truth about the events in Dallas on 11/22. No matter how many volumes of the Warren Commission are devoured, secret files eventually burst into light, or scratchy, lofi recordings surface, there will never be a seamless story we can tell. The Zapruder film emerged after decades in a vault, and this unearthed secret became, instead of objective evidence, nothing more than a Roarshach test. The so-called facts betray us, piling up on top of each other only to create a shroud of mystery.

A conspiracy theory, an attempt to mold a story out of this mud, is, thus, a creative act. It should be judged not on its closeness to the Truth (ha!) but its value as art. This in no way detracts from the strength and power of conspiracy theories, no, absolutely not. Only a masterful work of fiction can tear apart the dogma of the official government line. Don DeLillo’s Libra is such a work.

Of course, 9/11 has since replaced 11/22 as the preeminent American conspiracy. Its theorists advocate for 9/11 Truth, which they will also eventually come to realize does not exist. Despite the massive scale of the event and the video and the images and the recordings and all the data in the world, the facts of 9/11 shift and swirl. The events are more eerie than ever before in history. Something has been hidden, something is wrong, something doesn’t fit. Something lurks at the edges of videos, at the highest frequencies of audio recordings. Instead of Oswald’s rather charming, “I’m a patsy,” we have something much more disturbing and macabre: the hoarsely whispered, barely audible, “it’s a frame,” from a flight attendant on United 93, calling from a cell phone that shouldn’t even work at 30 thousand feet. The government is lying, and we can feel it, but we don’t know how to say it. There’s a looming darkness over the event, partly because of the horrible, interminable wars that followed and the terrifying, now declassified CIA schemes that preceded it. We can only ask our questions, ad infinitum. (…How could a 767 fly at over 500 knots so low to the ground without falling apart? And piloted so accurately to the target by men who had never flown it before? And causing a total collapse of the WTC 1 and 2 at freefall speed? And WTC 7 as well, somehow? And how can we explain those incredible acrobatics, making the 330 degree turn, hovering a few feet above the ground at 530 miles an hour, clipping light poles, and driving straight into the side (instead of the top!?) of the Pentagon, all by a guy who dropped out of flight school because of bad grades? Such confidence, such audacity, such bravery - is this the American spirit directed back at itself? And what happened to those engines? …) 

One day, a savior will come and weave a “Libra” out of 9/11 - but I have a feeling it won’t be as funny. Until then, we all have our theories. 

What’s mine? I believe everything. (10/10)