Conspiracy theories, particularly those that involve and seem to implicate the rich and powerful, are hard — maybe impossible — to contain. They’re predicated on the assumption that elites are orchestrating cover-ups to manipulate the great unwashed or to mask wrongdoing. No amount of disclosure fully stems the suspicions that fuel conspiracy theories because those theories, by their very nature, assume that ruses are designed to be perpetual. The truth may never be known. Something will always be hidden. The man is out to get you.

So we’ve had generations of speculation and conspiracies about the Kennedy assassination and Area 51. So we now have the Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy.

There are enough uncomfortable or unsettled aspects of this trio of examples to give them conspiratorial lift. It didn’t make sense that Jack Ruby got that close to Lee Harvey Oswald or that Oswald managed to shoot Kennedy all by himself. If there were no aliens or UFOs at Area 51, why was the military conducting expensive........

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