‘In retrospect, the Kennedy assassination was an event through which the paranoid style was grafted onto modern liberalism’

James Pierson writes:

…thereby giving it a conspiratorial and somewhat irrational outlook, particularly where “the right” is concerned…

It was wrong for national leaders in 1963 to fabricate a tale of President Kennedy’s assassination that deflected responsibility from the real assassin to a group of Americans who had nothing to do with the event and who played no role in the president’s death.

In concocting a story that fit comfortably with the assumptions of the time, even though it was at variance with the facts, they sowed the seeds for distrust and division in the body politic that are still with us today.