Is this article on conspiracies part of a conspiracy? In the world of conspiracies, Elvis is alive, Paul McCartney is dead, and the government that couldn't prevent the 9/11 attacks continues masterminding elaborate, highly complex schemes

Forty-three years after that Friday in Dallas, JFK is still the victim of a massive conspiracy, Elvis is still alive and presumably eating chocolate-covered fried chicken, and Paul McCartney is dead.

For those who don't know, Paul supposedly died in an automobile crash in 1966 and was replaced by a double. The new Paul--or "Faul" (for "Fake Paul")--has been impersonating him for, lo, these many years.

One Web site, at www.uberkinder.5u.com/paul/, not only has all the usual clues from the Beatles's album covers and music but compares voices and superimposes pictures of Paul at various times during his career to contrast noses, chins, bone structure, etc. There really is a lot of evidence to support the theory that McCartney is dead. The idea is presented cogently and backed by mountains of evidence. Like so many theories, it is neat and plausible, but, nonetheless, wrong.

The reason conspiracy theories are such an important subject is that we exist in a world awash with them: Kennedy, the origin of the AIDS virus, our supposedly faked moon landing, the death of almost anybody famous (Lennon, Princess Diana, John Kennedy Jr., Elvis, etc.), the government being involved in inner-city drug conspiracies, and on and on it goes. But some might inquire what difference it makes if people believe in cloyingly clever canards? We dwell in a world where fairy tales and fictions are already the norm. According to articles I've read, 70 percent of the public believes that there was a vast conspiracy to kill JFK, 80 percent believes in the existence of UFOs, and approximately 95 percent believes in supernatural beings such as ghosts, gods, devils, angels, and poltergeists.

In effect, everything in the world of conspiracies is the opposite of what it is in reality. Paul McCartney, who is really alive, is dead; Elvis, who is really dead, is alive. Since So many people saw JFK being fatally injured, you can't say he's alive, so they go for the next best thing: massive conspiracy. Whatever is ... isn't. Whatever reality you don't like, you can change with the handy eraser on the end of your pencil-like head.

So what difference does it make? I maintain that one of the reasons the world is in the jolly shape it's in is that we have many people believing in and, more significantly, acting upon things that are simply not true. When we believe in fairy tales, we keep ourselves timorous children. We lose our individual strength and begin looking to things outside of ourselves for that strength and guidance.

Let's look briefly at the most famous conspiracy theory, JFK's assassination in Dallas. [See also Massimo Polidoro's column "Facts and Fiction in the Kennedy Assassination," SI, January/February 2005.] Seventy percent say it was a conspiracy. This makes not believing it was a conspiracy seem naive, gullible--well, let's face it, downright jug-headed.

Much is made of the grassy knoll, located in front and to the right of Kennedy when the shooting occurred. Many people have opined that the shots came from there. Oliver Stone, in his movie JFK, suggests that the horrific head shot that killed Kennedy came from there.

As a young boy, my father took me out hunting probably hundreds of times. I shot hundreds if not thousands of animals (something I no longer do). All of the animals that met their deaths from my gun (deer, rabbits, squirrels, birds) died the same way: small holes where the bullet entered, perhaps a minuscule trickle of blood, and, if the bullet hit bone, massive, craterlike holes in their bodies where the projectile exited. It's simply a case of physics. No bullet ever made has the ability to tear large holes where it enters; it can only create them where it exits. This is because the bullet is intact when it enters and then explodes or fragments upon hitting bone.

And the same is true of the bullet that struck JFK. As anyone who has ever hunted could tell you, the head shot that took the front tight part of Kennedy's head off could have come only from behind. There is no other possibility, so scratch the grassy knoll.

The second area of doubt I would like to broach is the following, which I have never, by the way, seen addressed or answered in all my years of reading about the Kennedy case. If Oswald was part of a grand conspiracy and was ordered, commissioned, and paid to execute the president, is the method of getting a job in a building and then hoping you get lucky with the target actually driving by a viable hitman strategy? Obviously, Oswald didn't go to Kennedy--as all other hitmen do; Kennedy came to Oswald. Does this really sound like a conspiratorial plot to you? Or does it sound like what it was, not a crime of conspiracy but a crime of opportunity?

By the way, Kennedy wasn't scheduled to go to Dallas until just a couple of days earlier. His staff made a last-minute change for him, so he could go stumping (i.e., campaigning) for Democratic congressional candidates. Nowhere in the years since the shooting have I ever read or heard that anybody has ever suspected Kennedy's own inner staff of setting him up. They question every other aspect of the case from A to Z, but I don't know of anybody, official or unofficial, who has suspected the staff within the White House of being part of a grand conspiracy. His being rescheduled for a visit to Dallas was just one of those things that comes up all the time in politics.