"The JFK assassination is often seen as the moment where things started to change for the worse. Sometimes in terms of events that 'would not have happened' if JFK had lived and other times with regard to a kind of transformation of the United States' psyche, towards a more fractured, uncertain, and paranoid state. Either way, it is viewed as the - here literal - 'starting shot' of the social tumult of the years and decades that followed.

For an event of this magnitude, the official account of Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone is wholly unsatisfactory and in this sense it is unsuprising that people have sought out alternative explainations (i.e. conspiracy theories) for how the assassination unfolded and who might be 'really' responsible. As this school of thought is premised on the diminishment or ersaure of Oswald's role in the assassination, the resulting absence can be filled by effectively anyone or anything, from actors within the so-called 'Deep State' to aliens - and this is why we are still arguing about it."