In 2013, Mayor Mike Rawling shepherded into existence “the 50th,” the first-ever city-sponsored Nov. 22 event held in Dealey Plaza. Finally, Dallas citizens had a civically sanctioned event that allowed them permission to publicly honor a fallen president. At the time, Rawlings discreetly sidestepped the most controversial of the issues attached to the assassination: Who actually killed John Kennedy?

Today in Dallas, more than six decades after the fact, it is important that we finally and unapologetically address that issue: There was no great conspiracy. Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone when he killed the president. Jack Ruby acted alone when he shot Oswald. The Warren Commission got it right. It is well past time for this historical reckoning, and it is particularly important that it be pronounced here.

In Dallas, we’ve borne an immense historical burden because of our conspiracy-mongering past. In the aftermath of the assassination, the whole city became a pariah, its citizens treated like accomplices to the murder. We were labeled “the City of Hate,” and it took us decades to recover from the toxic fallout.

A month before Kennedy’s visit, Time magazine had already labeled Dallas “A City Disgraced.” This followed the ugly incident at Adlai Stevenson’s Dallas appearance and recalled the embarrassing 1960 “Mink Coat Mob” incident, where Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson were jostled and spat upon.

By 1963, Dallas had proved itself, in the eyes of the rest of America, as a hotbed of virulent Red Scare paranoia that could not tolerate civil debate. Kennedy’s advisers warned him not to visit Dallas because of the likelihood of violence. Kennedy himself explained to his staff as he made his final approach to Dallas: “We’re heading into nut country today.”

When he left Dallas, he was in a coffin, and the script for our ostracization had already been written.

Nut Country

Today, our entire nation is in danger of becoming “Nut Country.” Those 1963 events in Dallas have become the origin point of a newer, more infectious strain of conspiracy paranoia.

Today our contemporary culture has become so mired in conspiracy thinking that our ability to confront the greatest challenges of our age is threatened. The World Health Organization has called it an “infodemic.” A study published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in 2020 found that at least 800 people may have died due to coronavirus-related misinformation during the first three months of 2020. We are less prepared to respond to the next pandemic, climate change or the misinformation that plagues our elections than ever before. All of this, to a large extent, because of the brain-fog produced by conspiracy beliefs.

Conspiracy narratives are attractive; they help simplify a mystifying world. Take a few established facts, weave them into a comprehensive narrative — taking whatever leaps of logic and dismissing any inconvenient counter evidence necessary — and there you have it: a complex situation reduced to a simple parable.

Jim Marrs provides a good illustration of this process. The former Fort Worth journalist’s 1993 book, Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy, became a “go-to” conspiracy guide. As he sold more books, he expanded his focus, eventually concocting an entire conspiracy universe, involving the Trilateral Commission, Freemasons, the pyramids of Giza and space aliens.

Marrs’ big career break occurred when he linked up with Oliver Stone for the 1991 film JFK. As Stone transformed Dealey Plaza into a huge stage set for his grand conspiracy spectacle, he and Marrs used New Orleans prosecutor Jim Garrison’s 1967 Clay Shaw conspiracy case as their template for demonstrating a massive government JFK cover-up.

The actual Shaw case was dismissed by the jury in less than an hour, and Garrison’s lack of supporting evidence was considered a great embarrassment by even conspiracy buffs. Hugh Aynesworth wrote in Newsweek: “If only no one were living through it — and standing trial for it — the case against Shaw would be a merry kind of parody of conspiracy theories, a can-you-top-this of arbitrarily conjoined improbabilities.”

Nonetheless, Stone’s film was a Hollywood blockbuster. If the big JFK assassination conspiracy did not exist in fact, Stone and Marrs had ensured its existence in Hollywood myth.

Mainstream conspiracies

Three decades after the assassination, JFK conspiracy theorizing had gone mainstream. With the advent of the internet in the 1990s, the world of conspiracy speculation was supercharged. As a new generation of hyperconnected conspiracist thinkers was figuring out new ways to spread and monetize their work, the Kennedy conspiracy fable became the template for an amazingly versatile, all-purpose conspiracy system available for any ideology. It became a powerful and influential American myth.

Of course, conspiracies do exist. At any one time there are a number of significant conspiracy cases winding their way through our legal system. Prominent past cases include business fraud against Enron, a number of criminal cases brought against organized crime groups, and the conspiracy charges brought against the accomplices of John Wilkes Booth in the death of Abraham Lincoln. Even with rigorous demands of veracity and rules of evidence, it is possible to prove actual conspiracy in our legal system.

On the other hand, it is also possible to disprove bogus conspiracy accusations. Garrison’s case against Clay Shaw is a case in point. As are the scores of cases alleging the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Conspiracy theories, because they rely on missing information, do not often survive the scrutiny of the legal process.

Today, the court of public opinion is often divorced from systems of fact-checking. Our conspiracy theories bounce around in a super-heated media environment where there are fewer guardrails against misinformation than anytime in the past, and fewer procedures for validating evidence.

JFK researchers have performed a thoroughgoing critique of every aspect of the Warren Commission Report, but they have never disproved its basic assertions. You can watch the Zapruder film 1,000 times and each time it shows the results of the shots fired by Lee Havey Oswald from this sixth-floor perch. You can muck around in the gruesome photographic documentation of Kennedy’s autopsy and the same is true. We don’t need to exhume Oswald’s body from the grave again. It is well past time to end this macabre game-playing. Enough of “what could have happened”; it is time to reckon with what did.

There is no nefarious secret government that controls our lives. We live in a very messy democracy that is often difficult to understand. The true danger of conspiracy theories is that they inevitably manufacture an evil “other,” a secret cabal of adversaries intent on doing harm. This scapegoating often strips political or ideological opponents of their humanity, reducing them to villains rather than fellow citizens whom we might engage in dialogue.

Today, despite so much that unites us as Americans, we are a dangerously divided nation. Conspiracy thinking has contributed to this.

We do indeed live in an age when skepticism is a vital survival tool, but conspiracy thinking turns rational skepticism on its head, replacing facts with dangerous misinformation. President Kennedy did not die as the result of a conspiracy. His death was a tragedy, and that requires a deeper type of wisdom to fathom.

City of Truth

It is time to recognize the price this city has paid for its nurturing of conspiracy thinking and clearly pronounce: the JFK conspiracy theorists have utterly failed to make their case. After all this time, there is not a single JFK conspiracy theory that offers enough evidence to warrant serious consideration.

What history does show is that misplaced doubt about Kennedy’s death has contributed to the ever-expanding plague of conspiracy thinking that currently confounds our democracy.

Today, Dealey Plaza remains a mecca for conspiracy tourism. Each year it is the pilgrimage point for the Nov. 22 JFK Remembrance. Last year’s event was typical.

As 12:30 approached, the exact moment Kennedy was shot, one of the last speakers stepped to the podium. Judyth Vary Baker, who proclaims herself Oswald’s secret lover, recounted Oswald’s aborted mission to deliver a bioweapon to kill Fidel Castro and how Oswald was actually trying to save the president. It was also important, she said, to remember the government has a proven cure for cancer but is withholding it from the public to ensure higher profits for the medical industry.

Among the 200 or so attendees milled a newer generation of conspiracy thinkers. Many of these QAnon adherents wore distinctive T-shirts featuring images of John Kennedy, his son John, and Donald Trump, illustrating their theory that the two Kennedys would soon be resurrected to aid Trump in his battle with his political enemies who commonly kidnap children and feast on their blood.

At the JFK vigil, there was a striking divergence of views, but everyone was united in their conviction that our democracy has been stolen.

I suggest that on the 61st anniversary of the assassination, we find a better message. We can take up President Kennedy’s challenge to do something for our country and commence the hard work of taking care of the truth. We can take a huge stride toward reclaiming our democracy and the common ground of civil discourse by swearing off our growing addiction to conspiracy thinking.

Tim Cloward is author of “The City That Killed the President: A Cultural History of Dallas and the Assassination.”

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DALLAS – A Dallas appellate attorney says he is not surprised at the award handed down in the wrongful death civil trial of former Dallas Police Officer Amber Guyger.

It was a record number for a case where a police officer — off duty, but in uniform — killed an innocent man, Botham Jean.

Appellate attorney Thad Spalding says he’s not surprised at Wednesday’s $98.6 million judgment for the Jean family in the wrongful death lawsuit against Guyger.

“I think it’s a very natural reaction to what the facts they were presented with,” he said.

The family was awarded $38.6 million in compensatory damages and $60 million in punitive damages.

“It’s hard to quantify the loss of a loved one,” Spalding said. “And so the way this law works is we put this in the hands of the jurors who get to hear the witnesses, get to hear the family members and decide based on that testimony.”

Family attorney Daryl K. Washington said the city should share in liability with Guyger, but the city filed a motion to be removed from the lawsuit, which was granted.

“The city of Dallas hired Amber Guyger. The city of Dallas was responsible for training Amber Guyger on the night that Botham was killed,” Washington said. “The city of Dallas, the police officers protected Amber Guyger. And yet when you have a situation like this, they kick police officers under the bus, and they run away from the liability.”

A U.S. Supreme Court case decided in 1978 called Monell Liability keeps municipalities, in many instances, from exposure in these kinds of excessive force civil rights violation cases.

“What the U.S. Supreme Court said under the civil rights statute that this case was brought under is that a city is not responsible in that same way for its officers’ conduct,” Spalding said.

So while Guyger was considered acting as a police officer, although off duty when she fatally shot Jean in his own apartment, the city has no financial responsibility for her actions.

“In any other scenario, if you’re driving a truck for a company, and you crash into somebody, and you’re negligent when you do that, you’re acting within the scope of your employment,” said Spalding. “And so your employer is responsible.”

Spalding has appeared before the Fifth Circuit and Supreme Court in Monell Liability cases. He says in order to win against Monell Liability, you have to prove one thing.

“It essentially requires that incidents like this have happened multiple times in the past, that the city was aware of these incidents having happened, and that they didn’t do anything about it,” he explained. “It’s what’s called ‘deliberate indifference.’”

For Jean’s family and others, it’s a high bar to cross, which is why, more times than not, cities are dismissed from these types of lawsuits.

DALLAS – Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued the City of Dallas after it adopted a voter-approved charter amendment that decriminalizes possessing less than 4 ounces of marijuana.

About 67 percent of Dallas voters approved Proposition R in the November election. 

The amendment prohibits Dallas Police from making arrests or issuing citations for possession of up to 4 ounces marijuana. It also blocks the smell of marijuana from being used as probable cause for search or seizure and prohibits the use of city resources for THC tests, except as a part of a violent felony or felony narcotics investigation.

The City of Dallas directed the city to comply with the amendment earlier this week.

Recreational marijuana is still illegal in Texas.

Paxton’s lawsuit says that municipalities cannot refuse to enforce Texas drug laws.

“Cities cannot pick and choose which State laws they follow. The City of Dallas has no authority to override Texas drug laws or prohibit the police from enforcing them. This is a backdoor attempt to violate the Texas Constitution, and any city that tries to constrain police in this fashion will be met swiftly with a lawsuit by my office.” wrote Paxton in a statement.

The lawsuit is far from a surprise.

In January 2024, Paxton sued cities who passed similar measures, including Denton, Austin, San Marcos, Killeen and Elgin.

Judges overturned Paxton’s lawsuits against Austin and San Marcos.

The lawsuit against the city names Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson, city council members, interim city manager Kimberly Tolbert and interim police chief Michael Igo.

On Tuesday, Dallas City Council member Cara Mendelsohn proposed adding a clause to the amendment stating that Proposition R would not be enforced unless the state legalized marijuana. Council members voted against it.

“This is such a waste of your tax dollars. 4oz of marijuana is illegal in TX & USA. Now [Ken Paxton] will have to waste his time suing [The City of Dallas] and the city will waste tax dollars defending a losing case. We’ve put ourselves & the [Dallas Police Department] in a terrible position to violate our oath of office to uphold the law,” Mendelsohn wrote in a social media post.

Paxton’s office is requesting a trial to issue a permanent injunction to stop the city from implementing Proposition R.