Americans Love Conspiracy Theories—Except the Biggest One
The real forces that reshaped American life happened in plain sight
Over the last month, I’ve been writing about how cities shape everyday life—parking lots, street design, risk culture, and how people move through public space.
And most of what I’ve been writing lately comes from living in Spain and traveling through Europe—seeing how different systems influence preferences and behavior.
This piece connects to that—but from a slightly different angle.
It’s about the stories Americans tell themselves—and the ones they ignore.
I’m obsessed with two points in American history.
And even more annoyed that we barely talk about them anymore.
I bet they don’t even get taught in school.
Number one — the murder of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 in Los Angeles after he won the California primary.
Kennedy likely would’ve gone on to win the presidency.
Had that happened, the United States would likely more closely resemble the social democracies of Europe. Or, at least, it would have had a fighting chance without the pock marks on history that are Richard Nixon and — with any luck — Ronald Reagan.
But it wasn’t just RFK.
It was —
Medgar Evers 1963 June
John F. Kennedy 1963 November
Malcolm X 1965 February
Martin Luther King Jr. 1968 April
All murdered over the course of five years.
Coincidence? I think not.
Every single time I watch a documentary about this period in American history, I cry.
I also shed tears of a different flavor whenever I watch the PBS documentary called Taken for a Ride, which chronicles the General Motors streetcar conspiracy.
Most Americans have no idea that any of this happened.
I likely wouldn’t know had I not fallen in love with cities in 1999 and later enrolled in an urban studies program in 2002 at San Francisco State University (SFSU).
In what was the major’s introductory class — URBS 401: Dynamics of the American City — you watch Taken for a Ride.
And you’re instantly taken back.
The documentary explains how General Motors, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil, and other companies helped dismantle electric streetcar systems across dozens of American cities while promoting buses and, ultimately, the private automobile.
Several of the companies involved were eventually convicted of antitrust violations in 1949.
The punishment?
General Motors paid a $5,000 fine.
One executive was fined $1.
This is the forgotten history that helps explain why places like Manhattan are exotic anomalies to most Americans. And why they fetishize European cities on and after vacation.
It explains why I was chauffeured back and forth in a car every morning when my school, the bowling alley, and the baseball field were just a few blocks away.
It deflates the learned myth that Americans “just love their cars” and associate them and the open road with “freedom.”
If there’s anything I disagree with Springsteen on, it’s this bullshit idea that we’re born with this innate love for the private motor vehicle.
Babies don’t come out of the womb favoring pink or blue on the basis of their genitalia.
And, as they get older, they don’t count the days until they can get their driver’s license because the desire lives in the brain’s mesolimbic pathway — a system designed for autonomy and movement, not for any specific piece of machinery.
Society has simply hooked our drive for agency to the car.
We could have picked something else. Or General Motors could have.
From here in Europe, the contrasts become impossible to ignore.
In Paris — where I’m spending April — the outgoing Mayor, Anne Hidalgo, took the bicycle and infrastructure to support cycling and shoved it down the population’s throat.
She did a good thing with her “power” and — ultimately — the people joined her to say no to cars.
The newly-elected Mayor, Emmanuel Grégoire, appears set to continue her incredible work. The first thing he did after winning the recent election is get on a bicycle.
In a city that voted last year to pedestrianize 500 more streets.
All it takes is one look around this city.
Bikes are cool. Everyone rides them.
The young, the old, the hip, the awkward. Women in heels. Men in suits.
You’re not a loser if you ride a bike to get around in Paris — that’s the right kind of social conditioning. If we’re going to indoctrinate people, we might as well do it on themes that are good for the individual and the larger society.
When you’re in a part of Paris where the car still dominates or isn’t put in its proper place, you immediately notice.
Everything feels more tense. The sidewalks don’t just feel — they are more crowded. Cars block crosswalks.
You remember just how inefficient and inhuman a physical environment built to service the automobile is.
And you instantly think — I hope they get to this part of the city soon.
Paris is a perfect example of what’s possible. If they can put people, bikes, and public transportation first here, it can be done anywhere.
But it starts with the people.
In the United States, most people don’t look back on what ended with RFK. They don’t question the myth that the country’s size — or the supposed preferences of its citizens — created car culture.
Instead, they idle in the Starbucks drive-thru, double park in front of the bank, or circle the Trader Joe’s parking lot and convince themselves they’re living in the most advanced society in the world.
That kind of complacency didn’t appear overnight.
The turning points came decades ago.
1963 to 1968.
And before that, the dismantling of public transit systems and the triumph of the automobile.
Those decisions reshaped American cities, daily life, and eventually politics.
Donald Trump didn’t kill the country. He’s simply operating inside the system that emerged from those choices — a broken nation he now stomps across.
A nation where spectacle replaces substance.
Where bullying passes for strength.
And where the deeper forces shaping everyday life rarely become part of the conversation.
Until Americans start looking honestly at the events that shaped their cities and their politics — and the systems that dictate their look, feel, and function today — nothing fundamental will change.
The country will keep arguing about personalities.
While ignoring the structures that changed everything.
I’ve been publishing this newsletter consistently for a long time. It takes real time and energy, and like most independent work, it only survives if readers support it.
If you’ve been following this series, the next few posts bring it all together—how these systems shape where you can live, how you move, and what kind of life is even possible.
That’s where this is going.
And now there are driverless cars everywhere on the westside in Los Angeles.
Instead of investing in good public transportation ..more cars and more cars!
Even in my small city of Oshawa, change is coming. The regional government wants to run a light rail transit line down the middle of the city's busiest street. I hope they are paying attention to the lessons of Toronto, a big city. It has built five of these LRT lines, a few of which include subway transit too, since the 1990s. On average it took 4 years (!) to build each of these. The tardiest, the Eglinton LRT, was started 15 years ago, and is still not fully up and running. By contrast it took only 8 years to construct the Line 4 Sheppard subway, made up of ALL underground subway stops, all dug with tunnel borers. Subway transit is the way to go in Canada, given the nasty winter we just suffered through here.
Oshawa is no longer Car Canada given the ups and downs of the General Motors plant here, so I agree that the city should adapt more to public transit. There are already many more walkable areas in Oshawa than existed 10 years ago. But the process of installing the LRT lines will be just as painful here as it was in Toronto. If Oshawa had a million or half a million people the pain would be worthwhile, but I can't see it being feasible for a city of less than 250,000. So I am not a 100% pro-transit citizen, at least not in the proposed form.