Bonus Episode - Cuban Conspiracies and Schoolyard Chants

July 22, 2025·30 min·2 clips

How should we handle Karl Rove's biography on McKinley when his political biases are so well-known?

The bonus format gives Sebastian Major room to clean up what the William McKinley trilogy left behind, especially the Spanish-American War material that spilled past the regular episodes. A listener question brings him back to the destruction of the USS Maine and the conspiracy theories around it. He starts by getting the terms straight. Any explanation that depends on secret plotting, whether it points to hardcore Spanish monarchists, Cuban rebels, rioting Spanish soldiers, or jingoistic Americans, counts as a conspiracy theory. From there, motive does most of the work. Cuban rebels and rioting soldiers sound more plausible to him because they had a visible reason to want American intervention. Then he draws a hard line. The claim that jingoistic Americans destroyed the ship may appeal to some people, but Sebastian says he has seen absolutely no evidence for it. If someone is going to argue that Americans killed their own soldiers, the proof needs to be much stronger than a story that feels satisfying. He brings the death toll back into the room: 261 American sailors and Marines died when the Maine exploded. William Randolph Hearst gets pulled in too, through the theory that he paid saboteurs to destroy the ship. Sebastian says there is no hard evidence for that either, even if it fits the larger tale people tell about newspapers and the war. The episode stays loose and conversational, but the standard is clear. Suspicion can start the question. It cannot do the whole job.

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