The actor:	Nicolas Cage
The character:	Ben Gates
The film:	National Treasure
The line:	“I’m going to steal the Declaration of Independence.”

Future generations of Americans will want to understand (hopefully, let’s not get ahead of ourselves) why they are governed politically and socially by so many conspiracy theorists. The one-word answer is “boredom.” It’s a lot more exciting to believe in conspiracy theories than it is to learn the benign answers to what’s going on in the world, just like it’s a lot more interesting to believe that people didn’t know we lived on a round planet until Columbus than to know that people have always known it’s a globe. The longer answer has to do with popular culture and the way conspiracy theories have presented themselves as revealed knowledge to an enlightened elect. The right place to start is probably the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the revelation to the public of the Zapruder film via JFK. Personally, I’d want to really get into the topic via The X-Files.

Until I started watching some episodes, I just did not understand what a precise synopsis of that show the above tweet is. The last episode I caught part of was S4E5, “The Field Where I Died,” which takes us to the scene of a knowingly Waco-esque compound of religious weirdos. During an interview, a woman starts to speak in a different tone of voice, saying that the president is Harry Truman. Scully thinks the woman has multiple personality disorder. Mulder, on the other hand, writes PAST LIVES just like that underneath Scully’s diagnosis. Turns out, without spoiling the episode, that it was the knife alien after all.

The X-Files, an enormously popular show when that still meant more than 500 people were watching live, really took “I want to believe” more towards “I don’t believe” over time. I want to believe the paranormal; I don’t want to believe the normal normal. Massive as The X-Files was, the seminal event of the conspiracy theory racket of the 21st Century is The Da Vinci Code. Everyone read The Da Vinci Code, not least because the reading level of that book is almost certainly below the reading level of your average Thomas the Tank Engine story. The Da Vinci Code was bad and the movie was worse. But you know what kind of rocked?

National Treasure is released in this fertile moment in American history when having some conspiracy theorist bona fides meant you were fun and kooky as opposed to someone who wants to kneecap the republic. Dan Brown got to Jesus first, but that’s fine; Jerry Bruckheimer and company could still walk away with the Founding Fathers at auction. And where The Da Vinci Code doesn’t stick the landing or appreciate just how trashy it is, National Treasure knows that everything about it is absolutely ridiculous. The first and most important exhibit is right there.

For better or worse, Nicolas Cage has a reputation as our cuckooest movie star, which is really saying something, and National Treasure wouldn’t work without his performance as Ben Gates. What he’s after is weird. The idea that there is a national treasure which is discoverable by clues that you can basically get to by going to the same places that elementary school field trips go to is so stupid. Academy Award-winning actor Nic Cage and ’90s box office catnip Nic Cage have the appropriate gravitas and charisma to get us to come with him on this dork joyride. Self-aware doesn’t have to mean the Deadpool movies, which take self-awareness and curdles it with self-satisfaction. At its best, self-awareness can look like this line in a throwaway thriller. Give it a few years, and people will hoot, holler, and break into applause because of the devotion it inspires.