That's really the crux of the issue. They're so fucking incompetent that it almost works in their favor. It's just the status quo. Seriously muddies the waters.

For the record, I don't go hard on the whole moon landing thing, one way or the other. It's a relative nonissue, and doesn't affect my life one way or the other if it did happen. But there are questions. How did they beat the Van Allen belts? Why was the flag waving in space? Why were so many of the astronauts involved seemingly so evasive, depressed, and seemingly even scared after the fact? Why haven't we been back? We do send manned missions up nearby, and unmanned missions out to Mars. And, uh, a big one...they seem to have lost the original footage. They taped over their own original recordings for financial reasons. That's the official story, as I understand.

There are a lot of discrepancies. I'm completely willing to believe we landed on the moon. I'm also completely willing to believe the government once again lied to me to further their own goals.

Also, you tied it in to JFK. The official story of JFK is also absurd, just more widely publicized. It's all optics. If things were slightly different, we could use the exact same argument to defend how JFK was killed by a lone gunman on the grassy knoll, because the government is so incompetent no one even believes we landed on the moon.