For his part Quixote sees corruption, decadence and un-gentlemanly conduct everywhere while others appear either oblivious or indifferent to -- or even defensive of -- this state of affairs. He sees defensive castles where people see welcoming inns; he sees monstrous, menacing giants where others see innocuous windmills. And he pursues seemingly aimless quests that, for all their drifting pointlessness, 'predictably' produce very little of personal worth or insight for the novel's eponymous hero or any of the characters. Or so it seems.
At its core, Don Quixote (the novel) is at once a solemn meditation on self-delusion and disillusion, the real and the imagined, [the difference between] reality and fantasy, sanity and madness, [and] between what is real and what is phony (a la Catcher in the Rye). Only Don Quixote (the character) is able to remain constantly moral and upright (more or less), while the world around him is persistently and infuriatingly immoral, perverse, self-serving, possibly beyond redemption.
For his part 'The Don' doesn't understand the world as it is, only how he sees it should be. And "the world" 'returns the favour'. Indeed the knight-errant might be thought too delusional -- a caballero without a full suit of armour as it were. To possess such morality and idealism reveals more about the world than it does about Quixote himself, not only about the nature of truth in the world and the certainty of our place in it, but about the nature of human existence and the inherent purpose of said existence. Y'know dear reader -- dare I say it? -- the 'meaning-of-life' sh*t. So much of Quixote's view on the world is a figment of his supposedly delusional and wild-eyed imaginings, which themselves inspire his meandering adventures, his adventures in turn, fueling more imaginings. A personality-specific feedback loop of sorts.
The descriptor "quixotic" -- meaning "idealistic" or "unrealistic" -- is derived from the book's character of course; this is itself a testament to its enormous literary, cultural, philosophical and, one suggests herein, political impact. He is caught up in the romance of noble deeds and the pursuit of unreachable goals; idealistic without regard to practicality or allowing for the lack of idealism in others; and undertaking adventures along the sometimes rough and rocky high moral road un accompanied and un encumbered by a leavening sense of reality, pragmatism and obvious purpose. The Don's commitment to living chivalrously, with honour and good intentions toward all men (although less than perfect himself, 'natch'), and with his moral compass unerringly pointing 'north', forbids him to allow wrongs to go uncorrected.
All up then, if the Mediaeval Iberians had a term for 'whack-job' or 'loony-toon', 'The Don' would've 'made the team' without breaking a sweat. On the face of it his behaviour is irrational to many of those with whom he comes into contact, his apparently vague, elusive, at best ambiguous aims and goals driven by an inexplicable, curiously anomalous mix of paranoia and idealism with a smidgen of wishful thinking thrown into the mix for good measure. And his imaginings and pursuits are the butt of unkind practical jokes by other characters in the novel.
In short, the novel's themes and memes concerning the nature of reality, deception, personal illumination, determination, [the] courage of one's convictions, and simply doing the right thing, are especially applicable to the conspiracy construct. They are also, by definition, apposite to the inherent worth to the rest of us [of] the conspiracy theorists' own motivations, imaginings and insights. As it is to the worth of the theory itself, whatever that theory might be.
As noted, 'The Don' is the 'knight-errant' -- the 'do-gooder' trying to preserve the "universal" moral code. He attempts to strong-arm those around him and whom he meets on his 'quixotic' exploits, to face their own failure to maintain -- or preparedness to preserve -- the 'old school' system of virtue, of morality, of 'proper conduct'. To use the contemporary vernacular, we might say The Don sees the world going to Hades in a hand basket. This is what drives him forward, seemingly against all odds, a significant number of which may be of his own making.
Yet as noted -- and this is where the exercise gets interesting -- Don Quixote's ironclad (sorry) commitment to courtesy, honour, truth and justice eventually does not go entirely unnoticed by those around him -- even those who formerly sneered at his behaviour or found it naive, absurd even. Now readers who have come this far should be able to see where this is going. If he was around today, one suspects The Don would gladly cop the conspiracy-theorist rap , and like John Judge, wear it as a badge of honour. He would see threatening giants on the Grassy Knoll, the Stemmons Freeway Underpass, the rooftop of the Texas School Book Depository and maybe even in the storm-water drains underneath Dealey Plaza -- where others don't, or won't.
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