In Louis Begley’s engrossing book-length biographical essay on Franz Kafka, The Tremendous World I Have Inside My Head,” we learn that “one of the most enigmatic and intriguing figures of modern literature” often laughed out loud when reading aloud to friends the most dire and troubling passages from his novels and short stories. I think I may have a Kafkaesque sense of humor, because the more ominous Democrats purport the Trump/Russia connection to be, the more I find myself beset by amusement.
The left’s quixotic preoccupation with the unsubstantiated narrative about Russian collusion with President Trump’s campaign has engendered hysterical claims of connectivity, bent-over-backwards rabbit trailing, and a profoundly dysfunctional theater of the absurd. Now it looks like the whole thing might be falling apart.
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer provided the latest guffaw with his comment that “If the President puts Russian dressing on his salad tonight, somehow that’s a Russian connection.” The zinger sent diligent members of the anti-Trump press scrambling to produce opposition research about what the meaning of the phrase “Russian dressing” is.
What’s next, that Trump used CliffsNotes to prepare a New York Military Academy book report on Anton Chekhov’s novella “The Steppe”?
MSNBC host Rachel Maddow has set the stage for comic relief by drawing specious connections between decades-old deals with Russian businessmen and Trump’s 2016 election, but upstaged herself with a sideshow–her failed Trump income tax scoop. That hilarious anticlimax had even late night host and indefatigable Trump-basher Stephen Colbert in stitches. The tax fiasco, which showed that Trump paid more taxes in 2005 than Ms. Maddow’s parent company Comcast, eclipsed in belly laughs even Geraldo Rivera’s legendary foray into Al Capone’s empty vault.
It’s worse than that. Maddow’s empty reveal was reminiscent of a scene in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, where Van Helsing and his associates open recently deceased Lucy Westenra’s grave and find that her body is not there. She has joined the ranks of the undead, is still walking around, but dead. Like the narrative about the Russian connection.
None of this has stopped Maddow and the rest of the mainstream media from digging deeper, and it’s become evident that from the standpoint of credibility that they continue to dig their own graves. There is zero evidence, after months of convoluted collusion theories peddled ad nauseam by an ideologically rejected press desperate to foment a perception of illegitimacy around a duly elected president.
Speaking of Russia, we can’t trust Vladimir Putin any farther than Nancy Pelosi can throw a hard copy of the Affordable Care Act, but I suspect the gleam in his eyes during his read-my-lips denial of collusion had more to do with secret amusement than anything nefarious.
Since anyone is apparently able to offer up fairy tale theories about President Trump and the Ruskies, here is mine:
When the Trump for President campaign realized they had a real shot, they pink-slipped Corey Lewandowski and brought in Paul Manafort to grease the rails for Russian intervention. After Manafort facilitated the connectivity, he vanished into the wings and Kellyanne Conway took the helm. She then met with Russian operatives, insouciantly throwing her knees up on whatever couch was handy, and together they devised a scheme to ensure that only WikiLeaks harmful to Hillary Clinton ever saw the light of day. For good measure, they masterminded an effort to hack into voting machines in Clinton’s Blue Wall, and were able to illegally manufacture votes from those states into a winning combination of conservative/Commie red.
The rest is history. See how easy that was?
In the run-up to Election Day, warning his smug associates that Trump could actually win, leftist provocateur Michael Moore referenced, among other worrisome potential Trump voters, “people with odd senses of humor.” We can presume that meant people who may, for reasons lost deep in the abyss of the human condition, nihilistically cast a vote for the businessman from New York City.
Moore was right about more than just Trump’s winning potential. There is plenty of enjoyment available for armchair nihilists and Kafka fans who nevertheless believe we dodged a bullet this last election, and are either perfectly or conditionally satisfied with the man who ushered Ms. Clinton into history’s dustbin.
One incontrovertible factoid will stand the test of time and trial: anything short of evidence that the Trump campaign actively colluded with the Russian government to electronically change American votes is folderol. So far, they’ve got nothing.
In fact, it looks as if the narrative might be headed in another direction entirely. There are indications that he who represents liberalism’s worst nightmare may have the last laugh.
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