The Prague delusion
The Central European city is the last stop for the resistance fantasy
spectator.us/prague-delusio…
The Central European city is the last stop for the resistance fantasy
spectator.us/prague-delusio…
... there is a brittle, catty, whinging quality to the phenomenon of anti-Trump hysteria that puts it at odds with everything direct, forthright, and manly in our everyday concourse.
Let me forestall spluttering indignation by saying that I understand that these days the word ‘manly’ can hardly be deployed straight, without implicit deflationary quotation marks.
But I answer that that only corroborates the insinuating prevalence of that fraught feminization that has manifested itself (speaking of psychopathology) in such embarrassing developments...
...as the so-called ‘pussy hats,’ the ferocity of the DOJ and the FBI under the pantywaist watch of characters like Rosenstein, @Comey, and Mueller, and the coven of dismal choristers who weave dirge-like prognostications in their gossipy, fake-news stories...
... in their blog posts, and Twitter feeds around every development, imagined as well as real, pertaining to the Trump administration.
The psychopathology that bubbled up from the depths a day or two ago involves — or supposedly involves — Michael Cohen, the low-life former personal lawyer of President Trump.
Mr Cohen is about to embark upon an extended stay at Club Fed for various crimes, none of which (alas for The Narrative™) have anything to do with ‘Russian Collusion,’ the supposed raison d’être of the Mueller investigation that swept him up in its insatiable maw.
When Cohen first came to the attention of CNN, and other acolytes in the anti-Trump sorority, a rumor was floated that he had been in Prague in 2016 and had spoken to unnamed, highly placed ‘Russians’ to hand over the US govt to Putin or to assure his help making Trump POTUS.
A notable flaw in this theory was that Michael Cohen had never visited Prague, not then, not ever.
If you think that is a disabling flaw, however, you do not appreciate the robust goad to invention that hysteria provides. That fact that Michael Cohen has been shown not to have been in Prague is merely a fact.
Just because the idea that Michael Cohen was in Prague doing Trump’s dirty business was shot down when originally floated, does not mean that it might not fly when resurrected.
Which it just has been: ‘A mobile phone traced to Trump’s former lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen,’ McClatchy breathlessly reports, ‘briefly sent signals ricocheting off cell towers in the Prague area in late summer 2016.’
Says who? Why ‘four people with knowledge of the matter.’ Oh. ‘Four people,’ you say. And they have ‘knowledge of the matter.’ Well, that settles it, right?
.@jonathanchait offers a similarly vacuous intervention at New York magazine (where he also reprises that hardy perennial, the infamous ‘dossier’ bequeathed to the world by Christopher Steele.)
I hadn’t thought Michael Cohen was known for his sense of humor, but his response to this insanity was pretty droll. ‘I hear #Prague #CzechRepublic is beautiful in the summertime,’ he tweeted, ‘I wouldn’t know as I have never been. #Mueller knows everything!’
