Sick, dishonest hysteria.

Somehow every clear security breach in the Clinton camp . . . was no big deal, while every fourth-hand contact with someone who could possibly be linked to Russia was evidence that Donald Trump was secretly serving as a Russian agent.^[1]

This is a great take on the manufactured hysteria about Pres. Trump. and the Russians that calls to mind one of the great chase scenes of all time in the movie “Top Secret.” Some guys are chasing some other guys and the first group of guys lose control of their vehicle and it comes to a stop just baaaaaarely kissing the bumper of another car, whereupon there’s a giant explosion.

I love that whole movie, which is a work of genius. Something about the red car’s being a Ford Pinto set the wheels in my head to turning. At first, I thought it odd that the director made such a big deal of the make and model of the car. Then I remembered that that car had problems with the fuel tank being positioned behind the rear axle and fires erupting in low-speed impacts. So the clip is actually a joke within a joke if you remember the huge media focus on that problem back then.

Anyway, Mr. Penn captures our present absurdity well. Given the studied lack of interest in Hillary’s crimes and the aforesaid manufactured hysteria about Trump, my own occasional recurring blog title works well here too, I think. “Strain at a Gnat and Swallow a Camel Dept.” Our national debate and some very powerful but unbalanced people are making our society into something absurd, if not grotesque, while ignoring huge moral problems.

I don’t have to detail the penny ante stuff that gets so many people wrapped around the axle these days. But make no mistake. The movie’s is a perfect metaphor for taking the least detail about Trump imaginable and igniting it into a media fireball visible two states over. As one wit put it, Trump uses Russian dressing on his salad? Proof of collusion!

Tucker Carlson yesterday had a video montage of about ten different leftist TV personalities mouthing the identical phrase about how something shows Trump’s having some kind of creepy connection to the Russians. I don’t remember the details, I’m afraid. But the Carlson segment was a carbon copy of Conan O’Brien’s montage of the same phenomenon but in a less sinister context. Illustrative of how a “narrative” can spread but not sinister.

The "JournoList lives on under different camouflage now. The MSM stooges all read off the same script and the script says nothing is too petty, ridiculous, or dishonest to use to make it look like something is diseased about this president.

The movie’s a stitch, but this dishonesty and distortion aren't funny at all. They show not that this presidency is diseased but that the media, the Permanent State, and the “Resistance” are.

Notes
^[1] "Mark Penn: FBI Trump-Russia investigation shows deep state was worse than we thought." By Mark Penn, Fox News, 1/13/19.

Correction (1/15/19): add ellipsis to Penn quote.