In Impromptus today, I hopscotch around as usual, or maybe more than usual: from the War on Terror to rebellious Russian teenagers to flipping the bird in church. (Yes, you can still do that in America, the land of the free, the home of the brave.) Along the way, I have an item on Charlottesville “truthers,” i.e., those who believe that the Charlottesville mess was staged by the Left in order to make the Right look bad. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R., Calif.) is such a truther, I note.
After I wrote my column, it came to light that another congressman, Paul Gosar (R., Ariz.), is such a truther too. He believes that George Soros pulled the strings.
One congressman looks like a fluke, but two looks like a pattern. I always resented a famous essay title, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” because I thought it maligned the Right. I have frequently pointed out the paranoid style on the left. The Left has owned this style through most of my life. These days, however, the Right is making Hofstadter (the essayist) look like a genius.
There is a lot you can fault Soros for. Maybe it should be stipulated he did not kidnap the Lindbergh baby? (He was one year old at the time, and living in Hungary. It is possible, true, that he had super-baby baby-kidnapping powers.)