And so little time to find the answers before that fateful November 8. For example? Why did FBI Director James Comey release such sketchy information on newly found e-mails eleven days before the election? Why was the bombshell so vague in its particulars? Did Obama’s Republican appointee break the Hatch Act by divulging to his party’s congressional members what must be called a tenuous connection bound to raise doubts about Hillary Clinton’s character and take her off her message? Most importantly, why did Mr. Comey break protocol if not the law by making public his renewed Clinton E-mail investigation, yet mentioned not a word about his current probe of a possible link between the Trump campaign and the Russian government? Is not the subversion of our democracy of more pith and moment than the waywardways of some nutcase smitten with his penis?
Hillary’s predicament reminds me of the one Josef K faced in Franz Kafka’s novel, The Trial: Being charged and convicted of a crime never named by people you can never confront. Or is my allusion to Kafka’s masterpiece dead on arrival? As dead as K is after his execution? Or is Kafka even read any more? Shouldn’t it be required in high school?
Questions seem to beget more questions, until they start sticking together to form a many faceted major question/nagging puzzle that you want to forget about but can’t because the answer seems too threatening. Normally, I am not big on conspiracy theories. That said, I confess to being deeply troubled by what I call the Trump-Putin-Assange Triad. What are the three up to? Trump says on telly that he’s met Putin and he finds him an agreeable fellow who considers him (Trump) a genius. He’s also said on the telly that he’s never met Putin. So Trump’s a serial liar, but we already knew that. Putin flatters Trump but appears to put some distance between himself and the American entrepreneur. Doth he protest too much? Where does Wikileaks fit in this sorry scheme of things entire? What moral justification does Julian Assange have for meddling in U.S. domestic politics? Is he merely an indifferent conduit for Russian hackers? Acting at Putin’s behest? Is Trump wired directly into the operation as well? We know the Ruskies have hacked the Democratic National Committee and individual Democratic politicians; we also know they’ve attempted to penetrate several of our voting systems. What other institutions have they compromised that we don’t know about yet? The defense establishment, maybe? Are we drifting toward a renewal of the Cold War?
Am I coming down with an acute case of paranoia? Ya think?