The Strange Pleasure of Seeing Carter Page Set Himself on Fire

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-strange-pleasure-of-seeing-carter-page-set-himself-on-fire

Watching Carter Page immolate himself and incriminate a half dozen of his colleagues from the Trump-Putin 2016 campaign has been a strange, almost guilty pleasure. Profoundly disconnected, socially awkward, and reeking of late-stage virginity, he gives off the creepy Uncanny Valley vibe of a rogue, possibly murderous android or of a man with a too-extensive knowledge of human taxidermy and a soundproofed van.

Legal scholars watching Page’s borderline insane interviews, reviewing his bizarre public statements and reading the wackadoodle transcripts of his testimony to congressional investigators have expressed various levels of shock. His testimony this week must have dismayed his friends in Trump world; a long, rambling, performance art piece before the House which confirmed key sections of the Steele Dossier and opened up entirely new venues for investigation.

The emerging paper trail of his forays into Russia has been amazing mosaic of comic-opera misunderstandings, grand and petty corruptions, grade-school category errors, and fundamental delusions about Putin’s kleptocracy. In short, Page is a perfect example of the ad-hoc weirdness of the Trump campaign, Trumpism’s deep, misplaced love of Putin’s Russia, and the power of magical thinking among the coterie of misfit toys Trump calls his advisors. Page is weird and wrong and in most campaigns he’d be the weirdest, wrongest dog in the pack. In Trump world, Carter Page in the middle quintile.

A bizarre fascination with Russia as an ally shaped the view of many of Trump’s foreign policy advisors like Steve Bannon, Mike Flynn, Stephen Miller, Seb Gorka and the rest of the Foreign Policy Center for Kids Who Can’t Read Good and Want To Read Good. Yes, a meaningful fraction of it is informed by an alt-rightish belief that the U.S. and Russia are white Christian allies in the global war on Islam and brown people in general, but some of it is just their natural inclination toward nationalist authoritarianism.

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BRUTAL!