Louise Mensch is a Strange Bird

Charles C. W. Cooke on the left's favorite conspiracy theorist, who doesn't get nearly the (negative) coverage that Alex Jones does.

Because the left likes its own conspiracy theories.

Mensch reads like a woman who speaks civics as a third or fourth language that she lost touch with long ago. She has a pidgin grasp on the American [systems of government and criminal justice], and an ersatz, bastardized relationship with reality.

One part novella-fantasy, one part hallway-hearsay, Mensch's world is one in which an ethereal "they" are omnipresent and omnipotent. "They," she tells us, are considering executing Steve Bannon, though he hasn’t been charged with so much as speeding in a school zone.

Executing? Did I read that right?

"They" have already "sentenced" Rudy Giuliani -- to what fate we will presumably find out when someone next mentions his name on television. "They" will soon overturn the election results, and are on the verge of making Orrin hosta president.

Donald Trump, in turn, is perennially but a few steps from the gallows. On the 13th of April, Mensch promised that the "first arrests may be as soon as next week." Yesterday, she related that the president faced imminent "federal execution."

I'm not fantasizing this, right? She just said that two high ranking officials are facing "federal execution," right?

Presumably, "they" just needed some more time.

Usurpation abounds, at home and abroad, and seems never to be walled in by anything as prosaic as the law. Mensch’s Supreme Court has proactive police powers and a Bruce Willis–esque "marshal" who chases down helicopters and colludes heroically with the rogue justices. Her Congress acts primarily in camera [secretly, without the public being informed], and may already have informed Trump that he is no longer permitted to use his legal powers....

The America of Mensch’s imagination is a place in which the entire Republican party is imminently going to jail -- on RICO charges, no less -- because Paul Ryan is a partisan. What the Da Vinci Code was to Christian theology, Louise Mensch is to James Madison's handiwork. See how the symbols line up in the moonlight?

It is on the subject of Russia, however, that Mensch has really hit her stride.

I'll direct you to NRO to read Mensch's extensive research into Russia (KOMPROMAT!!!), and her suggestions as to how to deal with the Red Menace. (Hint: It involves bombs and lots of them.)

Will Megyn Kelly be interviewing Louise, or is NBC not terribly interested in putting their own fruitbats on display?

Cooke mentions that upon first seeing this teenage-girl fiction writer (no that was her previous gig, really) on a British news program, his father remarked that she was the "dullest" woman he'd ever seen (in the British sense -- dumb).

So now we see the sorts of fantasies the dull spin out: Not interesting fantasies, not compelling conspiracy theories which you may not quite believe but still think, "Man, that's kind of interesting, even if it is bonkers."

No, the dull spin out exceedingly stupid conspiracy theories that can't even be appreciated on a detached aesthetic level.

BTW: I wondered where the word "bonkers" derived from and was disappointed to see that there is no known etymology. Apparently it appeared in 1945 or so, and one of the first definitions claimed it came from British sailor slang meaning, at first, "slightly drunk," and speculates it might derive from the idea of being unsteady on one's feet from a bonk on the head.

That sounds like bullshit to me. It's too easy. Sounds like the guy asked his seven year old kid to come up with a guess and that's what the kid came up with after one second's thought.

My guess would be that it's derived from some pidgin language and has something to do with tropical insanity, like the Australian's "troppo."

My more specific guess, that it is related to "bonzo" (crazy, nuts), turns out to be wrong, as bonzo came later than bonkers, and might just be a mash-up of bonkers and gonzo.

posted by Ace at 02:01 PM

| Access Comments