The Alger Hiss Democrats in Congress

OPINION:

Well, I guess I have been right all along. Others have been saying that special counsel Robert Mueller was going to be swept up by the Kultursmog and become a tool of Hillary’s conspiracy. She said Russian hackers were the cause of her defeat — see page 395 of “Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign”— and she ordered her media to investigate.

Hillary’s explanation for her defeat has been that the Russians colluded with the Trump team in fashioning her defeat. After all, she has been a life-long enemy of Moscow, almost a member of the John Birch Society. Mr. Mueller and the camorra of Clinton supporters that he surrounded himself with must come to her aid now. They would reveal that Donald Trump and the Russians were in collusion to steal her election.

There is only one problem with this conspiracy. For two long years, after every leak, after every tantalizing tale of collusion, never was there discovered any evidence of it. Thus that is what Mr. Mueller reported. There was no evidence. The media and the Clintonites had a lovely theory of collusion. All that was missing was the evidence, and that is what Mr. Mueller reported. As I say I was right all along. Mr. Mueller was an honest man.

So now what are the Democrats going to do? Are they going to move on to something else, or are they going to fabricate another lie? They are going to fabricate another lie. They are going to claim that Attorney General William Barr’s revelations are a “cover-up.” Notwithstanding the law and customs surrounding a grand jury’s treatment of evidence gathered, they are going to claim the right to lay eyes on ever jot and tittle Mr. Mueller obtained and handed over to Mr. Barr. Even irrelevant data that might hurt the “reputational” interests of “peripheral” figures who happen to be ensnared in the grand jury’s findings, say an Uber driver, say a witness who blurted out his love for Chicken Kiev.

What the Democrats are going to do is what they have done for years when they are really desperate. They are going to follow the time-honored strategy of one of their own. Insiders call it the Alger Hiss Strategy. They will lie fervently, sincerely, and forever. They will never give an inch. They will lie unto death. They have implemented the Alger Hiss Strategy with the Mueller revelations. His report was sufficient to allay the suspicions of most objective readers, but there are always some suckers out there, and those are the Democrats’ targets.

So now the Democrats will ask for every word to be unredacted by Attorney General Barr. They will come up with some new figures that the report mentions, say the aforementioned Uber driver. They will come up with a janitor from Trump Tower. They will come up with some poor wretch that never heard of Trump Tower. That is pretty suspicious, no?

The wretches are there. Believe me. Some are in high office. Think of Congressman Adam Schiff. Think of Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or, excuse me, Congressgirl Ocasio-Cortez. They already believe the party line on Attorney General Barr and special counsel Mueller. It is actually a very touching fealty to the party line to see such credulity.

American historians, of whom I am certainly one of the foremost, have observed the Alger His Strategy since the late 1940s and early 1950s when Alger, an aide to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt at the Yalta Conference, said he was not a Communist and had never lied under oath. He was duly packed off to the hoosegow for perjury. Yet that was not the end of it. It was only the beginning. Alger continued to lie in and out of jail. As he continued to lie through the years he gathered more and more Democratic support, even independent support. A cottage industry of books, pamphlets, and other documentation came to Alger’s support. At the end of the Cold War, when historians could get into the Soviets’ archive and prove the old boy was a communist, one would think the controversy was over. Alger was a communist.

Alas, it was not over. Alger was dead. Communism was dead. Yet the Democrats had learned something very powerful from Alger’s life’s work. If you lie, lie fervently, lie sincerely, and forever there are credulous saps who will believe you. It does not matter how preposterous your story is. These poor saps will not only believe the lies, but they will actually acquire a kind of moral and intellectual superiority by believing it.

So when you encounter a fellow or a fellowess who becomes enflamed about what a scoundrel or an idiot Attorney General Barr is, do not be surprised. He, she, or it is in thrall to the Alger Hiss Strategy. Offer the poor sap a glass of warm milk.

• R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. is founder and editor in chief of The American Spectator. He is the author most recently of “The Death of Liberalism,” published by Thomas Nelson, Inc.