Anatomy of a Witch Hunt The Trump-Russia scare comes from the same playbook as fake cancer scares. By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/anatomy-of-a-witch-hunt-1497999116
Americans won’t be really good citizens until they read Timur Kuran and Cass Sunstein’s 1999 law review article about “availability cascades.”
Their launching point is the process by which we (i.e., human beings) decide to believe what others believe, and judge the truth of a proposition by how familiar it is. Such “availability cascades” drive government policy in good ways and bad, but usually bad. An example the authors analyze in detail is 1989’s fake “Alar” cancer scare that devastated U.S. apple growers.
Which brings us to today’s question: How did it become widely believed in the first half of 2017 that a U.S. president committed treason with Russia?
Consider what has passed for proof in the media. Tens of thousands of Americans have done business with Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union, not to mention before.
In 2009 President Obama made the first of his two trips to Russia with a gaggle of U.S. business leaders in tow.
Of these many thousands, four were associated with the Trump campaign, and now became evidence of Trump collusion with Russia.
Every president for 75 years has sought improved relations with Russia. That’s what those endless summits were about. Mr. Trump, in his typically bombastic way, also promoted improved relations with Russia. Now this was evidence of collusion.
Russian diplomats live in the U.S. and rub shoulders with countless Americans. Such shoulder-rubbing, if Trump associates were involved, now is proof of crime.
The Alar pesticide scare only took off when activists whom Messrs. Kuran and Sunstein label “availability entrepreneurs” peddled deceptive claims to a credulous “60 Minutes.” We would probably not be having this Russia discussion today if not for the so-called Trump dossier alleging improbable, lurid connections between Donald Trump and the Kremlin.
It had no provenance that anyone was bound to respect or rely upon. Its alleged author, a retired British agent named Christopher Steele, supposedly had Russian intelligence sources, but why would Russian intelligence blow the cover of their blackmail agent Mr. Trump whom they presumably so carefully and expensively cultivated? They wouldn’t.
Yet recall the litany of Rep. Adam Schiff, who declared in a House Intelligence Committee hearing: “Is it possible that all of these events and reports are completely unrelated and nothing more than an entirely unhappy coincidence?”
His litany actually consisted of innocuous, incidental and routine Trump associations interspersed with claims from the Trump dossier to make the innocuous, incidental and routine seem nefarious.
Maybe Mr. Schiff is a cynic, or maybe Harvard Law sent him back into the world with the same skull full of mush with which he arrived. But ever since, every faulty or incomplete recollection of a meeting with a Russian has been promoted in the media as proof of treason by Trump associates.
The president’s obvious irritation with being called a traitor is proof that he is a traitor.CONTINUE AT SITE
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