When This Blows Over

Of course, the lofty-minded refuse to see it this way. The
political damage that Mueller’s team is inflicting on Trump
helps explain why a surprising number of people mount
passionate and sincere defenses of the dossier and the super
spy who compiled it. The logic of partisan politics will always
lead a significant percentage of people to insist, with varying
degrees of true belief, that a sow’s ear really is a silk purse.
But partisanship is not by any means the only factor at work
here. Even people with well-deserved reputations for
intellectual seriousness passionately defend the integrity of
Christopher Steele, a man whom the New York Times insists
on calling, despite all contrary evidence, “a whistleblower.”
For a complete understanding of the
dossier’s tenacious hold on lofty minds,
one must supplement conventional
political analysis with psychology. What
we are witnessing is nothing less than a
textbook case of denial and projection —
the most perfect case imaginable.
• excerpted from “The Real Collusion Story”