I’m colluding with Russia. The farce to which American politics is reduced

Matryoshka dolls

I write at a desk on which stands a Matryoshka doll. By the US president’s new extraordinary standard, that seems to mean “collusion” with the Russians.

For, as others have pointed out the Trump White House now says collusion covers not just Russia’s election interference but anything that anyone has to do with Russia at any time for any reason.

Hillary Clinton has colluded they say because:

• The Democrats hired an opposition-research firm that created a raw-intelligence dossier on Mr Trump’s ties with Russia.
• Mrs Clinton managed to be US secretary of state at a time when another arm of the US government approved a uranium deal with a Russian-owned company that had given money to Hillary’s husband and to his charitable foundation.

As Dana Milbank of The Washington Post recently explained, this means that a lot of people are colluding / have colluded with Russia. With his tongue firmly in his cheek, Mr Milbank prepared a preliminary list of colluders.

They include:

• Those who consume or have consumed vodka, beluga or osetra caviar, play, or have played, with nesting dolls, watch or have watched the FX drama “The Americans”, viewed “The Nutcracker”, “Swan Lake,” or hummed the “1812 Overture”
• Those who have read “Anna Karenina,” “War and Peace,” “Crime and Punishment,” “The Brothers Karamazov” or any play by Anton Chekhov.
• Those who have heard Rachmaninoff, Shostakovich, Stravinsky or Mussorgsky.

Etcetera.

I admit it. The Matryoshka doll nails me.