(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To The Last Post Of The Week From The Blog's Favourite Living Canadian.)

It long has been taken as gospel in this here shebeen that one of the best things about the United States of America is that it is the greatest country in the history of the world to be completely out of your mind. I even wrote a book with that as one of the essential themes. The other was that there are inescapable—and often catastrophic—consequences to believing nonsense, especially in a country that was born of the Enlightenment values of scientific reason.

The book's amanuensis was an erratic 19th century genius named Ignatius Donnelly. He was a lawyer and a politician whose political beliefs were as peripatetic as were his enthusiasms, which were considerable. Donnelly is best known for Atlantis: The Antediluvian World. Published in 1882, the book was an instant sensation. In it, Donnelly produced the fruit of countless hours of research in, among other places, the Library of Congress, to which he would repair when his job as a member of the House of Representatives got too boring. In it you will find almost everything that ever has been postulated in a pseudo-scientific sense about the Lost Continent—from Leonard Nimoy's old In Search Of show, through the oeuvre of The Most Awesome Man On Television, right up to the lyrics of Donovan's hit, "Atlantis." All of these things began with Ignatius Donnelly, a wholly evolved product of American absurdity who, late in his life, gave to that distinct form of human folly that grows out of our Founding Documents as surely as does political liberty its most succinct summation. One day, writing in his voluminous diary, Donnelly declared:

I believe I am right. And, if not right, plausible.

I recalled all of this while watching Friday's installment of Sean Spicer: Live In Washington, the new hit series. This, I must say, was an episode on which the writer's room really outdid itself. Spicer broke a lot of rock trying to hang some sort of ratfcking rap on the previous administration based on something a former Obama official named Evelyn Farkas, who left the administration in 2015, said on television in 2017 about something that happened in 2016. (Big props to NPR's Tamara Keith for posing the question to Spicer in precisely that way.) Actually, all that Farkas did was say that the outgoing administration did its best to safeguard the intelligence data lest the incoming elves make the inconvenient parts of it disappear. Nonetheless, Spicer kept insisting on this point.

The United States of America is the greatest country in the history of the world to be completely out of your mind.

Later, while explaining the midnight ride of Devin Nunes to the White House, Spicer explained that there was nothing untoward about the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee—and a former member of the Trump transition team—slipping away for his staff and into the White House in the middle of the night, swapping cars in the process, and then repeating the White House's own alibis back at it. This whole performance was an absurdity that was an insult to the proud history of American absurdity. It was neither right nor plausible. Ignatius Donnelly would have been embarrassed to see how far we've all fallen.

If nothing else, in a little over two months, this administration has pushed the limits of American absurdity, which I always thought were almost boundless. It has done so in a cheap and grimy way. This is an administration of the sidewalk grift, not the big con. It's three-card monte on the A train, not an epic swindle on the order of Ocean's 11. For all his alleged millions, and for every one of his gold-plated commodes, the president* is a glorified street hustler. It's almost a shame that he may have a congressional committee and/or the FBI running him to ground. He should get hooked up by a 60-year old bunco cop waiting out his pension in a leaky precinct house. He is not right. He is not plausible. And that's beneath even the past crimes of the office he holds.

As I was saying… from NPR:

The settlement applies to three separate lawsuits — two class-actions and a fraud case. The $25 million deal includes payouts to more than 6,000 Trump U students who paid thousands of dollars for courses they describe as worthless.

And, once again, Judge Gonzalo Curiel, whom the president* casually slandered on the campaign trail, is in the news.

"The amount offered in settlement provides significant and immediate recovery."

That sound you hear is a mic dropping.

If, as has been bruited about, Michael Flynn is seeking immunity as a tactic based on the precedent established when Ollie North skated on Iran-Contra, he may be betting large on a bad hand. For those of you who may be joining our I-C obsession late, North was convicted in 1989 of crimes related to his role in the arms-for-hostages fiasco. Prior to his trial, however, North had been granted limited immunity to testify before a special congressional committee, a body which has gone down in legend as one of the greatest missed opportunities in the history of the republic.

Michael Flynn and his son, Michael Flynn Jr., arriving at Trump Tower in November. Getty Images

Anyway, ultimately, an appeals court ruled that witnesses in North's criminal trial might have been impermissibly influenced by his immunized (and widely televised) congressional testimony. So, two years after he'd been convicted, North was free as a bird. In his book, , Iran-Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh rails against the involvement in North's appeal of judges Laurence Silberman and David Sentelle, two very political conservative judges who would go on to play major roles in the various Clinton-era shenanigans. Be that as it may, if Flynn's counting on the kind of inside straight to which North drew, he should probably think again. In addition, the Democratic members of the various congressional committees have the Iran-Contra precedent to draw on. They already seem to have learned the lesson.

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: "Autumn's Child" (Captain Beefheart): Yeah, I pretty much still love New Orleans.

Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archives: Here's crazy Enoch Powell, being crazy, and ahead of his time, regarding the Common Market. There's a big party in hell this weekend. History is so cool.

This may be the saddest story I've read in weeks. As most of the regulars here in the shebeen know, I have something of a nasty dog in the fight against Alzheimer's Disease. Glenn Campbell has been wonderfully brave and public in his fight against the encroaching twilight of his disease. From the Tennessean:

There are times when he still tries to tell jokes. It's often gibberish, but it still makes Kim laugh. Occasionally, he will break into an air guitar — though he doesn't play a real one anymore. Other times, he tries to sing. When his daughter Ashley visits, she brings her guitar to play for him. He sits in his rocking chair as she strums Emmylou Harris or Johnny Cash. "You Are My Sunshine" seems to be one of his favorites. He closes his eyes and taps his foot. He likes the rhythm, Ashley says. How the sounds feel. Sometimes, he moves his mouth and makes sounds of his own. "With persistence," Ashley says, "something gets in."

Glenn Campbell can't play the guitar any more. This is some of what this goddamn disease has robbed the world. And this, too. Man, fck this disease.

The Final Four is this weekend and it's being played in a football stadium because the NCAA is greedy and stupid. Two teams—Gonzaga and South Carolina—who never have been there before and another, Oregon, that hasn't been since the Tall Firs won the first one. My first and only impression is that there are far too few people named Sindarius in the world. Get well, Sindarius. My favorite sports story is the way the U.S. Women's Hockey team took USA hockey over the coals to get what they deserved, and that USA Hockey looked all the way down to the high schools and couldn't find itself any scab players. That is just so hockey.

Is it a good day for dinosaur news, Guardian? It's always a good day for dinosaur news!

T rex and other tyrannosaurs would have used their tactile noses to explore their surroundings, build nests, and carefully pick up fragile eggs and baby offspring. But the snout is thought to have served another purpose. Experts believe that males and females rubbed their sensitive faces together in a prehistoric form of foreplay. Writing in the journal Scientific Reports, the US authors describe how the sensitive skin may have proved crucial to the dinosaur's mating success. "In courtship, tyrannosaurids might have rubbed their sensitive faces together as a vital part of pre-copulatory play," they explain. The findings follow the discovery of a new member of the tyrannosaur family called Daspletosaurus horneri in Montana, US.

Heh. They said, "horneri." Heh.

The members of the Committee took a couple of weeks off, but they came back with a vengeance and awarded Top Commenter Mary Beth Hilburn Top Commenter Of The Week for her succinct summary of Sean Spicer's Very Bad, Awful encounter with head-shakin' April Ryan.

So I'm guessing he tells male reporters not to scratch their asses. On top of the girls being told about their clothing on the airplane, it's been 1955 again today.

It's not. Gunsmoke was not on CBS. I checked. Nevertheless, 81.45 Beckhams to you, ma'am.

I'll be back on Monday with god alone knows what further madness ensues. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line or the gods of Atlantis will haunt your dreams. My anti-dee-looo-vi-unnn baybeeeeeee!!!

Respond to this post on the Esquire Politics Facebook page.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io