Leftism, like a zombie virus, eats the brains of respected institutions and renders them empty, animated monsters who feast on the flesh of the republic. Thus the New York Times, a genuinely great institution forty years ago, the paper of record that ran all the news that was fit to print, is now a shambling, drooling phantom of its former self, a record of little more than Democrat talking points, running all the news that fits with its point of view.

I once called the Democrat-Media complex an Empire of Lies, but the Times has gone way beyond that now. In a leading editorial last week, the Times showed itself to be the google-eyed emperor of an Empire of Fantasy, the Willy Wonka of a candy cane world that exists only within the confines of its pages.

The editorial was about Secretary of State John Kerry and was called — and so help me, I am not making this up — “America’s Mr. Diplomacy.” It began — really, hit the link and read it yourself, I’m not making this up! — thusly:

Since becoming secretary of state more than three years ago, John Kerry has been a man on a mission — multiple missions, in fact — relentlessly traveling the globe in search of diplomatic solutions to the world’s toughest problems. His efforts have been daring and, at times, quixotic. He was no more successful than his predecessors in securing a lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. But without his persistence, the Iran nuclear deal in 2015 and last December’s global climate change agreement in Paris would almost certainly have been unattainable. The cease-fire in Syria he negotiated last week with Russia could lead to yet another triumph — an end to the violence that has killed more than 400,000 Syrians and left many more without adequate food, water and medical supplies.

I do not know — I cannot imagine — how a person who lives by writing words could put such codswallop before the public and continue to look at himself in the mirror.

The Iran nuclear deal is a triumph? Since the deal, German domestic intelligence has reported that Iran is making “clandestine” efforts to obtain illicit nuclear technology and equipment — exactly what the deal was meant to prevent. Since the deal, Iran has launched ballistic missiles in defiance of U.N. sanctions, taken Americans hostage, harassed Navy ships and threatened to shoot down U.S. planes. Even the State Department has finally admitted that the deal may have made one of the world’s worst nation’s even worse. Follow the link to see the exchange. The networks wouldn’t play it — presumably for fear the Times editorial writer would come out of his pleasant dream of Kerryan triumph into the real world of the Obama administration’s dangerous buffoonery.

And what about that global climate change agreement in Paris? Maybe it will stop man-made global warming from turning all those glaciers in Michigan into Great Lakes. Oops, too late! The benevolent effects of the Paris accord are pure make-believe.

And — as any idiot except a Times editorialist could have predicted — the Syrian cease-fire is in danger of collapse just four days after the Times‘s stirring tribute to Mr. Diplomacy hit the newsstands.

Mr. Diplomacy. The Iran Deal. The Climate Change accord. A Syrian cease fire. These are the triumphs of the Obama administration in the work of Times journalists reporting from inside their imaginations. As they have abandoned the journalistic mission of objective reporting, one has to believe they think their skewed dishonesty is somehow making the world a better place. But how can you make the world a better place, if you’re not even willing to live in it?

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