Christopher Hitchens once described participation in the absurd debate over who actually wrote Shakespeare’s plays as “an unfailing sign of advanced intellectual and mental prostration.” It would be unsporting to apply this characterization of literary conspiracy theorists to the enthusiastic followers of Donald Trump’s criminal trial in New York, but only, I think, because the verdict in the latter case is still an open question. For the uninitiated (a category to which a great majority of voters belong), the most immediately striking feature of both Shakespeare denialism and the Trump trial is impenetrability: endless rolls of decontextualized names and dates; speculative chronologies; inconsequential or irrelevant details invested with a lurid significance; complex, novel theories of evidence that are somehow applicable only to one individual. How many people, even those who purport to be following the case against Mr. Trump, can summarize the premise on which the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, has based his claim that various alleged low-level bookkeeping offenses somehow congeal into a felony, much less explain why Mr. Trump is the only person of note whose ostensible accounting errors are treated like this? People recognize, at least implicitly, that the trial is in effect an attempt to settle an issue that courts are poorly suited to decide: namely, whether Mr. Trump should again be elected president of the United States. That, as they say, is a question for another day, specifically Nov. 5.

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Persons: Christopher Hitchens, Donald Trump’s, Shakespeare denialism, Trump, Alvin Bragg, Shakespeare, Francis Bacon Locations: New York, Manhattan, United States