And another on Turkey. This guy cites himself as a source for “alternate narratives about the July 15 coup [hat] attempt are equally compelling.” I like that phrase, and I’m not joking. The category “conspiracy theory” has done enormous damage by lumping together Area 51 Nutters with the genuine problem posed by bad-faith actors and networks. And at a time when more and more ‘leaders’ are deliberately plotting to circumvent and subvert public institutions, the category has become precisely and perversely backwards. It’s a pity we need this AEI guy to pull himself up by his bootstraps, as it were, to legitimize the “alternate narrative” — which is correct — that the ‘coup’ was tiny and mostly staged, the countercoup immense and all too real.