Flowcharts about a supposed Syria-oriented “red-brown alliance” are not too dissimilar from the graphics utilized by another political analyst.

Parts of the political left keep stooping lower and lower thanks to the establishment-driven and media-fueled sensationalism over Russia’s supposed meddling in U.S. electoral politics. Nary a day passes without yet another self-styled socialist or radical echoing the mainstream media’s wall-to-wall coverage about how the Kremlin threatens global stability and democracy. From John Reimann’s well-intended but misguided musings, to Louis Proyect’s unhinged personal attacks against anyone deemed insufficiently obsessed with driving Putin out of the Middle East, the reformist and pseudo-socialist left is cranking out a staggering amount of conspiratorial speculations and sleuthing so ponderous and bizarre that it would make Glenn Beck blush.

The roots of this spectacle lie in what one author, putting the concept to quite different purposes in an article published then removed from the Southern…