This Clinton conspiracy flowchart is the Time Cube of official congressional documents
The haphazardly assembled flowchart has long been a staple of the Photoshop-equipped conspiracy theorist’s arsenal, the GIF-equivalent of grabbing someone by the collar and screaming, “Why won’t you sheeple see the LINKS?!” It’s somewhat rarer to see such a nebulous array of boxes, lines, and free-floating, spittle-flecked outrage appear on the floor of our nation’s highest legislative body, but hey, it’s 2017, so apparently that’s just how top-level discourse rolls these days
Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert—the man who once straightfacedly introduced the phrase “terror babies” into the congressional record—busted out a flowchart of true beauty during a meeting of the House Judiciary Committee, in an attempt to explain the Hillary Clinton “Uranium One” scandal in a way that wouldn’t have looked out of place on that old masterpiece of internet paranoia, Time Cube.
The internet has had a fine old time today distracting itself from the more horrific stories in the news by ripping this thing apart, teasing out little details like the reappearance of special counsel Robert Mueller all over its width and breadth, or the fact that there appears to be at least one “Obama” box that leads directly to another, suggesting the horrific truth that Barack Obama might be related to himself.
Meanwhile, we’re just fascinated by the process that led this thing to being trotted out on the House floor. How many people looked at the finished product, saw the inelegantly arched font on “Obama DOJ,” and thought, “Finally, we got ’em”? How many intern hours does an artwork such as this represent? Was there a moment where Gohmert looked it over, smiled at team, and said, “We’re doing God’s work here, friends”? We desperately need to know.