Today’s Alice in Wonderland political rhetoric means almost no outlandish assertion is completely surprising. There are so many false, new orthodoxies that attempting to compile a comprehensive list would be a fool’s errand. Here’s just a taste: Words are violence, violence is speech, women can impregnate men, silencing dissent is tolerance, black lives matter except if taken or blighted by other black people, etc.

Against such absurdities, perhaps the ironies of the Democratic National Convention were not so egregious. But as they tumbled forth, stupefaction was avoided by appreciation of the chutzpah it took to tell such whoppers.