Vengeful in defeat: Hillary Clinton fantasises about WikiLeaks

This tactic ignores the ways and follies of the idiot politician, who can, in effect, lose against a figure such as Trump. This is the most bruising of all, the most damning. The Clinton campaign's own efforts at information warfare were paltry, presuming that the self-evident grotesquery of Trump would sway voters.

When the Washington Post published the 2005 Access Hollywood record of Trump's "grab 'em by the pussy" remark, the effect of that revelation, argues Clinton, was shrouded by the release of over 2,000 emails from Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta.

For the Clintons, the Podestas and the Mooks, the White House was in the bag of ambition and worth, and neither Bernie Sanders nor Trump was going to get their paws on it. This was meant to be an establishment show – till the establishment was shown up.

As for Assange, the return volleys soon came. Clinton was, in his view, a heartless defective. "It is not just her constant lying. It is not just that she throws off menacing glares and seethes thwarted entitlement. Something much darker rides along with it. A cold creepiness rarely seen."

It was the sort of creepiness that had been spotted before. Britain's current foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, took unusually faultless aim at it in 2007 in the Daily Telegraph. "She's got dyed blonde hair and pouty lips, and a steely blue stare, like a sadistic nurse in a mental hospital." By all means, he insisted, vote for Clinton, if only to return her husband to the White House. "If Bill can deal with Hillary, he can surely deal with any global crisis."

While it is entirely true that Trump readily traffics in hypocrisy and seems to be a comic monstrosity on various levels, a Clinton White House would have also made the world safe for hypocrisy. There would have been usual American brashness, military interventions, toughness poorly dressed in silk and padded by soft power. There would have also been graft, self-aggrandizement and the lying industrial complex.

To scold and condemn WikiLeaks in this affair is no better than dismissing the person who spots the fire as the arsonist gets away. Citing the efforts of the Kremlin, information bots, and fake news, can only go so far. The building still burns.