Roy Cohn and the Art of the Denial

I was lucky enough to have been able to do a PhD at Stanford University. It was mathematical heaven, of course, and, more broadly, it was cultural heaven. Every week, there were big shot speakers of all types that one simply did not want to miss. All this non-maths distraction may have been the reason why my PhD took six years.*

One of the speakers that I got to see was Roy Cohn. This was in the early 80s and, as it turned out, near the end of Cohn’s life. Cohn was no longer such a prominent figure but for the people interested Cohn was still huge. He had risen to prominence in the early fifties, as a prosector of the Rosenberg spies, scheming to have them convicted and then sentenced to death. Cohn then became an attack dog for the FBI and Joe McCarthy. Cohn had been a rabid witch hunter, a key player in America’s anticommunist madness.

It was amazing to be able to come see this historical villain. Others who attended seemed similarly nonplussed, although not many had taken the opportunity. It was just another talk, at the Law School, and maybe twenty or thirty people turned out, in a much larger theatre. It was weird. There was a quiet atmosphere of morbid curiosity.

I cannot remember the title or subject or purpose of Cohn’s talk. Whatever the officialdom, presumably it amounted to an invitation for Roy Cohn to be Roy Cohn. Which he was. Cohn was entirely unapologetic. He exhibited not an ounce of doubt, about his rightness, about anything.

I cannot remember what Cohn said, or even generally what he talked about, except for one, phenomenal line. Cohn got on to the McCarthy stuff at some point. He then made a bald claim:

“Not one innocent person was hurt by the McCarthy hearings.”

I was stunned. Everyone was stunned. What could one say in response, not that anyone was invited to respond. I had never witnessed someone willing to lie in such a psychopathically dishonest manner, and certainly not someone whose psychopathy had been so damaging to so many.

That was Cohn’s thing: no matter what, never confess, never back down. And it turned out that Cohn had a protégé.

Near the end of Cohn’s life and in the early days of Trump’s thuggery, Cohn was Trump’s lawyer and good friend. Trump’s psychopathy, his utter lack of concern for others, his willingness to tell blatant lies, his determinedness to never admit fault, is pure Cohn.

And many millions of Americans, and not a few billionaires, are fine with that.

*) Or, the reason may have been the fact that I sucked at mathematics research.