There is a specific, peculiar scent to American governance in its terminal phase. It is not the smell of sulfur, as the medievalists might have predicted, nor is it the metallic tang of blood that usually accompanies the collapse of empires. No, it smells distinctively of furniture polish, dry-cleaned polyester, and the stale, recycled air of the House Judiciary Committee room. Into this olfactory purgatory stepped Jack Smith on Thursday, the former special counsel, appearing like a man who has brought a slide rule to a knife fight, desperate to explain the mathematics of gravity to a room full of people who have legislated that they can fly.

Smith, with the weary demeanor of a high school principal explaining to a board of delinquents why setting the gymnasium on fire is technically against the code of conduct, delivered his testimony regarding Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. “Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in criminal activity,” Smith intoned. One almost feels pity for the man. He speaks in the archaic dialect of “Law,” a language that has become entirely dead in Washington, replaced by the guttural grunts of “Optics” and “Polling.” To hear phrases like “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” uttered in the halls of Congress today is like hearing someone recite Chaucer in a slaughterhouse—technically impressive, but woefully out of context.

The spectacle is, of course, entirely performative. We are witnessing the autopsy of a justice system that died of exposure years ago, yet the functionaries insist on twitching the limbs to simulate life. Smith sat there, defending his indictments, asserting that the evidence met a criminal standard. He seems to labor under the charmingly European delusion that if one simply stacks enough facts in a neat pile, reality will bend to acknowledge them. It is a quaint notion, reminiscent of the Enlightenment, or perhaps just a naive Tuesday in Brussels. In the United States, however, facts are merely decorative garnishes on a salad of tribal grievances.

Consider the absurdity of the setting. Here is a man describing, with surgical precision, the mechanisms by which a sitting President attempted to dismantle the democratic process. In any functioning republic, this would be the prelude to a sombre national reckoning. In the American variety of democracy, it is merely content for the afternoon news cycle, sandwiched between a pharmaceutical advertisement and a weather report. The committee members, particularly those on the right, view Smith not as a prosecutor but as a plot device in a narrative they are rewriting in real-time. He is the villain in their soap opera, the “weaponized” bureaucrat, and his insistence on the truth is merely an annoyance, like a continuity error in a script that has already been approved by the producers.

Smith’s testimony serves as a fascinating study in the disconnect between the bureaucratic mind and the political animal. The bureaucrat believes in the sanctity of the process; he believes that the rules exist to be followed and that deviations must be documented and punished. The politician, especially the modern American variety, understands that rules are merely suggestions for the opposition. Smith is playing chess; the committee is wrestling pigs. The tragedy is that Smith likely believes his moves matter. He believes that by stating, for the record, that crimes were committed, he is depositing something valuable into the historical ledger. But history is written by the victors, and currently, the victors are the ones shouting the loudest over the sound of the gavel.

There is a profound, existential exhaustion that radiates from these proceedings. It is the exhaustion of a society that knows the truth but has decided it is too expensive to afford. Smith’s declaration that evidence showed crimes is met not with shock, but with a shrug. The cynical brilliance of the American experiment in its late stage is that it has successfully monetized apathy. The citizenry watches the clips on social media, perhaps offers a digital grimace, and then scrolls down to a video of a cat falling off a table. The crime is acknowledged, the evidence is presented, and the caravan moves on, leaving the law standing by the roadside, hitchhiking to nowhere.

Ultimately, Jack Smith’s appearance is a piece of high-concept theatre for an audience that walked out of the play during the first act. He stands by his decisions, he stands by his charges, and he stands by the quaint idea that actions have consequences. He is the last straight man in a comedy that has spiraled into madness. One can only hope he enjoys the irony as much as we do from across the Atlantic, watching the grand machinery of American justice grind its gears, stripping the metal until nothing remains but the noise.