BY THE time Edward Snowden is finished with us, we won't know our elbows from our posteriors. Yesterday the Man from PRISM left the US government biting on a diplomatic dispute with Hong Kong, with mutual recriminations flying over America's mishandling of the case and Hong Kong's failure to honour extradition treaties, as he waltzed off to Moscow. This morning he followed up by dekeing a planeful of journalists from Moscow clear to Havana. Elsewhere, other journalists are arguing with each other over who accused whom of criminal behaviour, politicians are threatening unspecified consequences for Russia and China and who knows where, thumb-suckers are pontificating that all this excitement over Mr Snowden's flight is distracting us from the real story, and everyone except for the unfortunate protagonist in the story is having a wonderful time.

 

But Mr Snowden's most elegant fake-out of all is the one that has left the entire American political class dizzy: we don't know our right from our left anymore.