Imagine what it must feel like to be former FBI Director James Comey out for a stroll. Imagine the joys of living in such a revelatory universe as his. This is a man who, if his Instagram is proper evidence, spends his days walking awestruck through an enchanted world: Potently symbolic manifestations of the Creator’s ineffable will are liable to appear anywhere he goes. Nature clearly speaks to this man, which is why it’s so disappointing that, when it does, it’s always in the voice of prolix political slogans.

One moment Comey is consumed with “so many questions” while lost in the humbling majesty of an ancient forest; the next he is turning up a seashell pleading with America to vote for Kamala Harris. (What could this cryptic sign possibly mean? So many questions.) Sometimes he goes to work in the morning and just gets lost amid the White House drapes. And sometimes he finds strange natural shell formations on his beach walk.

Yes, that’s right, America’s former top cop — hated by the left for his involvement in Hillary Clinton’s server scandal in 2016, hated by the right for his existence since 2017 — has gotten a bit “weird” in his retirement. (He has a second career now as a slop novelist.) And yesterday afternoon he posted a picture of seashells arranged on a beach to spell out “86 47,” adding the legend “Cool shell formation on my beach walk.” (For foreigners unaware of basic American slang, “to 86” something means to get rid of it – however you care to define that – while Donald Trump is of course the 47th president of the United States.)

Upon Comey’s posting of this image to Instagram, the heavens immediately cracked open as four pale riders issued forth from the breach, bringing with them pestilence, war, famine, and death. Even worse than that, a bunch of people got extremely huffy on the internet — “Comey is calling for the murder of the president!” — as the rest of country was reminded of what a weird, mewling pussy the guy actually is. Comey deleted it several hours later, but not before the entire world — as well as the Trump administration — took notice. A Secret Service investigation has been initiated. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard appeared on Fox News last night to demand that Comey be prosecuted and jailed.

However overheated Gabbard’s reaction — Comey is not going to prosecuted — her view is more forgivable than you might initially think given that (1) James Comey is the former director of America’s top law enforcement agency; (2) Donald Trump is a man who has already dodged two serious assassination attempts in the last calendar year alone. Comey is probably getting a formal visit from the Secret Service sometime in the next few days, and it couldn’t have happened to a flakier or more deserving man.

But really, both sides are getting what they want out of this silly affair. The Trump administration gets to cast their boss once again as a martyr – few names are more likely to stir up the MAGA faithful than that of the man who ruined the Rolling Stones’ greatest non-album single by green-lighting “Crossfire Hurricane.” But equally as important, James Comey gets the attention he wants.

And I am certain that he wants it. For my guess about what’s really going on here is both simple and vulgar: James Comey has a new “crime novel” that nobody cares about coming out in four days (It is called FDR Drive, as if the name even matters), and this was his cloddish attempt to drum up publicity for it. The novel’s premise is that “free speech” is being used by America’s internal far-right enemies to provoke political violence, habitually line-stepping in public provocations to stir their followers to “stochastic violence” against elected officials as well as the United Nations. (The tagline: “Even Free Speech Has Its Price.”) In other words, it’s a standard-issue “Resistance” fever-dream plot, and I can’t wait to not read it.

You see where this is going, right? Comey’s brilliant idea yesterday here was — in lieu of a promotional budget, which I’m guessing James Comey’s half-baked and unread novels lack — to post a picture that walked that same line in the way he accuses his antagonists in the book of doing. (“Did he cross the line?,” etc.) This would then “start a public conversation” and in so doing stimulate curiosity and/or sales for his fiction.

It was also an incredibly stupid, pathetic idea, but that aspect is priced in with a weirdo like Comey. In fact, that is my primary takeaway from this ridiculous 24-hour kerfuffle. How did anyone this weird ever manage to rise so high in the Justice Department before taking control of the nation’s leading law enforcement agency? (As a former federal government employee myself, my first thought was “we used to staff every HR department with Mormons precisely to screen people like these out — standards are slipping.”) Allow me to end on a quote from a friend on social media, because it would be a waste of time to rewrite an observation this well-made: “His fans think he’s a beacon of democracy and his enemies think he’s a traitorous devil, but I think the main thing that’s become clear about James Comey is he’s an absolute goofball, just incredibly weird and awkward.” The truth is, James Comey is no threat to anything at this point except his own dignity.