miasma

Few writers since Henry James can create an atmosphere of doubt around events and character as effectively as this author does, and in “Venetian Vespers” the miasma thickens at every turn.

Above all, we experience a pervasive miasma of helplessness as we are forced to watch this intolerable train wreck.

In such a milieu, Hine’s troubling 1908 photographs would easily disappear, perhaps seizing a moment but soon evaporating into the visual miasma that floods the zone daily.

It was a couple of weeks after the great smog had brought London to a standstill, and although that particularly foul miasma had dispersed, smog still regularly reduced visibility.

None of these is a new argument — they’ve been swirling around the conservative and Republican fever swamp like a miasma for decades.