We live in a time in which people routinely mistake narcissism for patriotism.
We inhabit a country filled with an enormous amount of extremely ignorant folks and entire industries that are built on keeping them that way.
It has made some tiny and weak men very wealthy.
Stupidity and a lack of empathy have become cultural touchstones.
We live in essentially godless times where religion is often used a cudgel to berate and burden it’s own adherents.
Conservative Christian MAGA supporters get up to all kinds of hypocritical activities on Saturday night then pass the basket on Sunday mornings, while imploring their flock to turn their backs on their own children.
Or those within their own communities who have the courage to live and express their own truths in the face of cultural ignorance and bigoted rhetoric.
Grown men preach hate and retribution on the marginalized, for political expediency and to put another stone on the backs of the already overburdened.
Instead of treating them with the respect and dignity, not to mention love, that the man on the cross behind the pulpit preached.
That of course was the old Jesus, the new version has been redesigned in the eyes of MAGA as some jacked-up, bro-country version of Rambo, not representing some Jesuit intellectual’s idea of piety but a new and improved savior who sees no harm in owning an AR-15 and a mansion on the causeway.
Their new Lord places all fealty in the tiny hands of Donald Trump, he doesn’t ask them to open hearts to the meek but to kick them when they are down, and pay all alms to the orange con man and his sinner children.
There couldn’t be a better example of the hypocrisy of modern Christianity than the men and women who serve in the GOP Congress.
They have aided and abetted Vladimir Putin at every turn on the orders of a drug-addled idiot whose chief campaign aide, Paul Manafort, once worked for Konstantin Kilimnik.
In 2016 Paul Manafort handed Trump campaign data directly to Kliminik - who passed it along to Russia to help target their interference in the US Presidential election to benefit Donald Trump.
It worked along with its other aim, with the able assist from Team Trump, to help Putin invade and take over Ukraine.
One could simplify the whole Putin/Trump axis as coming down to a key strategic nadir.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine was the prize - and no amount of war crimes, bombing of power plants and ports full of grain headed for Africa to stave off famine, seemed likely to move the GOP from their objective to aid Putin.
A disgusting low point in US geopolitical history - and that it was caused by some QANON crackpots in the so-called ‘Freedom Caucus’ makes it all the more maddening.
The party that loves to hide behind their flag and badge fetish proved to be an utter embarrassment on the world stage when it really mattered.
It is incumbent on each and everyone one of us to do all we can to elect Democrats up and down the ballot in this next election.
We have to send a strong message to the GOP that aiding dictators and attempting to install their own in the White House is anathema to who we are as a people.
The inability to stand up for democratic allies and the regression here at home has already done real damage and cost countless lives.
This is not the world our veterans and their families sacrificed for, nor is it the world we want to pass along to our children.
There is no long game in Republican politics, as evidenced by their stance on climate change and appeasement of a narcissistic maniac whose only concern is how much money he can stuff in his pockets and staying out of jail for his myriad crimes.
Trump does not care about the health or well being of any one around him and he never has: it’s why they love him so much.
He allows them to live out loud as their worst selves and gives them permission to punish those that disagree.
That is why he has demonized President Biden and the Democratic Party, he needs them to be as bent and broken in their perceptions as he has always been.
Donald Trump’s only true enemy his entire life has been the truth - so lies have now become the platform of the Republican Party.
The recent reports of pregnant women being turned away from hospitals in southern states out of fear of GOP anti-abortion laws and the rampant ignorance that already pervades women’s healthcare in the Bible belt has already shown that they have no problem with Medieval-type cruelty.
Trump’s border policies will be much of the same; many forget that during his first term he wanted to paint ‘his wall’ black - to burn the hands of desperate migrants - put spikes on top to impale them and ‘shoot them in the legs.’
This is the same man who proposed building a moat along side the wall and filling it with alligators.
Not a joke - the man really is that stupid.
This is all to say we are perhaps in much more dire straits than many of us would care to admit.
The chaos on Capitol Hill caused by MTG and a supplicant Speaker (whose smirk after the House finally passed an aid bill sending 60 billion to Ukraine this weekend, seemed to suggest he thought he deserved some sort of prize for finally doing the right thing) is far from over.
In the meantime, much braver men and women are fighting in the frozen mud of Eastern Ukraine, fighting off a Russian invasion that does not end there if it is not thwarted.
We can aid their gallant efforts by calling out Russian disinformation and subterfuge when it finds its way into GOP talking points and their media mouthpieces like Fox News and Elon Musk’s X platform.
Even the New York Times last week wrote what essentially amounted to a puff piece on an X influencer, Jackson Hinkle, who frequently posts pro-Iran and pro-Russian content and deep fake videos, as he did that day before his star turn in the Gray Lady, posting a fake meme of Iranian bombers in the skies over Israel.
Why they would platform such a ghoulish grifter is something this lifelong reader finds both baffling and maddening but is sadly unsurprising as more and more mainstream media tends to be about outrage-farming and chasing clicks.
If we do not continue to call out and push back against this behavior we are dishonoring not only our own legacy as a nation, we are inviting shame upon our reputation on a global scale.
The stakes are far too high to ignore what is happening.
It must end now - enough of the insanity.
Vote Blue.
Re the moat: as a Florida resident who sees alligators all the time (and respects and fears them), it’s not a harebrained idea, like buying Greenland. The very thought is evil. Like feeding Christians to hungry lions. I guess Texas solved the problem with a trip to Home Depot: razor wire. Also evil. You are correct that he brings out the worst in already-bad people. Great post.
Excellent Noel!
Vote Blue in November as if lives depended on it; they do!