The Brain-Dead Left, Meet the Brain-Dead Right

Marjorie Taylor Greene at press conference announcing a privileged resolution to audit aid to Ukraine, Nov. 17, 2022.

For Immanuel Kant, the “crooked timber of humanity” is a universal. He wrote, “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.”

Yes, we do have a flawed nature and philosophies and ideologies can’t cleanse us of it. We aren’t saved by diversity trainings or renewing our commitment to Trump’s “stop the steal” crusade. “Gender therapy” – medical interventions such as synthetic hormones and surgeries – to straighten us out is an invitation to disaster. Simpletons, kooks, and charlatans are legion throughout the political spectrum and even the professions, and though they might agree with us on many matters, that doesn’t turn them into founts of wisdom. A prime example on the right can be found in the person of Marjorie Taylor Greene. At times, she dispenses sheer nuttery. She isn’t the only one.

May be a cartoon of 2 people, people standing and outdoors

Occasionally, the nuttery awakens as a consequence of a certain issue. The Ukraine War comes to mind. For anyone in their right mind (as in sober seriousness), befuddlement is the proper response to calls for appeasement in the face of thuggery and butchery. What else would you call it but appeasement? Marjorie Taylor Greene is consumed with it.

There’s an element on the Right intent on reviving the America First Committee of 1940. Aid to Britain was in the crosshairs at that time. The Third Reich’s Foreign Ministry was as overjoyed as Putin’s Foreign Ministry kleptocrats must be at this latest edition. Marjorie Taylor Greene, with all the confidence of a half-witted zealot, and with her coterie of the like-minded in tow, announced a “privileged resolution” to place aid to Ukraine under a cloud of suspicion. This thing isn’t about a prudent audit of a government spending program. Who opposes that, along with one for all the other federal spending monstrosities that are bankrupting our children’s future? But this one targets the Ukraine.

I smell a rat. The biblical injunction, “By their fruits ye shall know them” (Matthew 7:16 KJV), applies. These people have a track record of their illicit intentions. It goes far beyond prudence. She shares Trump’s weakness for Twitter bombast when she texted in March 2022, “We should not spend billions of American’s hard earned tax dollars on lethal aid to be given to possible Nazi militias that are torturing innocent people, especially children and women.” Additionally, “The US must demand Zelensky stop his military from torturing his own people.” Notice Putin’s “Nazi militias” propaganda line? This could have easily (and did) come out of his press spokesman. This gang isn’t a collection of original thinkers.

Matt Gaetz (R, Fla.), that other blowhard, has been pounding the drum for not doing anything on the international stage till we solve all our problems, or so it seems. In February 2022 at CPAC, Gaetz thundered, “Why should Americans have to pay the costs for freedom elsewhere when our own leaders won’t stand up for our freedom here?” Gaetz is correct to lambast Biden and his administration for their derelictions and disastrous policies but to say that our country’s foreign policy is tied to getting everything right here at home before we can do anything abroad is utter folly.

Our nation’s vital interests and security are of greater importance than Gaetz’s or Greene’s policy peccadillos. Yet, here they are advancing the ludicrous. They have a train of telegenic fellow travelers in the Right’s media. Candice Owens is similarly loose in her logic, tongue, and keypad when she tweeted, “President Zelensky is a very bad character who is working with globalists against the interests of his own people. I will not move one inch away from that assessment—ever—no matter how flowery the media depictions of him are.” In the wake of Putin’s claim that Russia created Ukraine, Owens in a fit of balderdash proclaimed, “Ukraine wasn’t a thing until 1989. Ukraine was created by the Russians…They speak Russian.” Whew, what do with that logic-chopping? Many people in the U.S. speak Spanish, but does that mean that Spain created the United States?

See the source image — Candice Owens on her podcast show

As for the assertion that Russia created the Ukraine, it ignores one salient fact: Russia is an empire, a polyglot. Meaning, it’s a collection of separate peoples that have one thing in common: these regions came under Russian imperial rule over the course of centuries. So separate is Ukraine’s identity that Stalin tried to wipe it out in the 1930’s, going so far as to try to starve it to death in the Holodomor. Russian was imposed over the native Ukrainian language. Yes, Candice, the languages are different with divergent alphabets, “vocabulary, pronunciation of words, and so on [see below].” Language is a marker for so many other distinctions.

Candice, reliance on Putin as a scholarly source for an opinion is a junior-high level term paper mistake.

And, by the way, this discussion by us is superfluous since the Russians know it. Once given the chance, this polyglot empire flew apart with the collapse of the iron fist of the Soviet CCP. The Ukraine gained its independence along with Kazakhstan, etc. The Ukraine was so distinct that General Secretary Khrushchev drew its boundaries decades before. Agreed, he outbounded them a bit, but he obviously knew the Ukrainians to be a distinct enough people to recognize the fact with borders. Besides, the Politburo and the Soviet CCP agreed to the lines. It’s disingenuous for them to “speak with forked tongue” later and use a spurious argument to first lop off parts of the country and then invade and try to extinguish it. Poland was similarly imperiled in September 1939. Let’s face it, it’s a rhetorical gambit for empire-building thugs.

With every disclosure of Russian brutalities (see below), this troupe on the Right seems intent on shoving their foot further down their throats. It’s a cast of clowns. Is this element on the Right the appeasement caucus? Are they in the grip of fear of Russian nuclear weapons? If so, I can’t think of a stronger endorsement for every tyrant to get some for themselves. Where’s their argument to defend the rest of Asia from a nuclear Red China or the oil-rich Middle East from a jihadi-riddled and nuclear Iran? The fear of an aggressor hurting us is a poor basis for conducting foreign policy.

erhii Lahovskyi, 26, mourns over the body of his friend Ihor Lytvynenko, in Bucha, Ukraine, April 5, 2022. (Zohra Bensemra / Reuters)

Today’s America First dimwits have much in common with the 1980’s nuclear freeze movement. Back then, the anti-war movement of the abandonment of South Vietnam and the rest of Southeast Asia found another cause near and dear to their hearts in stopping Reagan’s effort to balance the Soviet Union’s intermediate missile threat to our western European allies. The placement of American intermediate missiles to counter the unopposed Soviet threat was declared by peaceniks to be provocative. Sound familiar? Greene earlier this year blamed our efforts to assist Ukraine for “Poking the bear”. You see, if only we hadn’t expanded NATO and recognized the alliance with military facilities amongst out allies, everything would have been hunky-dory with Putin. If only we had granted Putin a veto for NATO expansion, all would be goodness and light. It’s a version of the old blame-America-first tactic of the 60’s New Left. It took awhile but the brain-dead Left managed to find common ground with the brain-dead Right. Like seeks the company of like, brain-dead that is.

With cranks like these on the Right, we on the Right don’t need any enemies. The Left has The Squad to live down, and the Right has Marjorie Taylor Greene/Matt Gaetz and company. Don’t expect the public to trust the Republicans with power with dunderheads like these becoming the face of the GOP. They just end up running interference for the socialistic Democrats.

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