One of my state’s senators is an astonishing figure by the name of Ted Cruz…a.k.a., “Cancun Cruz,” so called because he bugged out for sunny Cancun in the middle of the Valentine’s Day Storm in Texas, leaving his constituents to freeze in the dark while he enjoyed tropical breezes and excellent Margaritas on the beach.
He’s lately earned a new nickname, “Kremlin Cruz,” because he cited a Russian propaganda piece to decry what he termed the American military’s “emasculation.”* The piece in question was a video that contrasted hypermuscled Russian soldiers jumping out of airplanes and doing a zillion pushups with what was said to be an American military recruitment ad showing a fresh-faced young woman with two mommies who had joined the U.S. Army and was encouraging others to do the same.
Apparently, the Senator saw this video and responded by tweeting, “Holy crap…Perhaps a woke, emasculated military is not the best idea …”
Needless to say, Cruz has been promptly and justifiably pilloried by former and active duty service people for sheer stupidity. But, then, stupidity is something of which the Senator seems to have no shortage of.
Still, I wonder if you couldn’t argue that Kremlin Cruz had very little choice in the matter. He, like most of the rest of the Trumpian GOP, is in a trap of his own making. Neither he nor his Party has a real platform. He has nothing of substance to talk about. He has no suggestions for foreign policy. His economics boil down to little more than bailouts for billionaires. He can offer nothing constructive.
He has nothing to say...
So, instead, he…and the GOP in general…must rely on Culture Wars. The only way he has of gaining votes is by appealing to those who are dissatisfied or ignorant or both, and preferably by tossing them red meat and Molotov cocktails, usually in the form of boneheaded pronouncements on Race and Gender.
The problem with this strategy is, of course, that you are in effect at war with a significant fraction of your own nation. You have to discount external threats that you might, instead, exaggerate the one coming from “the traitors within.” And that means you end up agreeing with your nation’s most dangerous advisories. You end up borrowing their mindset and their most disingenuous statements. You become like, say, the British MP who quotes something he heard from Goebbels to explain his distaste for Jewish Bankers, even as German bombers cross the channel.
And thus we have Ted, “Kremlin Cruz,” forced by the logic of his position to praise the Russian military, and denigrate our own.
The next question, though, is where does it end? Since Ted, and the GOP, is in this rhetorical trap, where do they go? Will they follow their logic, irrational and destructive as it may be, to its inescapable end?
Which would be dreadful.
Because the ultimate end of that train of thought is treason. That is, to take arms against the men and women and government of their own nation on the grounds that their own nation is somehow irredeemably flawed, and only someone else’s is pure. Even if, or particularly if, that is the purity of absolute evil…
Murderous, and total.
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Until next time…
Onward and Upward.
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P.S. Happy Memorial Day, everyone. Except to Cruz...and anyone who thinks American service members are wimps.
mj
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Copyright©2021 Michael Jay Tucker
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*Source: “Troops Blast Senator for Claiming US Military Has Been ‘Emasculated’" by Steve Beynon, Military.com, 21 May 2021, https://www.military.com/daily-news/2021/05/21/troops-blast-senator-claiming-us-military-has-been-emasculated.html