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A statesman and a traitor


Yesterday, President Joe Biden made a surprise trip to Kyiv ahead of the one year anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

If you will recall, a few weeks ago the White House put out that Pres. Biden would not be making a trip to Ukraine. At the time, I considered that a wise idea. But, subconsciously, I wondered if this was not a diversion, and he would fly into a war zone unannounced.

Well, now we have our answer.

Let us not understate how heroic this action was. Sure, even Donald Trump flew to Afghanistan. But there he—and Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush—were visiting American troops. There was some danger, of course, but a blanket of American steel does tend to diminish that. Joe Biden is the first American president to visit a war zone where US troops are not currently engaged. If that isn't badass, I don't know what is. As I commented yesterday, Joey B is more badass than all of the GOP put together, from the leadership to the party's voters.

Joe Biden is a war president. Because make no mistake: we are at war with Russia. If Russian president Vladimir Putin loses his mind, we could be in a shooting war with Russia if he expands the conflict to NATO. And if he defeats Ukraine, that's exactly what he'll do. Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy doesn't want NATO troops engaged. He wants to be armed so that Ukraine can defend the West and the democratic ideal. Supporting him means the US and its allies are not neutral parties to the conflict. When someone like French president Emmanuel Macron says that Russia must be defeated, but not crushed, he's missing the point. That ship has sailed. There's no possibility of détente with Russia at this stage in its history. It's not regressed to the days of Brezhnev; it's gone all the way back to the early 19th century, with dreams of imperial expansion all over Europe. Putin sees himself as Alexander I, who marched to Paris, defeating Napoleon. Like Germany after World War II, Russia must be made incapable of waging aggression against its neighbors, and of destabilizing the West. There's nothing else to be done. And it's brought this all upon itself. The West was perfectly content to welcome Russia into the liberal democratic order. But even Boris Yeltsin felt it necessary to remind President Bill Clinton that Russia was a nuclear power. Were it not for that arsenal—and who knows if it's even operational, with the abject corruption which permeates the state and its entities—Russia would be a third-rate backwater, a European version of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Pres. Biden is the kind of statesman which it seems only Democrats can produce. Richard Nixon wound down the Vietnam War. But he did so by consigning Cambodia to perdition under the Khmer Rouge. Ronald Reagan supported the most reactionary forces in the world in his quest to destroy the Soviet Union. Republican statecraft is always a double-edged sword. Democrats have mostly moved on from "might makes right"'; the GOP hasn't.

But we move from Joe Biden to this:


First, there won't be a "national divorce". The 14th Amendment and hundreds of thousands of Union dead settled that question. (No, I don't care about the Confederate dead in the slightest.) Secondly, how will states like Alabama and Mississippi survive without tax redistribution from California and New York? Do they think Texas and Florida will pick up the tab?

Marjorie Taylor Greene is a traitor. Calling for the breakup of the Union is treason. And this is to whom Speaker Kevin McCarthy has given power, so that he can hold a gavel to replace his missing penis. While Joe Biden was in Kyiv supporting a democratic ally, Greene was crapping on the idea of the United States. If she had any shame, she'd replace that American flag with a Stars and Bars. 

This is the GOP at the current moment. A party which was born to combat treason now a party of treason. A party formed to preserve the Union now calling for secession. I don't want to hear another word of "Democrats started the Klan." Yes, they did. But that's no longer our problem. They all vote GOP now. 

This country faces a choice: a future led by the likes of Joe Biden, or one by the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene. The decisions we take over the next few years will be monumental. We dare not muck this up.

Postscript


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