REX TILLERSON DID CORRECTLY CALL THE PRESIDENT AS HE SAW HIM

 THE GOP CAN ADMIT TO HAVING THE DIMMEST BULB OF A U.S. SENATOR

 

     ….Senator Johnson is widely considered one of the dumbest Senators in U.S. history.

 

Rudy Giuliani appears to have helped a corrupt U.S. President’s attempt to twist foreign policy for his own ends.

 

Let’s consider two stories about voting, from the opposite sides of the country.

Over the course of the disturbing Donald Trump era, it was sometimes hard to keep two thoughts in your head simultaneously.

On one hand, the president was an ignorant fool, a desperately insecure man-baby at whom one could never stop laughing.  On the other hand, he was extraordinarily dangerous, causing unspeakable damage to our national spirit and many of the lives of Americans.

Though the Trump era may today be fading, that combination of stupidity and hate is still the signature quality of the party he left behind.

The Florida legislature just passed another voter suppression law, one that places restrictions on absentee ballots and drop boxes.  It requires voters to reapply to receive absentee ballots every two years.  It also limits who can drop off ballots, among many other things.

Asked for evidence of the fraud Republicans claimed necessitated these measure, one GOP lawmaker stupidly said, “I don’t know how, but I’m sure fraud was going on.”

Of course, Florida is just one of many states where Republicans have rushed in a panic to address the problem of too many citizens voting. While the Georgia voter suppression law garnered the most attention, the most restrictive effort is probably in Texas, where Republicans are trying especially hard to make voting inconvenient in all of their large cities where Democrats are strong. There, as in other places, Republicans are seeking to limit the power of local officials to determine how elections are run.

Meanwhile, in Arizona, where President Biden won a narrow victory last year, Republicans are determined to prove that something fishy went on. So the GOP-controlled state Senate turned over millions of ballots from Maricopa County to a bogus company.  The company's CEO has propagated conspiracy theories about the election.  All of this, just so it could conduct a fake “audit” to locate the fraud they’re all just so sure is there.  And that’s after three previous audits that said that everything was on the up and up!

While the bogus audit is being carried out largely in secret, it apparently involves shining UV lights on the ballots.  And that’s for reasons that are unclear, but the UV light may actually damage the ballots.. Perhaps the lights will reveal the presence of some satanic watermarks proving once and for all that the election was stolen by a cannibalistic pedophile conspiracy that wields foreign space lasers.

So while the nincompoops in Arizona shine special lights on ballots which will no doubt produce spectacular allegations of fraud.  A fraud that will disintegrate on a moment’s inspection while more clever and cynical Republicans are restricting the right to vote in real ways.

We see that same type of efforts in the news that federal agents served a warrant on Rudolph Giuliani’s apartment in possible connection with his work in Ukraine.  Work that was trying to manufacture dirt on Biden to help Trump win the re-election that was lost.  Rudy Giuliani appears to have sat at the middle where a corrupt president’s attempt to twist U.S. foreign policy for his own ends.  

And behind it, of course, was the Kremlin.  As The Post reported, “The FBI warned Rudolph Giuliani in late 2019 that he was the target of a Russian influence operation."  From all appearances, this did not bother Giuliani a bit.

The renewal of this story served as a reminder of one defining feature of the Ukraine scandal: “While seasoned government professionals such as Fiona Hill and Alexander Vindman raised alarms about the shadow foreign policy Trump had created, that shadow policy was being carried out by a band of lunkheads, including Giuliani and his buddies Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman.”

It’s no surprise that the GOP senator most closely linked with that halfwit that is Senator Ron Johnson.  Johnson is the conspiracy-theorizing, misinformation-touting Wisconsinite widely regarded as perhaps the dumbest member of the US Senate.  Intelligence indicated that he, too, was the target of a Russian disinformation effort, about which he was also seemingly unconcerned.

But while the whole episode was run through with GOP buffoonery, it was also one of the worst presidential scandals in American history.  An absolutely shocking betrayal of the president’s oath of office. The comical existed alongside all the nightmare actions.

And that is the essence of the Grand Old Party today.

Today the GOP is a party whose “allegedly sensible members” continue to tolerate attacks on our democracy and they indulge those extremists within their ranks.  They then express surprise when the result is an assault on the U.S. Capitol.  They also spout hilarious conspiracy theories that lead to actual violence in the streets.

They try to undo legitimate elections with hair dye running down their scalps (remember Rudy).  Their most ambitious figures act like clowns, with laughable culture-war posturing in an attempt to gain power that will be used for the most ridiculous, reactionary purposes.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t laugh at them when they deserve it, as they so often do.  Laughter and mockery have always been powerful weapons.

But you must never forget that the more ridiculous the GOP is acting, the more sinister are its purposes.

Let’s face it.  The current GOP is being a bunch of total buffoons.  But they have also become very dangerous.

Copyright G. Ater 2021