Does It Embarrass Anyone Else How the Republicans Make America Look?

I had a lot of 'splaining' to do on my recent trip to Munich about why the U.S. has lost its mind (THIS IS ORIGINAL, NON-MEDIUM CONTENT)

Courtesy of Bri

We clinked our glasses together, and immediately after the first sip of ice cold, frothy Augustiner beer, one of the guys sitting at our table (it is common to sit with strangers in Bavaria) asked with shock and bewilderment on his face:

“So what’s going on with America? What is this House stuff making you look really bad?”

Let’s begin with a statement of fact that should be obvious to all but sadly is not: None of the current chaos in the House has anything to do with Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, immigrants, or the Democrats in Congress. I have seen a wide array of Republicans pointing in the direction of the Dems when people ask, “Who made this mess?” 

It’s a genuine, down-to-earth, heartfelt, and brainless mess. Let me add something else to this descriptor: It’s the modern-day Republican Party at its absolute best. The loud-mouth mom rails against other kids and the ump from the bleachers at the Little League game. It’s the father who threatens that same ump with physical violence and then, when confronted, wilts like a salad being washed with hot water. In words you have by now seen written before I had the chance to write them, the Republican Party is a Goddamn embarrassment to everyone who had pride in being an American. 

I will shock you with this statement: The “wickedly embarrassing” moniker does not just describe the eight who voted to oust the weak and despicable Kevin McCarthy. It pertains to the other 214 of these pro-Trump, America-hating opportunists. 

These other 214 Republicans are suddenly trying to seem sober — nope, I wasn’t sniffing the glue, were you? — and they are banding together to cast stones and other objects at the eight idiots who turned not just the House of Representatives upside down but America. This Republican Party keeps repeatedly pushing the envelope closer and closer toward the edge. Once it falls, does it just harmlessly tumbles to the floor? No! It takes with it our democracy.

The Republicans in Congress are the same bunch that think Joe Biden is an illegitimate president. They are the same bunch that were unfazed by the events of January 6th, and when Trump said that his former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Mark Milley, should be executed for not supporting him, not one Republican went on the record to say that Trump was a lunatic who had clearly lost his mind. 

Long before the Kentucky turtle, Mitch McConnell began freezing up like an old computer, Republicans exploited every weakness and loophole in our system of government, creating devastating gridlock. When Obama came to office, they unrelentingly obstructed and said no to everything he put forth. They acted like they were in the majority, thus forcing Democrats to rule alone. Endlessly watering down their policies in the hope of gaining a few Republican votes, they would be left holding a hat with no Republican “yay” votes. Republicans gloated when the Dems used procedural measures to push through popular but inadequate policies to the nation’s festering problems.

“It’s tyranny,” they shouted. “The Democrats are forcing unpopular and destined-to-failure programs down our throats. They are silencing the minority to push through their extremist policies to lead us to communism.” 

Glee invigorates the right, and excuses and justification stain the left. The Republicans have, in the vein of Hitler’s minority party in the late 1920s and early 1930s ruled with the steel and unforgiving fist of the minority. 

The nation today is being held hostage by the consequences of Republican fascism. It is being eternally dumbed down and readied for violent, right-wing takeover by right-wing media where all that is bad and embarrassing is never the fault of the Republicans.

The narrative stands: The current chaos in U.S. politics is all the fault of Biden, Pelosi, the Crew, Schumer, and many other patriots. None of this chaos and weakness has anything to do with Trump, Tuberville, McCarthy, the entirety of the Republican Party, or Fox News. That refusal to accept responsibility for anything terrible unites the Republican Party with the Nazis in Germany and Moscow today.