The Scorpion And The Frog (America Is Not So Exceptional, Part Five.)

 Simon Adebisi: See, we are all of us bad men, even you. I know you have come to destroy me.

Kareem Said: Simon, I don't want to destroy you. I want to help you change.

Simon Adebisi: That is what would destroy me. ~From the HBO Series "Oz" Season 4, Episode 8, "You Bet Your Life."

Last night, I saw this.

Out of the blue, Trump sent out a memo, apparently trying to nuke the Republican National Committee's small-dollar donor base.

It'll probably work. Evidently, Trump is mad and suing the RNC over their continued use of his image and his name for fundraising. Not like he isn't still effectively the leader of the party or anything. Trump knows this, knows he's a public figure and this lawsuit won't likely go much of anywhere, so he did this.

He wants his supporters to give him the money instead of the Republican Party. Safe bet, if he gets it, the Republicans will never see a dime, not without immolating themselves even more on the flaming funeral pyre that is Trump's political movement. Trouble is, there will be some...probably quite a few...who will do exactly that. It's not a political party anymore, it's a cult.

From Wikipedia:

A scorpion wants to cross a river but cannot swim, so it asks a frog to carry it across. The frog hesitates, afraid that the scorpion might sting, but the scorpion argues that if it did that, they would both drown. The frog considers this argument sensible and agrees to transport the scorpion. The frog lets the scorpion climb on its back and then begins to swim. Midway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog anyway, dooming them both. The dying frog asks the scorpion why it stung despite knowing the consequence, to which the scorpion replies: "I couldn't help it. It's in my nature."

The thing I find interesting is that Republicans took this bet, and they somehow thought they'd come out ahead. Now, they're not only surprised that all this didn't give them their fabled Permanent Republican Majority or otherwise work out...they're convinced that the fact that it didn't was some big conspiracy and/or it's our fault, not theirs.

No, you fuckers broke it, you bought it. Have fun with that.

This crap is becoming like arguing with immature 13-year-old boys.

No. Sometimes, Republicans, when everybody hates you the problem is you.

And because these fucking people can't face reality or take responsibility here we are.

This morning, Marsha Blackburn was banging on about starting shit with China again. As if her donors didn't have the motherfuckers on speed dial for anytime they need cheap crap made by slave labor for less money in a day than the average American worker makes during their morning coffee break.

I'm sick of this goddamned horse shit. The Chinese haven't actually been Communists since the 1970's. Since then Conservatives, Republicans, and the rich fucks that enable them don't want to pay workers a proper wage, so they outsourced much of our manufacturing base to China, the Chinese government taxed all the money their elites made on all these business deals and put a shit ton of that money into building up their military, which we'll likely have to fight eventually. I'm serious, I don't like this fact anymore than anybody else who understands what that might entail but anybody else in the region that the Chinese might actually threaten is our allies and that's supposed to mean something.

When that time comes, the only advantages we really have are our power projection and strategic capabilities are better and we have about a 20 year technological lead, which the Chinese are working hard to close even as we're stuck trying to get out of the rabbit hole of the F-35 Lightning II, the Littoral Combat Ships and the Zumwalt-Class Destroyer being built far more to be contractor money-pits than effective weapons of war. We had to go back to building Arleigh Burke Class destroyers because they can't even manufacture shells for the guns on the Zumwalt-class (the ones they had gotten to prototype stage were roughly a million dollars a shot, literally) and we'll be back to ordering the same blocks of upgraded F-16V Fighting Falcons that we're selling to Bahrain and Slovakia before this is over...and that's actually Okay because the Viper is a good aircraft that's still a handy match for anything else in the world and everybody knows it.

Marsha Blackburn theoretically knows all this too...or she should, but the truth is she just doesn't care. The Chinese could invade and conquer Russia and be breathing down our throats directly on the borders of our NATO allies and she still wouldn't give a crap because for her it's not about any of that. For her it's cosplay and racism, gin up the base, make an indirect threat towards liberals, and wrap herself in the glory of Reagan and Bush 41...whose actual beliefs and politics she surely rejects...all at once, trying to claim the mantle of Cold War victory even though her party is very much in the thrall of both Chinese and Russian oligarchs...who, granted, she'd happily betray if a better deal came along.

Like I said, Reagan would weep.

Actually, he'd probably spit on these motherfuckers.

Note I'm not saying Reagan was some kind of a great guy, although he did do some things that were undeniably great. But nobody has worked harder to undo his accomplishments, to try and bring back the Cold War and reinstate the threat of nuclear war than his own party in recent years.

And one of the reasons for that is people like Marsha Blackburn absolutely do understand that as shitty as the F-35 Lightning II is, it's one hell of a lot better than anything the Russians have available...even the vast majority of their modernized and upgraded variants of the SU-27 Flanker, for example, are sold for export. But you rarely get the conflict you want to have.

That's begun to change a little, but not enough to matter if we decided to dust off and update the old REFORGER playbook and move our line of defense forward to deal with current threats. And all this is possible, even likely to be the case in the near future and it's a thing we've been preparing for and doing on a lesser scale since the conflict between Russia and Ukraine started. But there will come a point where air-defense detachments and tripwire forces and naval deployments aren't enough.

But there's also the little matter of the Republicans owe the Russians...and all this for a guy who just wrecked Republican fundraising prospects for his own benefit. Yes, that's something we're going to have to deal with, too.

And the reasons this has become permissible?

Hate, racism, and willful ignorance.

The average rural white American conservative Evangelical doesn't know jack shit about countries like Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania and cares even less. They have no idea that a former Soviet Navy base in Estonia has become a town that includes a small Estonian Army base and a bunch of things that'd surely be familiar to them, like a MacDonald's and a couple of Pentecostal churches. They'd be surprised by things like the fact that my Latvian friend from college liked explicitly Christian bands like DC Talk and P.O.D. or that we have people in Lithuania supporting the Baltic Air Policing mission. They don't know...or care...that Vladimir Putin persecutes Evangelical Christians in Russia, or that Christians in Belarus are persecuted by the government.

And lots of Americans don't know stuff like this because they don't have to, because it's too much work, and because it's uncomfortable, or because giving a shit might cost money. They want to be an island unto themselves, and not have to care about people in other countries, even when there's a better than average chance that those people are just like them and they'd likely have a good time if they met and sat down to have a beer. Even when we live in a world that is so interconnected that something that happens in a place like Estonia could very well affect something in my hometown in some small way.

Because too many of us lack the imagination to even consider the possibilities. Saving a nickel on a gallon of gas is more important. Smoking their next cigarette matters more. Hating their neighbors is easier.

But those people that really want to stick the knife in your back? People like Donald Trump and Marsha Blackburn?

They can imagine quite a bit. It just doesn't work out in your favor.

Part Four.