The American side of the Mexican-American border. Photo by Greg Bulla
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Far right Republicans have been screaming about a migrant invasion for years. They finally have the solution they wanted to combat it, but now, they apparently were just kidding.
For what like seems forever, the FOX talking heads have been screaming about the “invasion on our Southern border.” All manner of accusations and conspiracy theories about intentional recruitment of brown people and the “replacement” of white people fill in the space in between.
Then Greg Abbott decided he needed another stunt to make this invasion real to people and ordered his national guard to take over a park in Eagle Pass on the Rio Grande and prevent the Border Patrol from operating there. Three people, a mother and two children drowned for this stunt with Abbott lamenting that he couldn’t just shoot people on the other side without being charged with murder. Weird, a murderer complaining that he couldn’t commit murder. Just another example of the rightwing effort to paint themselves as victims. But I digress.
Abbott’s actions were so far off the beam that even our rightwing Supreme Court disagreed with him. And he chose to defy that. Other red-state governor’s decided to get in on the stunt action and send their own people down there. DeSantis decided to send troops from his own private army—though they only have authority to operate in Florida.
On top of all this, an “army” of MAGA acolytes—more of a gaggle than an army—showed up in Eagle Pass, Texas ready to repel the invasion they are convinced is threatening their lives. It must be a real invasion, isn’t it? Laura Ingraham, Jesse Waters, the highly reliable Alex Jones and others said so! But even these intrepid hunters of brown-skinned hordes couldn’t find it. They did find Sarah Palin and about 10 or 20 of them were treated to a show by Ted Nugent.
All this loony tunes activity has been paralleled by four months of negotiations in the Senate to hash out a border bill that has been a Republican must-do item for years. And apparently the bill is a gift, giving the right almost everything they have been demanding in a border bill. But the bill also includes the funding the Biden administration wants to help Ukraine survive the Russian invasion.
We truly live in interesting times when an imaginary invasion trumps—sorry, it was just the right word here—a real one. Funds for Ukraine has been held up for months by the treason caucus in the House, demanding drastic action on the border. But now that they have what they want, it turns out that they really didn’t want that at all. Psych! Picture Lucy yanking away the football just as Charlie Brown is committed to kicking it.
It turns out that the House extremists are declaring the border bill—which contains almost everything they have been demanding—dead on arrival because Trump wants them to keep the “problem” in place. Putin is of course overjoyed.
Let’s recap. Propagandists have been whipping up racist fear and loathing of an imaginary invasion. The far right demands policy actions to “combat” this. Red state governors get in on the act, killing a few people because those people had brown skin and didn’t matter. Now, after months of performative coordinated yammering, the Congressional insurrectionists—oh, yeah, the opposition to solving anything in Congress is also composed of members who were involved in Jan 6 and do not qualify to be there—actually get what they want. And now, the solution they’ve demanded is going to be DOA.
Well, that’s nuts. Right? Truly. But right along with this is this fact: Republicans call themselves the “law and order” party. Yet their unquestionable front-runner for the coming election is a man under 91 criminal charges, a demonstrably insane person who somehow thinks that openly sabotaging the work of Congress can give him a lever to defeat Biden in November.
The fact that there isn’t and never has been an invasion at the Southern border will not deter MAGA people from making up all manner of crazy explanations for the illogic of their actions. And boy, are they creative. But now the propagandists and the treason caucus in Congress have been caught out in their subterfuge.
Competence is not the strong suit of crazy people, which is a good thing for the country. The truest comedy of the current situation is that Biden seems to have Republicans fighting each other and in the end he’ll end up succeeding in getting Ukraine’s funding to keep destroying the Russian army and protect the rest of Europe from Putin.
Meanwhile the DOA border bill continues to move forward in the Senate. And Trump’s eligibility to run for any office, even dog catcher, comes up tomorrow for oral arguments in the Supreme Court. Stay tuned. Stock up on popcorn.
Marty Kassowitz
Marty Kassowitz is co-founder of Factkeepers. As founder of Interest Factory and View360, he brings more than 30 years experience in effective online communications, social media management, and platform development to the site. He is a writer, designer, editor and long time observer of the ill-logic demonstrated by too many members of the species known as Mankind. After a long history of somewhat private commentary on a subject he totally hates: politics, Marty was encouraged to build this site and put up his own analyses as well as curate relevant content from other sources.
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