I acquired an electronic mail from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) this week that caught my eye. It wasn’t private however as an alternative a kind of fundraising E-blasts that populates one’s inbox if one has signed up for political newsletters. Normally I ignore these, however this one had such a catchy topic line —– “Biden is Putin 2.0” — that I made a decision to take the bait.
“We simply witnessed a significant injustice wrought by a despot who has zero regard for human rights,” the e-mail started. “No, not Putin … President Joe Biden.”
It will get worse from there.
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LZ Granderson
LZ Granderson writes about tradition, politics, sports activities and navigating life in America.
Greene hurls a collection of nonsensical accusations on the administration earlier than asking for monetary assist: “I desperately want your assist to verify I’m nonetheless in Congress to cease Biden’s tyranny. Please donate at the moment.” It ended with “God Bless America,” which given the content material of the e-mail, felt extra like gaslighting than patriotism.
Russian President Vladimir Putin bombed a maternity and kids’s hospital throughout an agreed-upon cease-fire. In the meantime, Greene is attempting to rile up supporters over the so-called tyranny of a president who, final I checked, was attempting to get a toddler tax credit score extension by Congress to assist scale back childhood poverty — a metric during which Greene’s state, Georgia, ranked sixth.
In considerably peaceable occasions, that fundraising electronic mail can be thought-about partisan hyperbole designed to rile a sleepy base. However these aren't peaceable occasions. When a nuclear energy facility in Ukraine was underneath assault early this month, NPR reported, “Russian forces repeatedly fired heavy weapons within the path of the plant’s large reactor buildings,” and a shell landed simply 250 ft from one.
Maybe some members of Congress wanted a reminder that battle is raging and the stakes couldn't be larger.
“Bear in mind Pearl Harbor, horrible morning of Dec. 7, 1941, when your sky was black from the planes attacking you,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky mentioned in English in a video handle to U.S. lawmakers Wednesday. “Bear in mind September the eleventh, a horrible day in 2001 when evil tried to show your cities, unbiased territories, in battlefields, when harmless individuals have been attacked from air, sure, similar to nobody anticipated it, you can not cease it. Our nation expertise the identical, day by day, proper now on this second.”
It’s apropos for Zelensky to quote the assaults on Pearl Harbor and Sept. 11, as a result of like at the moment, the nation was deeply divided previous to these occasions. Will a surge of patriotism unite People this time because it did when the U.S. was attacked?
Earlier than the assaults of Sept. 11, 2001, People couldn’t even agree on whether or not the president had been legitimately elected. The Supreme Courtroom choice that delivered the White Home to George W. Bush was not but a yr previous when the World Commerce Heart was attacked. So whereas Bush made historical past by turning into the primary man since Benjamin Harrison in 1888 to win the presidency regardless of dropping the favored vote, let’s simply say it wasn’t the type of historical past that introduced individuals collectively. What introduced us collectively was the assault on our homeland. Bush went from a barely declining job approval score through the summer time of 2001 to the very best in Gallup historical past at 90% by the top of September.
Equally, the nation was not united within the years main as much as the assault on Pearl Harbor. Simply as Biden struggled to get his formidable Construct Again Higher plan off the bottom, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had watched parts of his New Deal endure setback after setback — and never simply from lawmakers. Within the fall of 1935, Gallup had discovered that 60% of People thought “expenditures by the Authorities for aid and restoration” have been too massive. In response to a conservative Supreme Courtroom that invalidated a few of his initiatives, Roosevelt introduced a plan to pack the courtroom with liberal justices, a maneuver some on the left have urged Biden to aim. That’s how deep partisan division ran.
After which Pearl Harbor was bombed and the U.S. was unequivocally pulled into World Battle II. As occurred for Bush after 9/11, the nation rallied behind Roosevelt. That’s to not say Republicans agreed with all of his liberal insurance policies or choices, solely that there’s not a complete lot of documentation of members of Congress evaluating him to Hitler on the precipice of battle.
I don’t consider the nation is extra divided now than it has ever been. From my perspective, the Civil Battle period nonetheless holds that title. Nonetheless, we do appear to be extra confused about what it means to be patriotic, an idea already sophisticated by our racist previous.
Anyway, whereas Russian forces have been making ready to play roulette with Europe’s largest nuclear energy plant, Greene was making ready to talk at a convention organized by a white supremacist who inspired pro-Putin chants earlier than bringing her out on stage.
“God Bless America” certainly.
Look, criticizing elected officers is a vital factor of American society, so I’m hardly advocating for censorship of Greene’s political speech. However underneath these circumstances, she ought to present some discretion herself. It’s by no means clear how a lot additional the U.S. can wage a proxy battle earlier than discovering itself in a direct one. Now is just not the time for selecting get together over nation, particularly for just a few marketing campaign bucks.
People understood that after Pearl Harbor. We understood it after 9/11. Now that Biden is sending a further $800 million in army support to Ukraine whereas calling Putin a battle felony for the primary time, my hope is it gained’t take one other assault on our homeland to get the Greenes of the suitable wing to know it at the moment.
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