It would seem so…and I would have told you, as recently as a week ago, that you’d catch me scarfing down a writhing bowl of live tropical centipedes before I had anything but venom and bile to spew all over the current Speaker of the House. Yet Mike Johnson, a thoroughly despicable, Bible-thumping, Trump-grovelling, MAGA-mollifying religious bigot, and one of the worst liars in a political party that boasts at least 3/4 of the biggest bullshit artists who ever drew breath, just did something unambiguously good, decent, vital to the interests of America and its allies, and, so help me, even courageous. Having toed Donald’s line for months, while knuckling under to the pro-Russian “Putin Wing” of the GOP, Mike Johnson executed an abrupt 180, sat down with the Democrats, and hammered out a bargain to flow 60-odd billion in desperately needed military aid to Ukraine (and 30-35 billion more to be split between Israel and Taiwan). Vlad over there in the Kremlin must have pitched (and must indeed still be pitching) an epic fit, and his allies in Congress, MAGA monsters like Mike Lee and Marjorie Taylor Greene, have been taking turns frothing at the mouth, bleeding out their ears, and birthing successive litters of kittens. In fact “Moscow Mike” Lee, who’s been all over Fox and Newsmax screeching about the injustice of funding Ukraine when nothing’s being done to stem the tide of illegal immigration, is carrying on as if he and his Senate Republican buddies didn’t themselves kill the bipartisan border deal negotiated by their own Senator Langford of Oklahoma, obeying the express public command of their Orange Messiah. The swine. This is Lee yipping at Fox professional hairdo Maria Bartiromo on Sunday:
Look, this is a really good deal for Ukraine and (Ukrainian President Volodymyr) Zelenskyy…And this is not good for hardworking Americans who are finding more and more of their taxpayer dollars going to people other than Americans; going to secure border(s) other than the U.S. border.
Yes, for the love of God, pity all those poor, hardworking Americans, swamped in their own country by the oppressive waves of brown folk flowing in over the open border with Mexico, while their hard-earned tax dollars are funnelled overseas to assist a bunch of undeserving, no-account Eastern Europeans in securing their far-away, unimportant Eastern European frontier, as if that has anything to do with anything that matters to all the hard-pressed, red-blooded American working folk, struggling to little fanfare to make ends meet back here in a declining North America. Yessir, bravo, nice one, Mike. Those are some first class GOP talking points.
Jesus Christ on steroids. You know? God’s teeth. What a miserable sack of shit. What an isolationist, blinkered, pro-fascist populist, bloviating in the finest tradition of old-school dysfunctional Nazi-curious 1930s American politics. What a preposterous, pig-ignorant, pusillanimous puddle of pro-Putin piddlejuice. True to form, he’s out there now Tweeting up an electronic shitstorm, trying to rally his fellow Republicans in the Senate, who still have to vote on what the House just passed, to kill the aid package. I’m assuming he can’t succeed. Here’s the pitch:
Sure, Mike, you just chime in with noted intellectual colossus Charlie Kirk. He’s a real big thinker.
And hey, get a load of this anguished Tweet from MTG:
America first!! USA!! USA!! (Oh, and all hail our lord and master Vlad, who means to re-gift us The Donald in 2024). She’s now threatening to feed Johnson to the same Republican wolves that devoured the all but forgotten Kevin McCarthy, and what’s delicious is that Mike’s telling her, essentially, to go ahead and bring it. Maybe he’s sanguine because he’s made a deal with the Dems to save him if she tries, but you know what, lately it really looks as if he couldn’t give a flying fuck either way. It’s as if he woke up one morning and realized he was selling his soul in a Devil’s bargain to keep what was, in fact, the lousiest job in these United States, herding the rabid cats of the intolerable, ungovernable, utterly feckless rabble that is the House GOP caucus.
What happened? It was just a few days ago that Mike crawled on all fours to Mar-a-Lago to lick Donald’s boots and receive his marching orders, as dictated to Trump by his Kremlin handlers. Talking to the Press, Johnson was adamant that there’d be no funding bill for Ukraine if nothing was done about border security, spouting the usual Republican horse manure, while at the same time doing his part to ensure nothing would be done about border security.
Yet here we are, the bill has passed, there’s nothing in it about securing the southern border, and, well, truss my legs and call me hogtied, I never would have believed it.
The story circulating among the pundits and national security types I follow on social media sounds like some sort of liberal fantasy written by Aaron Sorkin for season 2 of The West Wing: supposedly, Johnson received a personal briefing from CIA Director Bill Burns on the situation in Ukraine, and the grave geopolitical implications of a Russian victory, and saw the light. No, really, that’s the story:
That’s what they’re saying. They’re saying that Mike Johnson, a Republican, decided he needed a greater understanding. As if suddenly, facts mattered, as did the larger, long-term consequences of the cynical pursuit of immediate political gain. We’re told Mike listened, deferred to the superior knowledge and expertise of an analyst who manifestly knew what he was talking about, understood, and had some sort of come-to-Jesus epiphany. Why, Russia wasn’t just trying to conquer a little neighbour in an utterly unjustified war of aggression – which, surely, was bad enough – it was embarking on a campaign that threatened the entire world order that America had struggled so mightily, for so long, to uphold. It couldn’t be allowed to happen. The United States couldn’t be seen allowing it to happen. Not on his watch. No more games, then. No more kowtowing to Donald. Let the Russian-loving MAGA lunatics do their worst. This was bigger than him, and bigger than politics, goddammit.
Really?
I mean, get the fuck outta here. No goddam way. Mike Johnson? Standing on principle, and damn the personal consequences, because what’s right is right?
I’ll be damned.
Look, maybe there’s a couple of more shoes to drop here, I don’t know, maybe there’s some way this apparent victory for truth, sanity, and straight-up morality ends up being perverted into another masterpiece of Republican rat-fuckery, and maybe Mike Johnson even has a hand in it somehow, or at least soon reverts to form and resumes his previously tireless work to destroy what’s left of the Republic and the ideals to which it once aspired. If so, I guess I wouldn’t even be surprised. Right now, though, for just this one glowing instant, it really seems as if the dogmatic, self-serving, faux-Christian evangelical bastard had a genuine moment of clarity, swallowed hard, and dared to defy the traitors in his ranks to do an unambiguously unsordid thing. I haven’t seen anything like what seems to have just happened in a good long while, if indeed I ever have. So I’m going to celebrate the moment. Good for you, Mike. In fact, no kidding, bless you. Bless your usually black and bigoted heart. Bless the opening, however briefly, of your otherwise invariably closed mind. This makes a world of difference, and may even make for a different world, not so far down the road. There are innocents alive tonight, crouching under the latest barrage of drones and cruise missiles, whose flagging defences will soon be reinforced; many who’d soon have died will now make it through. There are brave soldiers, unimaginably courageous men and women, whose bitter, brutal struggle to preserve their nation’s freedom and cultural existence now stands a better shot of being won. There’s a damnable tyrant, until just now growing more confident by the day in a victory of pure attrition to be bought with literally hundreds of thousands of lives, who’s now forced to contemplate failure and defeat, with all that could mean for his own political, and perhaps even physical, survival.
Feels good, doesn’t it?
I know, it’s best we keep at least one foot planted firmly here on the muddy ground. This latest, belated round of assistance to Ukraine is no panacea. Of course nothing’s over, not by a damn sight. Nothing’s been decided. This one aid package, coming very nearly too late to inject new energy into a beleaguered military that’s been running on fumes, rationing ammunition and ceding ground, is nothing close to a decisive factor in what still bids fair to be a long and bloody struggle. More will be needed, soon. We can’t be sure, either, that the passage of one bipartisan bill through the House marks a permanent shift in policy, or a lasting sea change in how things get done in a still dysfunctional Washington. In a couple of months, Mike Johnson could be deposed, or could give into MAGA bullying to avoid being deposed, and Donald could be back to calling the shots. A little further down the road, Trump could even become President again, this we all know, much as we find it impossible to comprehend, and then, of course, everything goes to Hell in a handcart, and not just for Ukraine.
For now, I can’t go there. For now, for just a little while, it’s enough to find hope in this wholly unexpected political near-miracle. It’s enough to wake up in a world which today is just a little less dark than it was yesterday, and hold to the belief that so much remains possible.
Slava Ukraini.
Oh, and Mike, buddy – sorry about that World’s Most Punchable Face award a few weeks back. Keep this up and I’ll bestow it on Mike Lee instead.
the needlefish 