Sunday, February 21, 2021

America, united at last!

      Joe Biden has been president for only a month and a day, and already the country has come together, as one, something I would have not thought possible, never mind be accomplished so quickly. Democrat and Republican and Independent, from the far left to the far right, joining in unanimous agreement, a single people, united, at least in one regard:
     Ridiculing Ted Cruz.
     How stupid can a man be? Even a congressman? Even Ted Cruz. His flight southward Wednesday was one of those delicious slow-motion political train wrecks that unfolds like a glorious flower opening: first the glimpses of Cruz on Twitter, in his work-a-daddy gray polo and snazzy Texas mask, rolling his big black bag through the airport. Really? Not somebody who looks like Ted Cruz? Can it be? It is! Senator Ted Cruz, fleeing to
 CancĂșn to loll on a beach while the state of Texas suffers. Sans power. Sans heat. Sans food, water, hope, help. 
     Let them eat carnitas. While Texas plunges into misery, Ted is plunging into the warm surf. His hometown of Houston freezing while the only thing frozen about Cruz is the margarita in his paw. The jokes write themselves.
     It would look improbable in a Christopher Buckley novel. Yet so delicious real, sparkling like waves in the bright sun. And it just kept getting better. Cruz rushes back and ... wait for it! ... blames his daughters—they made him do it. Ted Cruz throws his daughters under the bus. Not his fault; he was just trying to be a good dad (it's a shame we couldn't get his daughters to ask Cruz to stop betraying the country; apparently he has to do whatever they say). Then his wife's giddy let's-get-OUT-of-here! email chain, handed over to the press by her supposed friends. Meee-yow! The marvel of Cruz actually admitting that yeah, maybe, he might have done something unwise. The heavens crack. Unprecedented!
     And then, the cherry on the top: Snowflake, Cruz's little dog. Left behind, alone in the freezing house that was too cold for his family to tolerate. Gazing pathetically out the door, captured by a press photographer. This is why I don't write fiction. What kind of man does that? I wouldn't leave my little dog alone in a warm house.*
     Was there a voice defending Cruz except his own? I didn't hear it. I can't imagine it. No, the entire nation rolling on the ground and kicking its legs in the air, grasping its belly and gasping for breath. If snark and sarcasm and ridicule were kilowatts, the state of Texas would be glowing like a hot coal by now. 
     It was all so much fun that I am reluctant to spoil the fun and point out something serious: the man is a traitor. Not a ha-ha traitor, or a thoughtless coward traitor, or a traitor to good politics and responsible citizenship. No, a betray your country during its moment of peril traitor. Ted Cruz turned his back on America, echoing Trump's vote fraud lies that fired up the Jan. 6 mob, then voting to toss out millions of legitimate votes afterward. Taking a pickaxe to the basis of democracy. Considering that real, deathless, damning, damaging perfidy, his little field trip to Mexico is nada, as they say down there, on the moral lapse scale. 
    But it is a lot of fun. 
    And a hopeful development. Beto O'Rourke almost beat him last time. Everyone hated Ted Cruz before. After four years of Ted Cruz's lips applied lamprey-like to Donald Trump's capacious ass, plus the grotesque spectacle of his powder to the Ritz-Carleton to soak up some rays while Texas shivers, well, maybe Cruz isn't the strategic genius who is going to succeed in bringing autocracy to the United States after Donald Trump finally sinks into his tar pit of bottomless grievance. Maybe he isn't so smart after all, Princeton and Harvard notwithstanding.
    Americans can forgive a traitor, obviously. We have a much harder time forgiving a fool. 

*The news that there was a security guard/dogsitter tending to Snowflake loped along late enough as to not spoil the deliciousness of the pup's arrival into the story, too much.

10 comments:

  1. People have short memories. Cruz doesn't run again until 2024; by then most people will have long forgotten this episode. Of course, they might remember if they're still paying off $15,000 electric bills, but I doubt it. It seems that being the human equivalent of a piece of shit is an advantage to Republican voters.

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  2. "Was there a voice defending Cruz except his own?"

    Actually, the odious Matt Gaetz suggested that Cruz should not have apologized.

    "Americans can forgive a traitor, obviously. We have a much harder time forgiving a fool."

    What a frightening thought. But absolutely true. Sedition is forgivable in the alternate reality the GOP exists in today.

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    Replies
    1. Dinesh D'ouchbag actually compliment Cruz fir leaving the state and not using up valuable resources.

      Delete
  3. Let us eat tres leches, I guess?

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    Replies
    1. Marvelous quip. I was on a cruise once in which a dinner companion asked if I knew how the "tray lesh" tasted and I had the distinct pleasure of telling her that it was not French, but Spanish for 3 milks and it tasted terrific.

      john

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  4. What makes the schadenfreude especially sweet is how sarcastically snotty Cruz was about California's power problems during wildfires.

    There have been some lame attempts among right-wing pundits to defend him, mostly along the lines of "What could you have expected him to do?" One guy actually commended Cruz for not being in Texas to consume its scarce food and water.

    How pathetic is that? They're actually admitting that their guy is a useless waste of food and water, and that Texas is better off without him.

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  5. Indeed, Scribe and mellowjohn, this episode provided the basis for yet another chapter in the ongoing "You can't make up parodies any more ridiculous than reality" volume, which must prove to be a real problem for writers at The Onion.

    Josh Barro, joking, at 9:21 a.m. on Feb. 18: "Ted Cruz is just doing his part to relieve demand on his state’s overburdened power grid by going somewhere else. The really irresponsible elected officials are the ones who didn’t go to Cancun."

    Dinesh freaking D'Souza, not joking, at 10:05 a.m. on Feb. 18: "What could @tedcruz do if he were here in Texas? I’m hard-pressed to say. If he’s in Cancun, that means he’s not using up valuable resources of energy, food and water that can now be used by someone else. This is probably the best thing he could do for the state right now "

    Ay-yi-yi!

    https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status/1362443093371482114

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  6. Let’s not write Trump off so soon. He’s addressing a Conservative PAC in Orlando this week. He will be idolized by Florida’s governor Desantis who just announced that the flag will be flown at half-mast in honor of Rush Limbaugh. I’m not making that up.

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    Replies
    1. Which flag? THat of Florida or that of the U. S.???
      Where does he get the authority to lower the U.S. flag?

      Delete

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