UNSERIOUS PEOPLE IN AN UNSERIOUS COUNTRY

I am worried that the United States is no longer a “serious country.”

Of course, the U.S. is still a powerful country, but regarding seriousness - the discipline and maturity that allows political leaders to discern events and issues that should transcend self-interest; to set aside ego and emotionalism; to act with prudence and self-restraint - the world’s oldest democracy demonstrates it is a a weak, impoverished provincial backwater.

“I look at the world and all the threats that are out there,” Representative Michael McCaul of Texas, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said on Sunday. “And what kind of message are we sending to our adversaries when we can’t govern? When we’re dysfunctional? When we don’t even have a speaker of the House?”

Today, after a two hour food fight over who the Republicans will elect Speaker of the House which ended with Steve Scalise coming out of it with fewer supporters than he had going in - a situation that portends his inability to round up 107 additional votes to gain a majority in the House through the Republican caucus, McCaul came out and told the press that "I see a lot of threats to this country out there. One of the biggest threats to the country I see is in that room."

Representative Troy Nehls of Texas said "We are a broken conference." He went on to say that one Republican in the meeting had declared, "I don't think the Lord Jesus himself could get 217 votes."

Five minutes after I first posted this, Steve Scalise announced he is ending his attempt to become Speaker. There is at this time no Republican candidate for Speaker and no member of that caucus that has any chance of obtaining a 217 vote majority to become Speaker.

A month from this coming Monday, the government will run out of funding.

Without a Speaker, the House cannot pass any legislation.

Ukraine needs aid in their fight with Russia.

There’s a coming disaster in Gaza.

From a Russian all-out war of conquest in the middle of Europe, to a national ethnic cleansing of Armenians, to more ethnic cleansing in a near-civil war in Sudan, to more Israelis killed in a single day than ever in the country’s history, to China eying Taiwan in the midst of the outbreak of war in the Middle East, there is nowhere that is not in crisis.

Some Republicans are saying it will be necessary to have Democrats save them in voting for a Speaker. However, no Democrat will vote for Steve “David Duke without the baggage” Scalise or Jim “What sexual abuse allegations?” Jordan, the man running the Potemkin impeachment investigation against President Biden, who has already vowed that if he became Speaker he would refuse to bring a bill to the House floor to provide additional support to Ukraine.

The Republicans who are saying votes from Democrats will be necessary are still sufficiently divorced from reality that they complained that Democrats have not brought them any proposals on how to resolve the problem.

I’m so old, I can remember when the Republican Party was led by people who could define themselves as responsible stewards of U.S. foreign policy. Now, they bow in fealty to an ignorant and incoherent Donald Trump whose mental capacities are so limited now that he claims President Obama is leading the country into “World War II” and denounces Netanyahu after he thanked President Biden for his statements of support for Israel this week, and compliments the murdering terrorists of Hamas as “really smart.” And this vengeful ignoramus has a lock on capturing the Republican presidential nomination, where he will receive the support of people who cannot find either Ukraine or Iran on a map.

Matt Gaetz. Marjorie Taylor Green. Lauren Boebert. Nancy Mace. Scott Perry. Jim Jordan. James Comer. Rand Paul. Tommy Tuberville. Josh Hawley. Ted Cruz.

Are any of these people to be taken seriously? Half their fellow Republicans in congress hate them!

There’s no direction I can look where I cannot find Another Fine Mess. And no solutions appear anywhere near at hand.

What is going on now is how republics fall.

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