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Watching the slow and steady Russian advance toward Ukraine over recent weeks, a stomach-turning series of thoughts took up residence in my head:
They’re not going to side with Putin, are they?
I mean, there’s no way that will be their position, will it?
They’d never be so bereft of decency and sense that they’d net out there, right?
My MAGA-leaning friends, Republican politicians, even the most morally-vacant Right Wing Network hosts and pundits wouldn’t go that far, would they?
Sure, they voted for and fell prostrate before a spineless, amoral weakling who’s showered the murderous Russian dictator with effusive praise for decades.
And yes, they repeatedly turned a blind eye as the knowledge of Russian interference in the 2016 elections surfaced, knowing the dire implications for our collective sovereignty and safety.
And yeah, they’ve steadfastly defended a violent insurrection on our Capitol designed to hold members of Congress hostage while commandeering the government and overturning a free and fair election.
And of course, they’ve spent months on thinly-veiled, childish, asinine #LETSGOBRANDON middle fingers toward a president who actually gives a damn about them and their children.
And sure, they’ve spent three years denying a virus, shunning safeguards, refusing masks, and opposing vaccines while a million of their countrymen and women were rapidly destroyed.
Even with all of that, even fully entrenched in embarrassing, blind tribalism for the past five years, they’re not going to take up the cause of a murderous, coldblooded dictator as he literally and figuratively tramples on the human rights of tens of millions of Ukrainians.
Americans don’t support sociopathic Russian warmongers under any circumstances, right?
Wrong.
Sadly and inexplicably, the response from the former president, his soulless sycophants in Congress and cable TV, and his rank-and-file MAGA fan club have managed to do the requisite mental gymnastics to lionize Vladimir Putin and denigrate President Biden, littering their broadcasts, press conferences, social media pages, and casual conversations with sickening praises for a man responsible for more deaths than any of us can fathom; a man who has been a planetary threat and a fierce adversary of America; a man who is the antithesis of what this nation aspires to and stands for.
Smarter people than I will try to break down the myriad of reasons why people who claim to be patriotic citizens of this nation would become cheerleaders for and admirers of the highest-ranking Russian mobster as he encroaches on another sovereign nation, but here’s what I do know:
People who place themselves in the camp of Vladimir Putin are not patriots, they aren’t America First, they aren’t Christians, and they aren’t pro-life.
They’re also not people who get to drape themselves in the flag, or invoke allegiance to this nation, or feign offense at kneeling football players, or spout some red, white, and blue nationalistic nonsense—because they never cared about any of it.
This is why the upcoming elections are the most pivotal in our history: because the kind of people who take up the cause of a monster like Putin while vilifying and condemning Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau are telling us who they are, how little regard they have for democracy, and how much contempt they have for America, its laws, its people, and its place in the world.
When Americans support murderous foreign dictators, they’ll welcome murderous domestic ones.
The rest of us are going to need to decide if we’ll let them.
