“A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends”. - Henry A. Wallace
Texas Senator Ted Cruz is somewhat a classic oxymoron. He’s a Harvard-educated twit, an astute buffoon, a circus clown ringmaster. That makes him an embarrassment to many Texans and a national security threat as a political leader in this country, though the term “leader” is a stretch for Mr. Cruz. The megaphone his political position allows him to spew conspiracy theories and violent rhetoric can and probably will contribute to deadly consequences for some.
A passage from James Parker's article in The Atlantic, titled Heavenly Hackwork draws a close resemblance between gentlemen in Elizabethan London and GOP pretentious-types like Cruz:
“a gentleman in Elizabethan London, a gentleman of more or less regular means and habits, ...had a passion for virtue and a genius for cruelty. ”They had wonderful manners and barbaric inclinations, lovely clothes and terrible diseases. ”They oscillated madly between the abstract and the corporeal. "
Cruz has been a fawning loyalist to the Big Liar who instigated the insurrection on our Capitol last year. And in the recent CPAC Convention held in Dallas, he was encouraging violence again against Democrats, calling them “barbarians” and “nitwits”. It was this type of irresponsible rhetoric that stoked right-wing extremists to attack the Capitol and is a harbinger of fascism.
And now he and the GOP leadership are taking Donald Trump’s lead again with hyperbolic and malicious lies about a civil search and seizure by the FBI on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Florida residence. An act that was only made public by the former President himself, serving purely to roil his devoted followers in the hopes they will once again enact violence to defend his criminal behavior. Their feigned outrage sounds similar to the language they criticized the BLM movement of following George Floyd’s death by Minneapolis cops.
In his pathetic attempt to portray Maximus, the lead role in the movie, The Gladiator, Cruz, speciously claiming to represent 30 million Texans, crowed to the crowd, “It’s like the old Roman Colosseum where you slam on a breastplate and you grab a battle axe and you go fight the barbarians. As they say in the military world, it is a target-rich environment.”
It’s remarkable that this man (again, “man” is a stretch) who self-emasculated when he kissed the ring of Trump at the 2016 GOP convention, months after Trump made derogatory remarks about Cruz’s wife and father, and constantly referred to him as “Lyin Ted”, now tries to convince his audience he is Trump’s BFF.
The pretense that Cruz represents the best interest of his constituents was exposed as a fraud when he fled Winter Storm Uri to the warm and cozy climate of Cancun while thousands of Texans suffered from the Texas grid power outages. And what supporter of our military troops, who’ve suffered serious health conditions and even death from the burn pits in Iran and Afghanistan, would fist-bump a fellow Republican congressman after they blocked a bill to fund the health care these vets require.
The stunt, a slap in the face of military victims of those burn pits, was merely a temporary power play by our two Texas senators, angered because the Democrats who had successfully moved a package of tax, climate and health care provisions through the budget reconciliation process that allowed them to bypass Republicans. Not an uncommon practice by the GOP Party under Mitch McConnell’s leadership.
Cruz was also part of the GOP effort to block part of a bill that allows Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices and put a $35 cap on the life-saving Insulin prescriptions. And let’s not forget Cruz’s backing of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority who flipped a 50 year old court precedent that gave women control of their bodies in deciding whether or not to end unwanted pregnancies. Geez, with representation like this, why worry about what Democrats do?
Ted Cruz may not be up for re-election this fall, nor will his BFF. But Texas voters who have supported them in the past can rethink their decision, by either voting Democratic November 8th or staying home this election cycle and send a message to the GOP that would take away the power you’ve given them and which they have in turn abused.
Act now while your choices still count, unlike what exists in fascist, autocratic states
