The Republican Party has hobbled and crippled the United States of America in a time of war. 

Republicans in the United States Senate continue to do nothing while one of their own, Senator Tommy Tuberville, decapitates America’s military.

For months, Tuberville has used his committee position to block the appointment of any officers to any position of command within the United States military. He announced today that he’s doubling down on his attack on America’s military preparedness, no matter the Hamas attack on Israel.

Mitch McConnell could remove Tuberville from his committee assignment with a flick of the pen. But instead Mitch confines himself to a few grumbling pronouncements that he “disagrees” with Tuberville and does nothing. Senate Republicans are letting Tuberville cripple the military of the United States of America.

Tuberville began this mis-use of his power by claiming that he was doing it to somehow force the military to stop providing abortions for America’s active duty personnel. He did this despite the fact that this is a policy that the military does not have the power to overwrite, and despite the fact that weakening our military in this butcher shop world ours could get a lot of people killed, including a lot of Americans.

One thing I’ve learned to my horror is that the term “pro life” doesn’t really mean all that much to many self-anointed “pro life” advocates. It appears to primarily be a get out of accountability free card that these “pro life” people use as a pass to do any dastardly thing they want to anyone they please, up to and including attacking the United States of America from within, trying to overturn our democracy and install a rapist/grifter/traitor as an unelected dictator.

Tuberville played the pro life card, and a lot of pro life people bought the lie.

However, Tuberville is almost as stupid as he is destructive. Instead of sticking with his “pro life” excuse for attacking our military, he recently switched to the inane claim that the military is “woke,” and that is why he’s decided to cripple our military readiness as a nation.

“Woke” is a word that Republicans use when they want to provoke outrage without any reason at all. In their usage, “woke” has no specific meaning. It’s a term used to focus the outrage of the Republican base and to excuse outrageous behavior on the part of Republican politicians It’s a way of painting a target on someone and telling the crowd to go at them with full on venomous lies and hate.

Republicans have used the word “woke” to focus the hatred of their flat-liner base on cans of beer, cartoon characters, football players, hapless election workers. I honestly think they do it part of the time for their own amusement, just to feel that sexual frisson of power when they say “woke” and watch the crowd attack some innocent person.

Of course, it does have significant racial freight, since the phrase “stay woke” began among America’s black people meaning stay aware of the the discrimination and prejudice hiding behind propaganda.

But Tuberville’s claim that he was decapitating America’s military because the military is “woke” is not only an obvious lie, it pretty much tosses his earlier claim that he’s doing it to be “pro life” in the toilet.

Switching reasons for his actions midstream made it clear that he was show boating and nothing else. Before that, the possibility lingered that stupid Tommy Tuberville actually thought he was taking a pro life stand of some sort. But, while he does give every appearance of being that stupid, it turns out that this time he’s just being venial and a showboat and demonstrating that, like the rest of his party, he doesn’t give one care about the United States of America.

So. We have the Republicans in the United States Senate, decapitating our military like a bunch of termites, chewing on the main beams of a house.

Meanwhile, over in the House, we have a bunch of Neo Nazi Republican thugs who have managed to — get ready for this now —  decapitate themselves. The Middle East is going up in flames. Biden and NATO are working to prevent Putin’s Hitlerian dreams of empire in Ukraine from sucking the whole world into World War III, and the Republicans have brought our government to a clanking halt with their corruption, craziness and total lack of patriotism and decency.

This is the same Republican Party — in fact, it’s the same people — who supported Trump in his attempt to overturn our democracy and make himself a dictator on 1/6.

If we don’t stop electing these traitors, they’re going to kill us all.