At the Republican debate last night, Senator Ted
Cruz said, “[P]olitical correctness is killing people.”
I’m sure that what the senator actually meant to
say was, “Bashing political correctness is a useful device for assholes like me
to appeal to the bigots in the electorate.”
OK, maybe not. Maybe he really meant what he said,
even though what he said was bull hockey, if you know what I mean.
In case you
don’t know what I mean, what I mean is bullshit.
If Senator Cruz is really hostile to political
correctness, he is hostile to a general sensibility that says it is a bad idea,
even unethical, to disparage people using racist epithets and to otherwise
promote negative stereotypes. If you think people shouldn’t be treated with racist
or ethnocentric contempt, you too believe in political correctness.
Naturally, some people take the idea of universal respect
for people too far and use political correctness as a way to strike a
moralistic pose or to pat themselves on the back. Shame on them. But shame,
even more, on people like Ted Cruz, who obviously practice political
correctness themselves while striking a moralistic pose suggesting they are
dead set against it.
Of all the people in both parties now running for
president (all 1,674 of them), Cruz is the worst. He is undoubtedly an
intelligent man, which makes him that much more odious. He, more than any of his
rivals, reminds me of Richard Nixon. People who listened to Nixon’s White House
tapes have reported with disgust that every staff meeting seemed to be focused on how
to advance his, Nixon’s, political interests. Never was the issue of what’s good
for the nation brought up. I imagine that if we could hear Ted Cruz’s thoughts,
we would be similarly struck by their repugnantly selfish and utterly unethical qualities.
The man just seems to breathe a raging, narcissistic ambition.
He has been called out for his declaration that if
he were president he would “carpet bomb” ISIS. This is a lie. Nobody in the
American military believes that carpet bombing is an appropriate or effective tactic. Cruz probably knows this, but in his inimitably sleazy
way, he broadcasts his commitment to carpet bombing as a way to sound tough. “President
Obama is such a wimp that he refuses to carpet bomb ISIS and kill hundreds of
thousands of civilians, but I will!”
When Cruz was called on his carpet bombing claim
during the debate, he tried to double-talk his way out with this gem: “[I] would
carpet bomb where ISIS is, not a city, but the location of the troops.”
News flash, Senator Cruz, the ISIS fighters are in
the cities.
Imagine for a moment that Ted Cruz were a decent, honest man.
I know, I know, but just try.
With his intelligence and his superior debating
skills, he could bring a lot to a presidential campaign. But instead, he insults
us with a well rehearsed, thoroughly dishonest series of sound bites, many of
which he himself does not believe, but which he has calculated might attract naïve
voters to his cause. Gross.
But, you ask, doesn’t every politician do this?
Well, except maybe for Bernie Sanders, I think they all do it to some extent. But Cruz is
special because that is all he does. So now I find myself watching with fascinated
horror to see just how high the Republican electorate is willing to lift this duplicitous poser. May the Force protect us.
(Thanks to Jezebel for the picture.)
