What Feckless Republicans Can Learn From Navalny

Today's Republican Party has become the party of treason as Republican office holders up and down the ballot embrace and prostitute themselves to an individual, Donald Trump, who has flat out stated he would suspend the U.S. Constitution and longs to be a dictator.   Meanwhile, the Republican Party continues to push anti-democracy policies that seek to disenfranchise voters not supportive of the party's racist and extreme agenda driven by evangelicals and white supremacist among the party base.  Worse yet, Trump and these Republican officeholders are increasingly are doing the bidding of  Russian dictator and war criminal Vladimir Putin.  The image above shows Trump's servility to Putin, but is also emblematic of how Republican officeholders prostitute themselves to Trump and the party base which has no use for true morality and decency. To the extent evangelicals pay any heed to the Bible, it is only to cherry pick Old Testament passages to justify their hatred and mistreatment of others much as slaveholders prior to the Civil War cherry picked Bible passages to justify slavery and later Jim Crow laws.  Other than hijacking the "Christian" moniker, there is nothing Christian about these people.  A column in the New York Times calls out these politicians and their base of support in the wake of Putin's murder of Alexei Navalny, Russia's leading dissident who wanted a democratic Russia.   Here are excepts:

Vladimir Putin’s Russia has just become even more bleak and soulless with the reported death in an Arctic prison of Aleksei Navalny, the 47-year-old dissident who showed immense bravery and humor as he tried to bring democracy to his homeland.

Navalny’s strength, resilience and courage contrast with the fecklessness of so many Americans dealing with Putin. From Donald Trump to Tucker Carlson, a remarkable number of American leaders and their mouthpieces roll over before the Russian president.

“Why do Trump and his congressional enablers want to further appease this Russian tyrant?” Senator Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, asked after the news broke of Navalny’s death.

The most fundamental test of our fortitude is simple: Will the United States continue to support Ukraine as it tries to fight off Russian invaders? I hope Navalny’s sacrifice helps us find the will to stand up to Putin.

Navalny was Russia’s foremost dissident and opposition leader but also emerged as something of a Mandela of our age. Despite being poisoned and repeatedly punished with long bouts of isolation in remote prisons, Navalny stood unbroken. He continued to mock Putin and denounce the invasion of Ukraine.

His wit and refusal to bow to authority made him a Kremlin nightmare. Sent to the gulag, he mischievously attempted to unionize prisoners and guards alike.

No wonder Navalny is reported dead. So many brave Russians — journalists, lawyers, political figures — have died after challenging the authorities. It’s baffling how many Americans have responded in the opposite way, by acting as Putin’s poodles.

Tucker Carlson managed a 127-minute interview with Putin this month without even asking a single question about Navalny. It was such a softball interview that Putin professed exasperation at the deference and said he wished he’d been asked sharper questions.

Carlson even embarked on what seemed a promotional tour of Putin’s Russia, praising Moscow. . . . He doesn’t seem to understand that Russians spend four times as much of their income on food as Americans, and that prices are cheap because Russia is a poor country with a weak currency.

It is of course true that Moscow has a beautiful subway, and I’ve no objection to commentators pointing that out — or wondering aloud why American cities can’t have mass transit as nice. But it is profoundly troubling when American sycophants seem eager to whitewash Putin’s brutality, largely ignore his victims and score political points at home in ways that burnish Russian dictatorship and diminish American democracy.

Today’s right-wing affection for Putin is an echo of the traditional myopia that ideologues have had for overseas dictators, including the left’s onetime fondness for Mao. Today’s version, led by Trump himself, is dangerous — witness Trump’s recent suggestion that he might invite Russia to attack NATO allies that did not pay enough for arms — and it’s also oblivious to Putin’s long history of brutality at home and abroad.

Putin solidified his grip on power in 1999, in the aftermath of several mysterious apartment bombings that killed more than 300 people. Putin blamed Chechen terrorists and began a war in Chechnya that presented him as a decisive, tough patriot defending his nation’s interests. However, there have long been suspicions that the bombings were orchestrated by Russian security authorities themselves, to give Moscow an excuse to crack down. We still don’t know for sure, but my view and that of many others is that on balance the evidence suggests that the authorities were more likely to have planned the bombings than Chechen terrorists.

In other words, from the very dawn of his rule, Putin has been associated with repression, deceit and brutality toward his own people. Russia has also destabilized or attacked its neighbors, from Georgia to Moldova, Estonia and Ukraine, and according to the F.B.I. interfered in the U.S. presidential election in 2016.

That is the Russia that Navalny stood against. And that is the Russia that too many Americans have buttressed by opposing aid to Ukraine.

It’s natural to see the loss of Russia’s most important opposition figure as a sign of Putin’s commanding power, but I wonder if it isn’t also a sign of his insecurity.

A Russian dissident, Vladimir Kara-Murza, wrote a few days ago in The Washington Post, “Even from a Russian prison, I can see Putin’s weakness.” And Navalny himself once said: “If they decide to kill me, it means that we are incredibly strong. We need to utilize this power.”

Those are words that Russians and Ukrainians alike should take to heart, but it’s also a message to American members of Congress and right-wing partisans who have become Moscow’s fellow travelers. May Navalny’s heroic sacrifice wake them up.