In his letter of Aug. 22, Joe Kent assailed Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez for her vote against the veterans funding bill. The vote in the House of Representatives was 219-211, strictly along party lines.
House Democrats voted against the bill because of several amendments attached to it by radical right-wing MAGA carnies like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz and Jim Jordan who Joe Kent says he would be allied with if elected to Congress. As approved by the Republican members, the bill would strictly ban any abortion services for veterans, restrict LGBT veteran care, loosen gun ownership restrictions for veterans found incapable of managing their own affairs and prohibit the VA from enforcing any COVID-19 mask mandates, among other culture war issues.
The bill has no chance of passing the Senate. An overwhelming majority of Americans support the position of the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court abortion compromise. (See recent election results in red states Kansas, Kentucky and Ohio.) Kent and the radical right-wing Republicans are trying to impose minority rule. Extremism.
Donald Trump is a con man. He conned Joe Kent at the Dover Air Base where he met the plane carrying the body of Kent’s wife. As Trump’s onetime Chief of Staff General John Kelly wrote in his book, Trump’s real view of military personnel who die in combat is that they are “losers and suckers.” I respect Kent’s grief over the tragic loss of his wife, but grief and grievance is a place of great vulnerability to a con man like Trump.
Trump has said that Vladimir Putin would never have invaded Ukraine if he were president because “I was the apple of his eye.” Kent’s stances on NATO and Ukraine echo Trump’s words, words that suspiciously never fail to praise Putin. I am pretty sure neither President Eisenhower nor President Kennedy ever claimed to be the apple of Nikita Khrushchev’s eye.
Kent called Russia’s demands for Ukrainian territory “very reasonable.” Putin continues to prosecute that devastating war because he believes a Trump win in the 2024 U.S. election will result in an American withdrawal from and destruction of NATO, giving him a free hand to subdue Ukraine.
Putin has long stated his admiration for Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, and he is every bit as ruthless as the old Bolshevik. The recent public execution of Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin demonstrates that. It is utterly naive to believe his stated goal of just wanting Ukraine as a buffer zone. A buffer zone to what? To the prosperity and freedom of western Europe? Putin’s goal is to destroy western democracy and make the world safe for dictators like him. NATO has never been a threat to Russia but it does deter Putin’s real ambition to restore the old Russian Empire which included Alaska and most of eastern Europe and the Baltic countries.
MAGA isolationists make the same mistake as their America First predecessors in the 1930s. They think a withdrawal from the world will make America great and/or safe, but if dictators and autocrats succeed in their quest for world domination, eventually the United States will have to bow to political and economic compromises that betray our free and democratic ideals. Or worse. Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt understood that. Right now is the most dangerous moment for democracy since World War II. Donald Trump has already made those compromises.
Trump says everything is “negotiable.” For him, good and evil are “negotiable.” Joe Kent follows in his footsteps.
Marty Ansley
Cinebar
