It is fair to say Lewis County is a more than “conservative” area. The 64.44% Lewis County vote for Joe Kent last November, by far the greatest margin in his favor of any county in the 3rd Congressional District, marks Lewis County as an area of “extremist” right-wing political views, not merely conservative.
Were Kent to have prevailed on Nov. 8,2022, he would have, by his own campaign declarations, been among the 20 Republican extremists who caused such turmoil in the selection of their own party’s Speaker of the House of Representatives. Those 20, plus additional members of the so called “Freedom Caucus,” portend an ominous two years for the House of Representatives, but more importantly for the country.
Americans can expect attacks from these extremists by virtue of them being newly empowered by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy with key committee assignments as a groveling reward for their support of his speaker candidacy. They are now in powerful committee positions to affect American government policy in three key areas and others.
They have stated a strong inclination to curtail or eliminate U.S. aid to Ukraine in the latter’s pro-democracy war against Russia and Vladimir Putin. They also have stated a desire to cut defense spending even more radically than the most left-leaning Democrats. This at a time when the world enters perhaps our most dangerous era in a long time with the expected more aggressive stance of China toward southeast Asia and Taiwan. These extremists tout an isolationist world view that is intellectually, morally and historically bankrupt. It was a disaster in the 1930s that led directly to the deaths of 55 million people worldwide and is equally a disaster today.
They are in committee positions to engineer a credit default by the U.S. government. Such an action, long popular in fiscal extremist dogma, would not bring about “fiscal responsibility” as they see it. It would certainly lead to a severe American and global economic recession and a rise of the Chinese yuan as the world’s reserve currency. It would be the beginning of the end of U.S. economic power. If the government stops paying its bills, also expect all programs, including Social Security and Medicare, to cease functioning.
These election deniers promise to “investigate the investigators.” They propose to defund the FBI and the Justice Department and to impeach Attorney General Merrick Garland and a host of other cabinet members, and possibly President Joe Biden. In service to deranged conspiracy theories and a provably corrupt former president, they will try to derail the rule of law.
These are not conservatives. They are nihilists and anarchists. They have no ideas about how to manage foreign threats, economics, the rule of law, immigration, public safety, health care, scientific facts, climate change or anything else. Their goal is simply to burn it all down. They are the arsonists and chaos agents of Donald Trump’s “American Carnage” and the ensuing fascist “salvation” from that chaos.
It is not Lewis County’s “conservatism” that invites ridicule. It is the area’s attachment to extreme views that have been widely and seriously discredited many times.
Marty Ansley
Cinebar
