What Is It Good For?

 I know, it's hard to keep track of what is happening across the globe when things are so very tumultuous here within our own borders. The Middle East is continuing in its near eighty year run of having some sort of armed conflict going on. Currently it is Iran and Israel who are shooting at one another, with the ongoing ugly mess in Gaza has been pushed briefly to the back burner. Those folks are in a tie with the Civil War in Myanmar, where a seemingly never-ending series of insurgencies have been taking place since the end of World War II. 

Then there's the war in Ukraine. A relative newcomer to this list, but they can lay claim to an eight year conflict that began with Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity back in 2014. The full-on Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February, 2022. You may remember that just a little before that Americans learned the Latin phrase "quid pro quo" as it related to the then US "president" trying to make a deal with the President of Ukraine. "I'll give you weapons if you give me help me get some dirt on my political rival." 

Since then, aid to Ukraine has been a political hot potato here in the United States, with many in the Republican Party seemingly happy to have Russia continue on blasting its way to overwhelming the recently dignified sovereign state of Ukraine. Now, with the rock in Israel and the hard place in Ukraine coming together to create a diplomatic conundrum that sometimes seems more like a game show than a policy discussion. The previous Speaker of the House, Republican Kevin McCarthy was deemed "unsuitable to govern" by members of his own party and removed from his seat. The unsuitable part was apparently that he was actively courting Democrats to collaborate on solutions to the country's problems. Like the War in Ukraine. 

So along comes Mike Johnson, deemed to be just the right amount of god-fearing conservative to fill McCarthy's chair. With an election swarming into this mix to make things even more confounding, Speaker Johnson has suddenly found himself in quite the pickle. Honor his party's increasingly bozo demands, or work across the aisle to find actual solutions to the country's and by extension the world's problems. “I think that Vladimir Putin would continue to march through Europe if he were allowed. I think he might go to the Balkans next. I think he might have a showdown with Poland, or one of our NATO allies.” 

What? This won't make Marge Greene happy. She's going to want to turn the Speakership over again until she lands in it. Or her favorite dictator wins the election in November. Then maybe we can look forward to the beginning of our won civil war. 

Sleep tight, America!