By Bob Gaydos

The Chinese spy balloon.

  “The dividing line in America is no longer between right and left — it’s between normal or crazy.”

    Oh, Sarah, truer words have never crossed your lips. If only you realized why.

    Most critics of today’s Republican Party have been respectful enough of the usual norms of political discourse to avoid publicly saying what they really think about Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her ilk, who have mugged the party’s cowardly leaders through threats and retribution, turning it into a cabal of, well, in Sarah’s scenario, the not normal ones.

     Yes, the newly elected governor of Arkansas, who was a daily source of misinformation as Donald Trump‘s White House press secretary, meant the other guys. That’s how detached the party is from reality today. 

      Sanders’ remarks came in the Republican response to President Biden’s State of the Union address. That typically reserved, dignified event became just another excuse for the GOP problem children to act out, because that’s pretty much all they do.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders

 But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. The State of the Union boorishness and Sanders’ response capped a week of Republican nonsense.

    It started with a Chinese spy balloon. For three days, as it floated over the United States, a chorus of Republican politicians  berated Biden for allowing this violation of U.S. air space and not shooting the balloon down over Montana, where apparently people on the ground are not as important as those in Arkansas. It made America look weak, they insisted. China is snubbing its nose at us. Who would have respect for us? Etcetera.

      Biden had actually wanted to shoot the balloon down over the open spaces, but his generals told him it would still not necessarily be safe for people on the ground. The balloon was the size of three buses. It could do considerable damage where it landed and there’s no guarantee of avoiding people or structures. Shoot it down over the water, they said. We could control whatever information the device might be able to collect and once we had it down we could see what it was collecting and, in the process, gain intelligence on China. Makes sense. That’s what was done.

     China of course denied any spying, claimed it was a weather balloon. But the Pentagon said similar balloons had entered U.S. airspace three times in the Trump administration. Republicans had no comment on that.

    The most sensible explanation I heard for the inexplicable event was that someone in the Chinese intelligence community had messed up. Sending a spy balloon over the U.S. on the eve of a visit by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to China at a time of tense relations between the two country makes no sense at all. That visit was abruptly canceled by Biden, to be reset at a later date.

    Biden then focused on his State of the Union address, which detailed the massive infrastructure package he had gotten through Congress, along with the addition of thousands of jobs, reduction of inflation and a revival of the semiconductor business in the U.S.

     He asked for Republican cooperation on passing a budget, with tax increases for the very wealthy and corporations, preserving Social Security and Medicare and raising the debt limit so that the U.S. could continue to meet its obligations.

      What he got from the Republican kids smoking in the bathroom was catcalls, boos, and shouts of “liar!” “bullshit!” The feckless speaker of the house, Kevin McCarthy tried to shush his nasty little kids, but they weren’t having it. They were on national TV and they were gonna make the most of it. Buffoons.

       Then, Republicans  followed with the Arkansas governor’s comments about what terrible shape this country is in and how Biden and the Democrats are responsible for it by making people salute their flags, teach their subjects and go to their churches. Which is, of course, the only Republican agenda.

      I think most of us normal people see this, Sarah. Just sayin’.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

Bob Gaydos is writer-in-residence at zestoforange.com.