(Dobbs) The Red Lines, If They Were Ever There, Are Gone
We have our answers, and they are hideous.
In the past week we’ve had a pair of perplexing questions answered. Sad to say, the answers are appalling.
Overseas, in the war for Ukraine, we’ve all been wondering, how far will Vladimir Putin go, how brutal will he be, to win the war he started? Surely there is a red line that even he will not be willing to cross.
We now see even better than before, there’s not.
Here at home, in the war for decency and democracy, we’ve been wondering, do Trumpified Republicans have moral red lines that they won’t be willing to cross?
We now see even better than before, they don’t.
Let’s start with Ukraine, where after the attack on the multi-billion-dollar bridge that Russia built to connect its motherland with the Crimean Peninsula— rightfully Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula— Putin’s Cruise missiles and weaponized drones hammered every corner of the country.
Were they aimed at the Ukrainian military? At its soldiers, its weapons, its bases? Were they calculated to help Russia’s troops? No. They were only calculated to hurt Ukraine’s civilians. They were aimed at “infrastructure,” civilian infrastructure. And they hit their marks. In large swaths of the nation, people lost homes, people lost water, people lost power. And people lost their lives.
This is hardly a new tactic for the ungodly Russian president. In the week before the bridge attack, his missiles rained down on the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia. As I write this, the civilian death toll is 43. That came on the heels of the unearthing of yet another mass grave, in the eastern city of Izium. Some of the more than 440 corpses exhumed there showed signs of torture.
So no, this is not the first sign we’ve seen of Putin’s barbarity. But in the scope of his attacks, it is the biggest. Yet rather than repelling his supporters, it is inspiring them to call for more. A war correspondent for a century-old Russian newspaper called Komsomolskaya Pravda, which means “Young Communist League Truth,” demanded that his country “hammer Ukraine into the 18th century, without meaningless reflection on how this will affect the civilian population.”
So far, it seems, that is Putin’s playbook. Anyone but a madman might stop. But evidently that’s not on the table. Finland’s president, who has known Putin for many years, told a news conference Monday, “I think he is not capable of taking a defeat.”
There could of course be backlash for Russia. Despite their “friendship with no limits,” China’s foreign ministry said as Russia’s missiles bombarded Ukraine, “All countries deserve respect for their sovereignty and territorial integrity.” India, which has not severed its ties with Russia, declared that it is “deeply concerned at the escalation of the conflict.”
What’s more, a former speechwriter for Vladimir Putin, Abbas Gallyamov, said of the massive retaliation against Ukraine, “The response was supposed to show power, but in fact it showed powerlessness. There’s nothing else the army can do.” That will not move more Russians to rally around the flag.
It is moving Ukraine’s allies though, including the U.S., to send even better weapons systems even faster than before.
But there also might be backlash for the West. Namely, a nuclear strike. Whether tactical, with geographical limits, or strategic, with widespread desolation, the prospect is ghastly, but it no longer sounds like a red line a cornered warmonger like Putin wouldn’t cross. Or maybe better to call him a cornered terrorist. Russia’s first foreign minister after the Soviet Union collapsed, Andrei Kozyrev, called him as much yesterday, saying of Putin, “Terror is the only thing left, like for any miserable terrorist in the world.”
Then, on the domestic front, there’s the Republican party that panders to Donald Trump, denuded of its facade about family values by a former girlfriend of Herschel Walker, the party’s candidate for the Senate in Georgia. Last week she showed evidence to The Daily Beast that in addition to fathering one of her children out of wedlock (as he had other women with other children), he also paid for an abortion— even sending a “Get Well” card— another time she was pregnant. In case the point is lost on anyone, Walker, who claims he is a “devout Christian,” has gone all-in against abortions, likening them to murder and not even allowing for exceptions if a pregnancy comes from incest or rape, nor even to save the life of a pregnant woman.
Has this become a “Come to Jesus” moment for Trumpian Republicans, a time to choose moral strength over a political prize? Hardly.
”I don’t care if Herschel Walker paid to abort endangered baby eagles” said former NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch, “I want control of the Senate.”
The day after Walker’s ex-girlfriend went public, an evangelical pastor at a Southern Baptist Church in Georgia, with the candidate by his side, urged his congregation to pray for Herschel Walker. It was described as the washing away of sin. Seems to me more like the washing away of conscience.
Another Georgia pastor, Jentezen Franklin in Gainesville, says he can write off Walker’s immoral past because “I always vote for policy more than personality.” Evidently more than character, too.
And right on the heels of the ex-girlfriend’s disclosure about Walker, Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, which bills itself as “the leading voice for the family in our nation's halls of power,” formally endorsed him, ignoring the dark shadow of the woman’s revelations but praising Walker’s story “about the power of grace, redemption, and the opportunity America still provides.”
A convenient case of denial when domination is the goal.
It’s worth remembering, incidentally, Walker is not running against a godless man. The incumbent Democrat he is challenging is Raphael Warnock, still the senior pastor at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church. That’s the church of Martin Luther King.
The journal Psychology Today ran a piece midway through the Trump presidency titled, “A Complete Psychological Analysis of Trump's Support.” It offered fourteen explanations why, even after Trump was heard saying on tape, “When you’re a star, you can do anything, grab them by the pussy,” people stood by him. The very first explanation was, Practicality Trumps Morality.
Remember, Mitch McConnell said after Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial, “This is not about this president. It’s not about anything he’s accused of doing. It’s about flipping the Senate.” For that matter, remember that Trump himself said during the 2016 campaign, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”
As it turns out, he got that right. The party he has proselytized would give him a pass. They’ve given one to Herschel Walker. They’ve given one to the January 6th insurrectionists.
Dan Rather summed it up in a commentary on his Substack site last week when he wrote about Trump’s allusion to violence against Mitch McConnell— the “death wish” posting— then Trump’s comment, “Must immediately seek help and advise (sic) from his China loving wife, Coco Chow!” Rather wrote, “If you had expected Republican politicians to rally in disgust around some version of ‘this finally crosses a line’, you would be disappointed. But I imagine few of you expected anything of the sort.”
It’s appalling that he’s right. Any wishful thinking that Donald Trump’s followers have a moral red line that they won’t be willing to cross is shattered. And if Georgia voters ignore family values and Herschel Walker wins his race there, then all our questions about the family values crowd are answered.
Over almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies and politics at home and international crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, and the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.
Increasingly i fear that much of humanity is blind to “red lines.” Hard to recognize one when “leaders” are blind to moral limits.
Since Putin likes the finer things in life, like opulent homes and yachts, one would think that he would not like to see it all go up in nuclear smoke. There must be a red line that he will not cross.