GOP Sen. Ted Cruz received a lot of criticism after sharing a Russian propaganda video on Twitter in an apparent attempt to criticize the idea of a ‘woke, emasculated’ U.S. military.
Yeah, now we can add Kremlin Cruz to the list with Moscow Mitch. Really, Cruz, sharing Russian propaganda films?
Nice, now he just lost the support of the Military… well, our Military, the Russian army likely is 100% behind him.
Why is it that the GOP keeps calling the Dems "commies’; while their guys are supporting the Russians?
I think it’s a combination of the only comeback they can think of to being called Nazis as well as not having any grasp whatsoever on what Communism is.
If someone refers to a democrat as a communist and you ask them to explain their reasoning behind it, what that person said or did that appears to be inspired by or similar to something a communist would do, I don’t think they’d be able to answer it the majority of the time.
Can I comment here on the silliness of comparing these videos and the claims that it shows an “emasculated” military? Because, while Cruz made a prat of himself by sharing this, it had already gone viral on right wing channels.
I’m no military expert, but I think that an army’s ability to wage war has not depended on mean looks and having good trapezius muscles since firearms were a thing.
The Russian military of course includes women, and I’m sure they probably have adverts aimed at getting more women to enlist that may be more in the style of the US army’s video, and, conversely, I would assume that there are of plenty of US military ads that are more in the style of “America, fuck yeah!”, “come join and be Rambo (the version from the second movie)” or whatever.
Tellingly, there is a version of this meme that included the Chinese military too, but that got selected out of the memepool. Because, while it is more macho than the US ad, it does also prominently feature women and highlights the importance of being technically proficient and having strategic skill.
Yes the cartoon part of the US ad did make me roll my eyes, but it’s irrelevant to any individual’s competence as a soldier, nor whether the US military is “emasculated”.
The stupid thing is that it’s totally what the nations in question WANT to show in their recruiting ads. In other words, what works for the people they want to recruit.
So the Russians want a bunch of Ivan Drago looking goons. Great. Good for them. The US wants a bunch of regular people from all walks of life? Good for us. We could have just as easily put footage of SEALs or Rangers doing their thing and had something every bit as macho as the Russians did. But we chose not to; not because our military is too effete, but because we aren’t interested in recruiting just macho meathead types.
Yep, today’s Russia is the Republican Platonic ideal for the United States. A crony capitalist authoritarian regime with a heavy security state and thin veneer of democratic institutions for appearances sake.
Perhaps, but it hides that under a guise of capitalism, which is still basically what Republicans seem to want these days. Anything that lets the rich control everything seems to be good in their books (unless those rich people are shudder liberal. [Fortunately most really aren’t.])
But Ted Cruz beyond a shadow of a doubt knows what Communism is.
Senator Cruz graduated cum laude from Princeton, and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. He is not an ignorant or uneducated man. He cannot credibly claim that he didn’t know the video he was circulating was Russian propaganda.
And when he calls something “Communist,” or “Marxist,” or “socialist,” he does so knowing full well that words have meaning, and that his political opponents (i.e., Democrats and insufficiently Trumpist Republicans) are not, by any stretch of the imagination, Communists. Or socialists, or whatever.
What he’s doing is playing to the moron crowd, stoking the fires of their rage and fear. What he’s doing is quite intentionally trying to destroy the nation he has the (utterly undeserved) honor of serving in the Senate, so that he can emerge from the ensuing chaos sitting on top of the heap.
TL:DR – every word out of Ted Cruz’s mouth is a lie.
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To Cruz, the For the People Act, or S 1, is “the most radical legislation the Senate has considered” since Cruz entered office in 2013, and it’s “the most dangerous legislation pending before the U.S. Congress,” he said during a Tuesday morning meeting of the Senate Rules Committee.
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“This legislation would register millions of illegal aliens to vote. It is intended to do that,” Cruz said. And by allowing “millions of people to vote illegally,” his argument continues, it would “dilute the legal votes of American citizens.”
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[Long and thorough explanation by Politifact follows. Conclusion:]
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[Ted’s] claim is based on a requirement in the bill that directs states to adopt automatic voter registration systems, which 19 states and Washington D.C. already have. But a section of the law instructs state agencies to share information for voter registration purposes only for citizens. People are also required to attest to their citizenship under penalties of perjury.
The bill also does not change the fact that local election agencies would still be required to vet an applicant’s voting eligibility, as they have done in the past.
Although glitches and malfunctions of automatic registration systems have been recorded, they are rare and easily corrected.
I don’t know that I’d say every word out of Ted Cruz’ mouth is a lie. I would say that every word that comes out of his mouth is calculated to advance his ambition of becoming President, and whether it’s truthful or not doesn’t even come into consideration.
That pretty well describes Trump’s approach to truth as well. And apparently pretty much the entire RW mediasphere and R party.
Whatever their ambition is, be that becoming President, stealing an election, overthrowing the constitution, or simply stealing contributions from the rubes, just invent whatever sounds best suited to advancing their goals and repeat it until it turns into what their followers perceive as truth.
