Ted Cruz- Wisdom and knowledge don't mean what you think they do

How can someone with two Ivy League degrees be so f*****g stupid and mean-spirited?

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) needs a blowjob.

Ah! how little knowledge does a man acquire in his life. He gathers it up like water, but like water it runs between his fingers, and yet, if his hands be but wet as though with dew, behold a generation of fools call out, 'See, he is a wise man!' Is it not so?

• H. Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure

God provided wood as well as the skill of the carpenter. He provided marble as well as the skill of the sculptor. But by far, the greatest thing that He provided us with was the freedom to use the provisions in whatever manner we might choose. And the greatest skill that He granted us was the wisdom to use them wisely. Therefore, if we have abused the freedom and abandoned the wisdom we will destroy a million trees and turn quarries of marble to powder. And at that point, we will have nothing to build with and everything to grieve for.

• Craig D. Lounsbrough

Sen. Ted Cruz, by most conventional standards, is not a stupid man. He has a B.A. from Princeton and a J.D. from Harvard. You don’t get those by lacking functional brain cells. And his ascent through various levels of the federal and Texas governments shows that he knows how to politically maneuver his way to career advancement.

But that’s the most significant part of Sen. Cruz’s problem- Ted Cruz is all about Ted Cruz. He’s shamelessly self-interested, to the point where he publicly supported the same Presidential candidate- Donald Trump- who called his wife ugly. (I daresay if Orange Jesus had denigrated any of our spouses, we’d have kicked his ass and thrown him into traffic, no?)

That must have made for some interesting pillow talk in the Cruz house, eh?

Of course, being a lawyer, Ted Cruz has an overdeveloped knack for arguing that the sky is green, and if you don’t believe that…well, that’s your problem.

There is a unifying factor in nearly everything Republicans have to say about immigration these days. It is that, upon hearing any of it, a normal person who thinks normal things cannot help but think, “OK, I know this is offensive, I can see that it is offensive, but what does it actually even mean?”

Unless that’s just me. It could be just me.

Recently, Senator Ted Cruz from Texas sat down with Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo to discuss the border and immigration. This has been the topic du jour on the Right lately, I assume because even they got a little tired of crying about drag queens all the livelong day. And what else do they have, really?

During this discussion, Cruz complained that those he considers to be on the “far left” — such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and others who would be relatively centrist in most European nations — think that America is “fundamentally illegitimate.”

Bartiromo, Queen of the Softball Question ©, is not known for being the most formidable interviewer a Republican could face. So it was that Sen. Cruz had something of a home-field advantage.

No one, especially Sen. Cruz or Maria Bartiromo, believes that any Democrat thinks America is “fundamentally illegitimate.” It’s hyperbole- they know it, we know it…but the Fox News viewers swallow it like it’s mother’s milk. It’s terrible kabuki, performative propaganda, and cheap bullshit fed to the drooling, knuckle-dragging masses because they absorb it like a dry sponge.

Rather than debating the issues on their merits or comparing and contrasting Democratic and Republican ideas (oh, wait; sorry…Republicans have no ideas), Sen. Cruz has chosen to demagogue immigration. Rather than talking about the issue in terms of people and the humanitarian crises behind it, the junior Senator from Texas has decided to dehumanize immigrants. He’s spouting “terrorism,” “radical open borders crowd,” and accusing some Democrats of believing America’s “existence is fundamentally illegitimate.”

No reasonable person- Democrat OR Republican- would believe that to be true even for a moment.

That none of these things will do anything to address, much less resolve, the problems contributing to the issues at our southern border is beside the point for Sen. Cruz. He appears to have no interest in the thousands who are suffering. To him, immigration is a political issue to be squeezed for every last ounce of political benefit he can wring from it.

Cruz said politicians like Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), along with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and the “radical open borders crowd,” are driving Democrats’ agenda and believe that it’s wrong to have a border.

“Some of those nuts believe America shouldn’t exist, that our existence is fundamentally illegitimate,” Cruz told Fox’s Maria Bartiromo.

That’s perhaps one of the most meaningless yet slanderous sentences I’ve listened to in quite some time. Sen. Cruz manages to defame and question the patriotism of three Democrats the Far-Right traditionally hates while accusing them of precisely nothing specific or concrete.

I’m not an attorney, but that seems borderline libelous…or just another day of Ted Cruz flapping his gums.

What does that even mean? Is it like when a spoiled child responds to criticism by screaming, “I bet you wish I’d never even been born!?”

What is it that he’s interpreting here as people believing “our existence is fundamentally illegitimate?” Is it criticism of the United States? Are we not allowed to do that? Because it does feel a tad warranted to at least point out that many of the countries that today’s immigrants are fleeing are countries where the United States has fought wars, supported dictators, assisted right-wing military coups and trained death squads over the years in the name of “stopping the spread of communism.”

Or is it that we welcome immigrants? And if immigrants make our country “fundamentally illegitimate,” why has he not yet sent dear old Dad back to Cuba?

The issue here, really, is that our own personal egos and sense of self are simply not tied up with borders and nationalism and homogeneity in the way that the Right’s are. We’re not scared of criticizing the things our country has done wrong. We’re not scared of people who are different, so we are able to look at this with clearer eyes. We want to help people, we know we have lots of wide open spaces in this country and we also know that despite the fact that the immigration waves of the past 100 years have brought us both Ted Cruz and Maria Bartiromo, it has largely been a blessing.

Every time I hear Ted Cruz speak, I’m reminded of what the late columnist Mike Royko once said about how it’s easier to be a Conservative than a Liberal because it’s much easier to give someone the finger than to lend a helping hand. That personifies Sen. Cruz to me- a walking, talking, upright middle finger.

Sen. Cruz accused Democrats of looking the other way when immigrants enter the country because “they just see future Democrats.”

No, we see the people coming in over the border…because we see PEOPLE, and we see their suffering. We don’t view them in terms of their political future and how they might vote 10, 15, or 20 years down the road. We haven’t forgotten that we’re a country of immigrants (Sen. Cruz himself was born in Calgary, Alberta, CANADA) and that we have an implied responsibility to pay it forward.

We see people who are suffering and searching for a better life.

People who may very well end up with children and grandchildren like Ted Cruz, the son of an immigrant from Cuba, and Maria Bartiromo, the granddaughter of immigrants from Italy who think all of the current immigrants are just as dangerous as people thought their relatives were.

I would argue that it is people like Cruz and Bartiromo who believe that America is “fundamentally illegitimate.” To the extent that we have any unifying culture here at all, it is not the culture the WASPs considered “the founding stock” of this nation. Rather, it is made up of the contributions of Black people brought against their will and waves of immigrants bringing new cultures, new perspectives and delicious foods to our shores. And thank goodness for that because I think we all prefer eating pizza and tacos to cucumber sandwiches.

We are the ones who are honoring the inscription on the Statue of Liberty — “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” — and this history as a nation of immigrants, save for the fact that we do not want to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Yes, our immigration system is broken, but I’d remind Sen. Cruz that Republicans have chosen to demagogue past efforts to reform that system. The GOP has ridden the cracks in our immigration system as proof that Democrats can’t govern, even as Republicans refuse to participate in the governing process.

We need a humane immigration system that recognizes our history as a nation built by immigrants…and as a nation that will need immigrants to help create our future.

We won’t get far with demagogues like Sen. Ted Cruz playing politics with the lives and suffering of those coming to America looking for a better life. We’re not talking about migrants, refugees, or illegal immigrants. These are PEOPLE, and no human being can be considered illegal. Every human life is precious…unless you’re a Republican demagogue, and then non-American human life becomes little more than a political football to be used to trash Democrats as the “radical open borders crowd.”

How inhumanly pathetic is that?

(All of my posts are now public. Any reader financial support will be considered pledges- support that’s greatly appreciated but not required to get to all of my work. I’ll trust my readers to determine if my work is worthy of their financial support and at what level. To those who do offer their support, thank you. It means more than you know.)