Counterpunch, October 22, 2021
There are few things that strike terror in the dark hearts of god-fearing, beef-eating, Republicans like the scourge of the Squad. Transgender bathrooms, the female orgasm, pissing off the Israel Lobby. All pale in comparison to the fury of four junior congresswomen of color, Ayana Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and the ferocious Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. This fearsome foursome has somehow single-handedly hijacked the most powerful political party in the country and forced it to do their bidding. Their malignant influence reaches all the way to the top. The White House itself is their plaything and soon it will be painted a Bolshevik shade of red as they unleash a socialist wave of terror across the fruited plains of the heartland. The rich will become poor, the poor will become entitled, police stations will be razed to the ground, and the Marines will be replaced by a new Red Guard who will send Scotch bloated right-wing talk show hosts to work in the fields. Oh the humanity!
I think the Republicans have been huffing paint thinner and digging into their daddies John Birch Society agit-prop again. As much as I would love to believe that the Squad are the reincarnation of the Symbionese Liberation Army, even Patty Hearst wouldn’t be caught dead voting ‘present’ on genocide. Once again, if the left in this country were even half as scary as the right make them out to be, I would probably be a lot less ashamed to be a part of it. The sad dismal truth about those radical ideologues in the Squad is that they really aren’t that radical at all, at least not where it counts. And nothing should count more to a successful leftist strategy than anti-imperialism. On this subject, the Squad is inconsistent at best.
Oh sure, they’ve thrown a few bones to us starving peaceniks with bills to hold their beloved president Joe Biden to his worthless word on Yemen and to shave a few bucks off Mama Bear Nancy Pelosi’s record-shattering Pentagon budget, but time and time again these ladies have folded like deck chairs on George Soros’ yacht when it comes to empire. Ayana Pressley co-sponsored a bill defending the BDS Movement only to vote to condemn the same group. Rashida Tlaib voted for a bipartisan budget act that allocated billions to the Department of Defense. Even mighty little Ilhan Omar, who I myself was once briefly and madly in love with, broke my bleeding anti-Zionist heart by signing on to a letter by those Hebrew supremacists in AIPAC in support of the UN’s crippling sanctions regime on Iran during the height of the pandemic.
