The Reflecting Pool of MAGA Moronitude
Thomas Massie is a libertarian and a former leading member of the Republican Party’s “House Freedom Caucus” — a name which can only be used in scare quotes, since almost all of its members in Congress, past and present, have proven themselves to be utter frauds who would, and indeed did, sell their country’s last shred of freedom in a heartbeat to protect their political positions and personal privileges. Of that sadly sold-out faction, Massie was certainly the last congressional libertarian standing. I say was, upon reading the breaking news that he has just lost his seat by way of being primaried out thanks to the year-long temper tantrum of Donald Trump and his MAGA morons, who would, and indeed did, choose fake gold idols and gaudy purple paint over the party of Abraham Lincoln. Washington, D.C.’s reflecting pool has become a cesspool, filled with, and therefore reflecting, only the verbal and moral feces of Trump and his millions of un-American cult worshippers.
For what it is worth, I am neither a libertarian nor particularly impressed by Thomas Massie, although he has certainly established himself, over the past year, as a better and bigger man than Trump and all of his fawning devotees combined — hardly a large claim, but it has to count for something in the midst of his party’s near-universal ten-year collapse into a frightened fetal position before the Trump cult’s treasonous idiocy. Massie, faced with the same choice as every other elected Republican over the past decade, chose, unlike almost all the others, to lose with his dignity rather than preserve himself at the price of eternal ignominy. The nobody who defeated him in the Kentucky GOP primary will turn out, no doubt, to be a non-entity and a sycophantic hypocrite. But Trump endorsed him — precisely because Trump regards non-entity and sycophantism as virtues — and the Kentuckians who voted in the primary are apparently as dumb and cowardly as most other Republicans nationwide, so Massie is out.
I note, however, that Trump and his cult (card-carrying members) were not the only Republicans opposing Massie. In the final day before his primary defeat, no less a traditional conservative bulwark than National Review published an editorial opposing him and supporting the nobody endorsed by Trump. The reason? Israel.
Though acknowledging that much of Massie’s fiscal conservatism and constitutionalism are genuine and desirable, and accepting that his libertarian isolationism, though not NR’s preferred stance, has been consistent and unwavering, the one sticking point that made him insupportable to NR was his refusal to make an exception to his libertarian foreign policy position for the sake of Israel.
Like most right-wing conspiracy theorists, he has no use for Israel. Massie is a genuine isolationist, who opposes even sanctioning other countries, but his opposition to Israel is bitterly irrational. He boycotted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress and claims that every member of Congress has an AIPAC minder. He opposes all aid to Israel, even for Iron Dome, and routinely votes against pro-Israel resolutions.
Massie opposes foreign aid generally (a typical libertarian position). He opposes American involvement in foreign conflicts of all kinds unless there is an immediate threat to America herself (a typical libertarian position). And he believes that American foreign policy ought to be strictly focused on furthering America’s national self-interest, narrowly defined, rather than being influenced or guided by the interests or concerns of other nations (a typical liberarian position). But because, in light of current events and long-term trends, he has felt a need to highlight the special problem of the American government’s frequent willingness to defer and cater to Israel’s security needs in a way that is clearly unique to that case — how could anyone deny that the pro-Israel lobby is an unusually powerful faction within American foreign policy debates? — his consistency and courage in opposing even his own party’s fiscal and foreign policy excesses (as he sees them) are to be rejected as unworthy of support. After all, NR effectively says, no one deserves to be elected to the U.S. Congress as a Republican if he dares to question Benjamin Netanyahu’s influence over Donald Trump’s decision-making processes, or to criticize the influence of pro-Israel donor groups in shaping the GOP platform. This particular opposition to big government interventionism, unlike his other examples of it, reveals Massie to be “bitterly irrational.”
The implication, of course, all but spelled out by NR’s editors, especially with their repeated use of the cheap and ill-defined trope “conspiracy theorists,” is that Massie, with regard to Israel, is not merely a libertarian-style isolationist opposed to foreign entanglements on principle, but an anti-Semite — the standard slur against anyone in American politics who ever dares to utter a word of skepticism about Netanyahu’s motives or methods, or about the power of pro-Israeli money in American electoral politics.
I do not have a problem with the United States allying itself with Israel, and even supporting that country financially in some defense matters. Although I have great sympathy with the ideals of libertarian non-interventionism, I nevertheless believe that the modern age, and specifically modern technology, would force George Washington himself to rethink the practical applicability of the isolationist position today. Simply put, “isolation” may be desirable from the national interest and limited government points of view, but it is no longer feasible as a political reality — no one, and no nation, has the practical freedom to live in isolation anymore, regrettably. That is a sad reality that, in my opinion, libertarians like Massie are refusing to come to terms with when they fall back on the Founding Fathers or Murray Rothbard for their foreign policy principles.
Having said that, the NR editors’ choice to smear Massie as an anti-Jewish conspiracy theorist because they do not like his foreign policy positions displays both cowardice and a failure to see the big picture of their own party’s fate. Trump and his minions did not oppose Massie because of his position on Israel. They opposed him, plainly and simply, for defying Trump in ways that were becoming embarrassing to Trump, and therefore by implication embarrassing to all those Republicans who chose to bow before Trump rather than incur his wrath. Massie opposed Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which circumvented constitutional procedures and blew out the national debt. Massie opposed Trump on the Epstein files, refusing to let Trump get away with burying the damning evidence against Trump and his powerful friends (and violating the faith upon which millions of MAGA voters supported Trump in two elections, namely that he would expose the crimes of America’s elites). And of course Massie opposed Trump on the Iran war, which was clearly prodded by the Israeli government and which violates every libertarian principle of non-aggression — not to mention every principle of sensible national restraint and just warfare — in the most obvious ways.
For daring to have the courage to stand against Trump’s actions on these issues, actions which obviously violate not only libertarian positions but also conservative Republican norms and constitutionalist priorities, Massie was rewarded with not only the predictable invective of Trump and the dutiful obedience of the cult, but also, pathetically, the ugly smear tactics of the so-called conservatives at National Review. The NR editors, pretending as usual to stand detached from the Trump debacle, have with this smear tactic chosen, also as usual, to support Trump in one of his most offensive attitudes, his will to destroy the life, reputation, and career of anyone who shows the independence of mind to disagree with him about anything. Their thinly veiled accusation of anti-Semitism against Thomas Massie, on the eve of his attempt to salvage the Kentucky Republican Party from the shame of blindly kowtowing to Trump’s id, amounts to nothing but kowtowing to Trump’s id by other means, and thus amplifies the shame and highlights the irredeemability of the former “American conservative movement.” They do not even want their souls back.
