Today, August 12,2008, Senator John McCain was speaking in one of his (invitation-only) town meetings, held in York, Pennsylvania. I occasionally watch his town hall speeches just to remind myself how batshit crazy this guy is (and as preparation for some phone banking). But he had something new to talk about today, what with Little-War-That-Couldn't happening between Georgia and Russia. And most of what he said was absolutely insane. Here's the video.
Let's start small, shall we?
Georgia itself my friends, has a long and remarkable history. It is a 4th century convert to Christianity, one of the first nations on Earth to convert to Christianity.
My first thought was "What the fuck does a Georgian conversion to Christianity have to do with what happened yesterday?" But then, given my inherent distrust for anything McCain says, I decided to check his facts.
I quickly looked up some Georgian history on Wikipedia. Yes, the people living in the area where George now exists did convert to Christianity in the early 4th Century. Except it was known as the Kingdom of Iberia back in those days, the consolidation of Georgia proper not happening until the early 11th century. The modern Republic of Georgia wasn't created until the early 20th century. This is an important point, because it was a kingdom - it was not a democracy. A king decided that. The people did not . Yet, he doesn't mention this detail at all. As a matter of fact, the way he tells the story, you'd be led to believe that Georgia was always a peaceful, Christian, democratic nation. I'm sure he knows all that. He's just betting that the people listening to him don't.
I think he's basically trying to paint Georgia this way to soften the crowd up for this unbelievable load of bullshit:
The impact of Russian actions goes beyond their threat to a democratic Georgia. Russia has used violence against Georgia to send a signal to any country that chooses to associate with the West and aspire to our shared political and economic values. My friends, we learned at great cost the price of allowing aggression against free nations to go unchecked.
Is . . . is McCarthy McCain trying to revive the Red Scare? He does realize that Russia's form of government is a federalist republic and that there's about as much daylight between that system and ours as there is between himself and George W. Bush?
He does know that Georgia was the aggressor here and began this conflict when it began bombing South Ossetia?
You know, I'm sure he does know that. He's just betting the people listening to him don't. And even if McCain's version of how this went down were remotely accurate . . . how the hell are we gonna back up that threat when almost all of our military assets are tied up in Afghanistan and Iraq?
So why the hell is McCain so gun-ho about protecting Georgia? Oh. Right.