Pour one out for Alexei.
I don’t say this to be glib.
I am quite serious that at this moment Americans need to take stock.
Alexei Navalny represented a spirit of bravery and stoicism in standing up to corruption - and the oppression that always follows it - with a steadfast and unwavering resoluteness.
An example and hero to millions of Russians and freedom-loving people all over the world.
He was the sort of person that the Republican Party at one point in their existence would have seen as a hero and a role model.
They would have lauded him from every angle.
Now they will have to laugh along as Trump undoubtedly makes Navalny’s death into some sort of punchline while praising Putin at the next MAGA rally.
That Navalny’s death came in the same week that Speaker Johnson blocked a vote in the House on the Senate’s Ukraine aid package is no accident.
Nor is it any coincidence that it came on the heels of Tucker Carlson’s fawning and propaganda-filled interview with Vladimir Putin in Moscow.
And the subsequent pro-Russia content Tucker has been furiously uploading to his twitter account all week.
His pro-Putin hagiography tour finding an eager hype man in the salivating retweets by Elon Musk.
Carlson’s own comments when confronted this week at the World Governments Summit with Putin’s brutality, ’every leader kills people….’
It’s disgusting stuff but should sound familiar to anyone paying attention.
Russian talking points always follow the same script: see Trump’s ‘Super Bowl’ interview with Bill O’Reilly in February of 2017 when he was asked about Vladimir’s brutality, ‘You think our country is so innocent..there are lots of killers’.
Tucker becoming Russia’s foremost content creator comes as people are being rounded up and arrested in cities all over Russia right now for memorializing and gathering in remembrance of Navalny.
Russian forces are removing the flowers left at monuments and arresting journalists covering the scenes.
Putin wants to make Alexei Navalny disappear from the consciousness of the millions of Russians who supported him - and there are many members of the American conservative movement that would gladly help him.
It’s a sad day indeed: one in which people who value democracy and love freedom need to stand up and take stock of where we are headed as a nation.
The GOP has been in the pocket of Vladimir Putin for some time - this is no secret to even casual observers of American politics.
The former Soviet Union started spreading cash around D.C. in the ’90s with no surfeit in sight.
Their investments have paid dividends in the MAGA era.
So much so that Putin has been able to completely change the narrative around Russia within the Republican Party.
Vladimir Putin is practically celebrated on Fox News and in the halls of the GOP Congress.
Republicans have gone out of their way to both cut support and rhetorically undermine Ukraine and minimize Russia’s horrific invasion.
This is accomplished by outright Putin toadstools in the GOP firmament.
In both the Republican House and Senate there are no shortage of Putin apologists.
From the obvious lap dogs like the poodle-permed Rand Paul, to the lasciviously greedy like Ron Johnson.
Over on the house side of the Hill it’s smarmy frat bros like Matt Gaetz who proclaim things like ‘Russia’s never done anything to me…”; using his stalling of Kevin McCarthy’s Speakership to leverage cutting Ukraine aid (to the detriment of his own state and constituents, as Florida earns billions from manufacturing weapons used by Ukraine).
We should also remember the recent snub of President Zelensky when he requested to address Congress on a U.S. visit in September and was denied by then Speaker McCarthy.
Bravery isn’t a good look for the modern GOP so they try to avoid any examples of it at all costs.
Men like Zelensky and Navalny are examples of real leadership and selfless service - which is the polar opposite of the cult of personality that has formed around Donald Trump.
The GOP’s aim is the constant massaging of Trump’s delicate and very damaged ego.
‘Trump works for Putin and we work for Trump’ could be the modern Republican mantra.
There is no easier way to distill what I am trying to say than saying it like that.
I do feel it is important to meditate on this moment and see very clearly what many of our fellow countrymen have become and where we are heading collectively as a nation.
For anyone that lived through the Cold War era this turnaround in the Republican Party is quite shocking.
I’m in my early fifties now, so I only caught the last 20 years of the Cold War but it was enough of a taste to realize - it is hard to believe we are even talking about the same Republican Party.
But we are not talking about the same party and I guess that is the point.
The party of Rambo and Ronnie Reagan has become the party of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk and a thousand other Russian sycophants looking to suck up and follow the model of Putin’s kleptocracy and set up shop for an American oligarchy.
Trump will of course assert himself at the top of that food chain and his minions will become his version of the Russian billionaires who bled their country dry while their daughters shop in Palm Beach and buy apartments in New York City that cost more than most Russians will make in a lifetime.
If you have spent anytime in Monte Carlo or Mayfair or Miami you can find them everywhere, the duck-lips and Balenciaga bags, bleached blonde, plucked and coiffed with that dead-eyed look that always comes from placing money above morality.
That recipe looks pretty tasty if you’re in line to become an oligarch yourself. Many of the billionaires who bought up judges and politicians at Trump’s behest have no problem with the conspicuous consumption of other people’s money.
Jared Kushner, who lives the high life with Vanky on Indian Creek, a private island in Miami designed solely for billionaires, will play an outsized role in this burgeoning kleptocracy.
He was the chief architect of the initial Trump administration’s designs on turning the USA into an oligarchy - and also the one who has seemingly gotten away with it.
He can now direct his evil minions with the smugness of a hairless cat luxuriating the in the South Florida sun.
Many forget that while Trump was still just a president-elect, Jared set up a back channel with the Kremlin, going around U.S. intelligence agencies. Naturally this came to light, so when Trump assumed office Kushner’s original security clearance was denied, only to be overridden, against our intelligence and security agencies wishes by Trump himself.
Kushner then steered his father-in-law’s foreign policy decisions based on how much they would benefit Vladimir Putin and of course MBS.
Given Trump’s recent comments on NATO and allowing Putin’s Russia to “do whatever the hell they want….” when it comes to invading European allies, the GOP’s blocking of Ukraine aid and Putin’s murderous impulses and imperialistic designs, we are quite clearly in a moment of peril and pathos.
Brave men do not die in vain: Alexei Navalny was astoundingly brave and not unaware of how his story would end.
His life should serve as an example to all of us to light and stoke the fires of fierce non-violent, political opposition to any and all enemies of freedom.
Even when those threats appear to be homegrown.
I will stop writing now and let Alexei Navalny’s words speak for themselves:
“Listen, I’ve got something very obvious to tell you. If they decide to kill me, it means that we are incredibly strong.”
And this quote from a letter he wrote upon his return to Russia, “Everything will be all right. Even if it isn’t we’ll have the consolation of having lived honest lives.”
May his memory inspire and guide us all, rest easy, Alexei Navalny.
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