Have you ever noticed that it is usually the smallest, scrawniest rat dog that yips the loudest and quickly becomes an annoyance?
Which brings us to our recently minted vice president, J.D. Vance, and his incendiary role in February 28’s debacle of a photo-op gone disastrously off the rails.
When in a photo-op with your boss present, the traditional role of a vice president is to sit quietly and listen to the immortal words of the top dog. The vice president should speak only if spoken to. It is expected they will always look worshipfully at the guy in charge. Fawning, while optional, is highly recommended. More lap dog than attack dog.
But not our recently minted vice president.
Sitting on a couch with an uncomfortable looking Marco Rubio (who, allegedly, is in charge of our relations with foreign heads of state and all things diplomatic), our bearded former freshman senator from Ohio interrupted the flow of a tense, but nonetheless diplomatically acceptable, dialog between his boss and the president of a foreign state supposedly allied to the United States, and began to yip vociferously
After making it abundantly clear that he disrespected our ally, the newly minted vice president angrily charged that our ally had disrespected us. He yipped about how our ally hadn’t thanked us enough for what in reality is the boost his country has given to the American armaments industry. (After all, his country used the monetary grants from the United States to buy weapons and ammunition from American manufacturers.)
Then the beleaguered and blind-sided foreign head of state made a boo-boo.
He pointed out that while the country invading his country was just next door, we in the United States have an ocean moat, a moat that has protected us in the past but may not offer such security in the future.
This roused our real-estate-agent-in-chief and deal-maker-non-pariel from a state of glowering, but largely silent, intensity and set him off on a trip down memory lane. In a barrage of indignation, he revisited the various injuries done to him in the past, with special emphasis on those wounds suffered jointly with his good friend Comrade Putin.
We’ve heard it all before ad nauseam ad infinitum ad mortem.
His role completed in this likely ambush; our recently minted vice president mercifully ceased his yipping.
Silent as the tomb, Marco Rubio lived down to his nickname, “Little Marco.”
Our chief deal maker tossed our ally out of the White House with orders that he not be readmitted until he was ready to do a deal no matter how costly, unfair or disastrous that deal may be to the country he leads.
As I write this, I am painfully aware that a good chunk of my fellow citizens (probably not a majority, but a good chunk, nevertheless) think all this is wonderful stuff.
Our big boss was strong and put this supplicant in his place. He told it like it is, and if it isn’t pretty – tough. It’s the way of the world. Get on the bus or get run over by it.
That goes for our so-called allies as well. Who needs or wants the allies who have stood with us for generations? We have new friends: Russia, China, Cuba, North Korea, Iran, or any other strong-man regime elsewhere on the planet.
And all this is apparently good enough for the cabal of invertebrates posing as Republican senators and representatives who appear willing to sell their souls, their constituents – and their country – down the tubes so long as they avoid primary opposition that might threaten their jobs.
Shakespeare couldn’t have plotted a better tragedy.
If we squander trust, if we squander honor, if we squander truth – those attributes that America has enjoyed in some measure as leader of the Free World order that has existed since World War II, we will find they are extremely hard to regain. If ever.
February 28, 2025, will go down as a dark day in American diplomacy. It is the day we told our friends to go their own way without us and cozied up to those who wish for this nation nothing but ill.
The Ferries Wheel 