Post-Navalny, what will courage look like?

BONUS: Bad -- really bad -- week for Republicans

Navalny leading a protest march along Moscow's Tverskaya Street in March 2017. -Wikipedia

After Russian dissident Alexei Navalny died last week at only 47 years of age, words of praise — all earned — flowed quickly and easily from the commentariat: selfless, patriotic, brave, determined, visionary. Suffice it to say that Navalny was a man of uncommon courage in an era marked by uncommon cowardice.

As is often the case with individuals who speak truth to power, Navalny paid the ultimate price. By all accounts, Navalny died while in custody in an Arctic gulag, on the orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom Navalny had tormented simply by advancing the cause of freedom in the dictator’s repressive kleptocracy.

Putin was probably afraid that Navalny would become the Russian equivalent of Nelson Mandela, the South African dissident who emerged from prison after 27 years, led a movement to dismantle apartheid and eventually became that nation’s first fully democratically elected president in 1994.

I’d wager to say that most Russians, except for those who are ignorant or benefit in some way from the current regime, share our collective outrage at this naked abuse of power by Putin and his police state. But the outrage felt by most people in the U.S. is not shared by all of our fellow Americans.

Typically, Americans value and cherish those who speak truth to power, those who rise up in opposition to tyranny at great risk to themselves. But we are not currently speaking with one voice on this matter. Indeed, we haven’t done that on just about any issue since 9/11. But you would think that if anything has happened since that horrendous day 23 years ago that might unite us again, it would be outrage at the assassination of a dissident fighting the reign of an dictator who spent nearly a quarter of a century working for the KGB, the secret “security agency” of the old Soviet Union.

Navalny at Moscow rally on March 10, 2012. -Wikipedia

President Biden has minced no words in expressing his outrage, condemning the hit job and calling Putin “a crazy SOB.” But for some reason — and there are lots of guesses as to why — former President Donald Trump is loath to say anything negative about Putin. In the only public statements he has made about the murder of Navalny, Trump did not assign blame to Putin but instead compared himself favorably to the brave Russian dissident. It’s an odd equation: Navalny stood up to Putin, while Trump has played the role of lapdog.

On some level, you could understand Trump’s attitude because he is likely compromised in some way. But other Republicans — and there are many of them in MAGA Land — are reluctant to speak in defense of Navalny. Former defense hawks such as Lindsey Graham are mostly silent on the matter and are siding with Trump on the matter of discontinuing military aid to Ukraine.

The list of famous media personalities and prominent Republicans in Congress who side with Putin on his invasion of Ukraine and downplay Navalny’s assassination — is long and ignominious. Liz Cheney has dubbed them the GOP’s “Putin wing.”

Tucker Carlson, the fired Fox News personality who has since taken to airing content on Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter), traveled to Moscow recently for a fawning sit-down with Putin. Later, Carlson walked through a Moscow food store with a camera crew and marveled at the shopping carts and low prices.

I am reminded of American progressives in the 70s and 80s who acknowledged the brutality of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, while quickly adding that, “Cuba has such great healthcare.” Okay, so if I challenge the Castro regime on a policy issue and he sends one of his goons to break my kneecaps, the Cuban government will pay to have my legs stitched back together, no questions asked.

I’m old enough to remember when the GOP was the party of hardliners against Soviet ruthlessness. I was still in college when Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev sent the Red Army into Afghanistan to subdue the mujahideen rebels and prop up the pro-Soviet regime.

Even Democrat Jimmy Carter, the U.S. president at the time and reputedly a dove, denounced the invasion, characterizing it as the “most serious danger to peace since 1945.” Carter then suspended grain exports to the Soviet Union and led a 66-nation boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow.

Now the Trump-obedient wing of the Republican Party, which appears to make up more than half the GOP, reacts to the naked Russian aggression against Ukraine with everything ranging from a collective shrug to outright approval. Either they’ve been politically “re-educated” or they’re cowering in fear of Dear Leader — or perhaps both.

The contrast between the heroic opposition of Navalny and cowardice of the ex-president and certain members of Congress is striking. In the days of my youth, the feeling among conservatives was that appeasement invites aggression. And I wholeheartedly agreed. Now such appeasement invites the approval of a U.S. cult leader. How far we have come since the days of Lincoln, Churchill and Roosevelt.

Alabama high court’s chilling decision

In the elections-have-consequences department, we were confronted last week with the news that the Alabama Supreme Court had ruled that embryos are children under a state law allowing lawsuits when a child is killed. The ruling came about because an Alabama couple receiving in vitro fertilization treatments sued the IVF clinic after some of their embryos were dropped on a floor and destroyed. So in assessing whether or how much to award in damages to the couple, the court had to determine the value of the embryos.

As a result, one of the largest hospitals in Alabama has suspended its IVF operations, not so much because of the possibility of more fertilized eggs dropping on the floor, but because excess embryos created by the IVF process are often frozen for later use or destroyed. Here is an excellent explainer on Vox. Here is the actual text of the decision.

A key question is whether Alabama’s highest court would have delivered this decision if the U.S. Supreme Court had not issued the 2022 Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 judgment that established abortion services as a constitutional right. If I had to bet, I’d say the elected justices in Alabama felt emboldened by Dobbs. If not for Dobbs, the Alabama justices would have known that this decision would have likely been overturned on appeal, and judges hate it when their decisions are reversed. In a creepy reference, the chief justice, invoked the name of the almighty in his concurring opinion:

“Human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God … Even before birth, all human beings have the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.”

It goes without saying that the name of God should never be invoked in the reasoning of a court decision in the United States of America, where our constitution protects us from the establishment of a state religion.

This is another case of Republicans shooting themselves in the foot. Nothing motivates people more than having their rights taken away. Post-Dobbs, the removal of abortion rights has proved to be a losing issue politically. Now Republicans can add couples who have had IVF, or are pondering it, to the list of those aggrieved by Dobbs.

Democrats will hit Republicans over the head with this issue until they can barely see straight. The political and legal backlash will be tremendous. It just might be the issue that saves Joe Biden’s presidency.

Disclosure: My wife and I tried IVF several times back in the 90s, so this issue hits close to home.

Comer’s star witness a liar

One more piece of bad news for Republicans, especially those in the House of Representatives such as Rep. James Comer who had commenced an inquiry into the impeachment of Biden. Their star witness has zero credibility and just might have been a Russian plant.

As reported by the AP:

Alexander Smirnov falsely reported to the FBI in June 2020 that executives associated with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid Hunter and Joe Biden $5 million each in 2015 or 2016” and “promoted a new false narrative after he said he met with Russian officials,” prosecutors said.

Maybe the “Russia collusion hoax” wasn’t such a deception after all.