DC Trawler

TPM’s Josh Marshall: Hey, What’s Russian For ‘Tea Party’?

Font Size:

So, there’s been a terrorist attack on an airliner in Ukraine. You know whose fault that is, right?

Here’s David Remnick of the New Yorker describing Igor Strelkov, a retired Russian colonel who is a key figure in the pro-Russian separatist faction within Ukraine, and who is now claiming responsibility for shooting down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17:

A wildly messianic nationalist who cultivates an air of lumpy intrigue, Strelkov has found his way to the battlefields of Chechnya, Serbia, and Transnistria. He is now helping to run the separatist operation in Donetsk. Like the radical nationalists and neo-imperialists in Moscow, who have easy access to the airwaves these days, Strelkov has a singular point of disagreement with Putin: the Russian President hasn’t gone nearly far enough; he has failed to invade and annex “Novorossiya,” the separatist term for eastern Ukraine. Pavlovsky said that people like Strelkov and his Moscow allies are as delusional as they are dangerous, somehow believing that they are taking part in grand historical dramas, like the Battle of Borodino, in 1812, or “the novels of Tolkien.”

“Strelkov is well known for leading historical reënactments of Russian military battles, like you have in the States with the Civil War reënactors,” Pavlovsky said. “It used to be a fantasy world for people like him, but now they have a realm for their imaginations.”

Josh Marshall at TPM responds:

So that’s who you’re dealing with: some mix of civil war reenactor or Tea Partier decked out in revolutionary garb, with a mix of reckless aggression and comical incompetence. Here we have them break into nursing homes to photographs senator’s comatose wives; there Putin gives them heavy armaments designed for full scale land war in Europe.

Marshall’s headline: “Just With Real Weapons.”

Get it?

Think about it, wingnut, if you can spare a few brain cells that aren’t devoted to guns and religion. It’s only a matter of time before one of you teabaggers takes down a commercial airliner. You know it, I know it, and most importantly, Josh Marshall knows it.

Everything bad that happens in the world can be traced back to you, teahadists. And the more you deny it, the truer it gets.

P.S. So Google “Josh Marshall,” then. Do I have to do everything for you?

P.P.S. John Sexton has more on Marshall’s smart take.

Tags : treacher
Jim Treacher