Alan Zendell, October 25, 2023

As the sun rose on October 25, 2023 America was dealing with two hostage crises, one three weeks old and one that has lasted nine months. In the former, more than 200 hostages, including children and the elderly still languish in the tunnels that house Hamas terrorists and their weapons in Gaza. In the latter, 350 million Americans are being held hostage by a small group of MAGA terrorists in the House of Representatives.

In each case, the hostage crisis is the result of years of strategizing. Both terrorist groups are comprised of people who believe they are a persecuted minority, and both are now betting their existence on their ability to direct the future for millions of people that they neither represent nor care much about. As different as Hamas appears to be from the handful of right-wing extremists who have paralyzed our government, they have important things in common.

Hamas feels aggrieved by what they perceive as decades of occupation by Israel; the MAGA minority in the House believe they are restoring America to its rightful owners: white, male Christians. Both are self-righteous about their beliefs, and both seem to expect a huge, dormant groundswell of support to erupt and sweep them into power.

There are differences, of course. Hamas is committed to eradicating Israel and killing Jews wherever they find them. Only a few MAGA types seem hell-bent on murder and lynching – Hang Mike Pence! – but they would happily re-institute slavery and relegate everyone who opposes them to deportation, exile, or life in some form of ghetto or concentration camp. Their hero and spiritual leader, Donald Trump, has loudly advocated imprisoning his political opponents and executing some of his senior military leaders.

The most important thing these two groups of terrorists have in common is that both pose existential threats to America. The religious wars that ravage the Middle East, awful and brutal as they are, are also proxy wars for the major powers. Russia and Europe have huge stakes in the oil-rich region, with China opportunistically sniffing around for areas of weakness they can capitalize on. With Iran stirring the pot as they work toward building nuclear weapons, the Middle East poses an existential threat to the entire planet.

The MAGA threat, rather than exposing its opposition to mass killing and the possibility of a nuclear holocaust, promises a long, slow death of strangulation if it is not neutralized. Their stated goal is to weaken our central government so the states they control can return to what they call traditional American values – what the rest of us call misogyny, racism, xenophobia, and fascism. They reduce our status as a world power, weaken our military, and undermine our international trade and alliances.

What CNN’s Jake Tapper refers to as the clown show in the House is no laughing matter. It is Donald Trump’s desperate attempt to control and weaponize his political base as his legal problems worsen in the courts. That means not only attempting to recapture both the White House and the Senate, but undermining the Biden administration’s attempts to support Ukraine against invasion by Russia and prevent the Israel-Hamas conflict from exploding into a wider, deadlier war.

Controlling the level of violence in the Middle East is a Herculean task under any circumstances, but with MAGA Republicans showing the world that the most powerful nation on Earth can be reduced to a paper tiger by a handful of extremists, our leverage in the region evaporates. Moving two full carrier groups to the eastern Mediterranean was a powerful show of force, but if the Trump crazies in Congress are able to shut down the government next month, all that military power might as well be my grandkids’ toy boats in their bathtub.

Hamas has demonstrated what most careful observers already knew. The Palestinian people are not backward, uneducated Arabs wandering around the desert on camels, worshipping oil wells. Their purported leaders are a smart, sophisticated enemy who are willing to risk their existence on one final attempt to eradicate Jews from the Middle East. Neither they nor their hundreds of millions of potential supporters in the region, manipulated by hate-mongers and religious fervor, can be taken lightly. Only our best effort will defeat them, but our own home-grown terrorists are either blinded by their lust for power or unable to see past their ambitions. It’s up to the rest of us to re-establish a government based on bipartisan cooperation and the strength that comes from being united.

When Trump first adopted Make America Great Again as his motto, America was flawed, but much closer to being the great nation it aspired to be than it had been in previous decades. Now that Trump has reduced us to the Jake Tapper Clown Show, I agree with him. Let’s make American great again by excising Trump and his influence before he destroys us.