In late December, US Representative Lauren Boebert (R-CO) packed her carpet bag and moved her 2024 re-election campaign. After supposedly representing her state’s 3rd district for two terms, she’s now seeking to supposedly represent the 4th.

Why? Well, it’s all about safety.

Not her constituents’ safety, her district’s safety, her state’s safety, her party’s safety, or even her personal safety, but the safety of her career climbing the ladder of the American political class.

After eking out re-election by about 500 votes in 2022, she’s not sure she can do it again … at least not where she is. The Democratic opponent she barely beat last time is back for Round 2, this time with a lot more money, a lot more name recognition, and several more public embarrassments under Boebert’s belt to eat away at that tiny margin of victory.

Naturally, Boebert blames “dark money that is directed at destroying me personally,” rather than anything she’s done or failed to do, for her situation.

Meanwhile, fellow Republican Ken Buck has announced his retirement, after five terms, from a “safe GOP” seat that Donald Trump carried by 16 points in 2020.

Sure, there are Republicans who actually live in the 4th District and are interested in replacing Buck, but for Lauren Boebert it’s all about Lauren Boebert.

While the particulars of her move are unusual, the general idea isn’t. It’s often the case that budding politicians will “shop” for, then move to, the districts or states they consider most likely to help launch successful careers.

Then there’s former US Senator Joe Lieberman.

In 2006, Lieberman lost the Democratic primary in his quest for a third term supposedly representing Connecticut. In response, he launched a “third party” campaign and ended up winning the general election with a plurality.

His choice of party name was telling. Most politicians would have gone with “Lieberman for Connecticut,” but in a refreshing fit of honesty he chose “Connecticut for Lieberman,” thus tacitly confessing that, in his view, the state of Connecticut existed for the sole purpose of providing  him with a Senate seat for as long as he darn well felt like sitting in one.

Which is pretty much what Boebert’s telling Coloradoans with her own House district move. And it just may work. Not for them, necessarily, but for her.

These people don’t work for you. They work for themselves. You’re just there to fund their paychecks and benefits. Don’t forget that.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

As 2023 ends and 2024 begins, I’d like to take the opportunity to thank billions of you, in America and around the world, for your service.

No, I’m not talking to military veterans — or at least not to military veterans AS military veterans. Whenever I’m thanked for my “service” in the US Marine Corps, my first instinct and usual course of action is to point out two things:

First, the rest of you paid me good money and provided me with food, housing, medical care, exotic travel, and other benefits.

Secondly, my “service” wasn’t to you, nor was it to some high-minded concept like, say, freedom. It was to a government which forcibly extracted that pay and those bennies from Americans’ wallets whether they liked it or not, then endangered the lives and livelihoods of Americans and others alike by using me and millions like me, sending us around the world conducting ourselves violently in pursuit of unworthy goals.

War is an evil, not a good. Those who engage in it are, at our very BEST, the unwitting (or if conscripted, unwilling) pawns of evil actors, and at worst know full well what we’re doing and for whom, yet actively choose to do it anyway.

You don’t owe veterans thanks for our “service.” We owe YOU our sincere apologies and such restitution as we can figure out how to make for the damage we’ve done.

Of course, many veterans go on later to engage in service that’s truly worthy of thanks.

Waiting tables. Growing crops. Building houses. Writing software. Entertaining audiences. Treating the ill and injured. Putting out fires. Repairing or operating planes, trains, trucks, cars, bicycles, etc. Mopping floors. Cleaning toilets or making sure water gets to and from them correctly.

The list of good  and important things that people do goes on and on.

The vast majority of humans spend much of our time making other humans’ lives better, and having our own lives made better by those other humans.

I’m not sure we thank each other (including military veterans who’ve moved on from destructive to productive work) enough, or sincerely enough, for all we do.

But I’m sure we should.

My New Year’s resolution is to be more mindful of my debt to all those who, by way of earning their own livings, improve my life.

Thank YOU for YOUR service. I wish you a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2024.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

By way of marking the western date for Christendom’s most holy celebration, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III announced  that “at President Biden’s direction, U.S. military forces conducted necessary and proportionate strikes on three facilities used by Kataib Hezbollah and affiliated groups in Iraq.”

So much for visions of sugar-plums, etc.  Instead of surplus socks or the latest video game console beneath the tree and a day spent watching football and avoiding fruitcake, we get war  in the “Holy Land,” war in Ukraine, war in Myanmar, war in Sudan … the list goes on, covering quite a lot of territory, costing thousands, and negatively affecting millions, of lives.

Austin’s justification for the US strikes: They “are a response to a series of attacks against U.S. personnel in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-sponsored militias.”

The US occupation of Iraq (following George W. Bush’s war of aggression based on false “weapons of mass destruction” claims) supposedly ended in 2011.

US forces supposedly vanquished the Islamic State in Syria (following Barack Obama’s illegal invasion, supposedly in pursuit of that objective, but more likely in hope of overthrowing that country’s existing government) in 2019.

Why are US troops still in harm’s way in those places?

Why does the US government continue to mind everyone’s business but its own — providing arms, “advice,” and even direct muscle to at least one side in almost every conflict on the planet, at your current financial expense and at your and your loved ones’ future risk of experiencing the same horrors now inflicted on others?

If all the talk about “democracy” means anything, the answer is:

Because you allow it.

The usual appeals against you doing so are aimed at your conscience:

Don’t you care about the lives of civilians caught in the crossfire of [insert war here]?

Don’t the mangled bodies of children disturb you?

Don’t the videos of families fleeing their homes with what little they can carry, ahead of airstrikes or within hearing of artillery fire, rouse your empathy?

The evidence says no, not really, or at least not very much.

If you DID care, the gaggle of warmongers you continue electing and re-electing to Congress and the presidency would either be in prison or, at best, out on parole and asking you if you’d like fries with your value meal to earn their livings.

Since you clearly don’t give a hoot about the lives of foreigners who may not speak the same language, worship the same god, or even sport the same skin color as you, let me instead appeal to your self-interest.

Do you remember 9/11? I’m sure many of you do. Do you want more of that action? Because this is EXACTLY how you get more of that action.

Every time “your” congressional representative or the president “you” “elected” announces US government support for atrocities abroad, he or she is threatening you and yours with death at home.

If you choose to vote, vote the warmongers out — for your own good and for your family’s safety.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY