Generational Dynamics World View

[John J. Xenakis]

** 23-Oct-2019 World View: The stupidest person in Congress - Chris Murphy

• Chris Murphy speaking to the Center for American Progress
  (al-Jazeera)

I've often said that the stupidest person on the scene today is
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), who makes one moronic, pathetic
statement after another.

Just to prove that I'm not sexist, I've now found someone who is even
stupider than AOC. AOC is just a young girl, new in Congress, so has
an excuse for being stupid.

But Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy is 46 years old, was in the House
from 2007-13, and has been in the Senate since 2013 and he's a member
of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee.

So I was watching al-Jazeera, and they showed a brief video of Murphy
speaking to the Center for American Progress, where he's apparently
thought to be an expert.

Here's what he said in his speech:

Quote: "Elsewhere in the Middle East, things are falling
apart fast, due mostly to the Trump administration's
incompetence. It started with this nonsensical fracture of
relations between Saudi Arabia and another key US ally Qatar.

It was the kind of disruption that frankly would normally be
papered over and fixed by a competent US administration probably
in days, but three years later, these two countries, Saudi Arabia
and Qatar, still aren't talking, largely because we did nothing to
fix it."

I hear politicians say really stupid things all the time, but this is
about the stupidest thing I've heard a politician say recently -- and
that's saying a lot.

He's referring to a major split in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)
that occurred on March 1, 2014, when Saudi Arabia, the United Arab
Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain recalled their ambassadors from Qatar, and
then on June 5, 2017, when the same four Arab countries imposed a
land, sea and air blockade on Qatar.

I've written about this subject many times, and how it's based deep in
the history of the countries involved, going back to the collapse of
the Ottoman Empire.

So we can infer the following from Chris Murphy's statement:

• He knows absolutely nothing about the history of the countries
  in the Mideast.
  
  
• He thinks that the blockade is "nonsensical."
  
  
• He thinks that a US president could "fix" a problem that two other
  countries have had for decades or centuries within days by "papering
  it over."
  
  
• He thinks that the blockade is still in place "largely because we
  did nothing to fix it."
  
  
• He thinks that the entire Mideast will be stabilized if Trump
  "papers over" the dispute.

This goes beyond simple ignorance. Someone who has been in Congress
since 2007 and is on the Foreign Relations Committee should at least
know that he doesn't know what he's talking about, and should have the
common sense to keep quiet. This goes we'll beyond ignorance into
sheer stupidity.

Qatar-based Al-Jazeera ran this video without comment. They must have
run it to show the world how stupid the Americans are.

And it isn't just Democrats. Lindsey Graham has been saying some
really dump things about the Syria situation that I won't go into
here. Of course, almost all other politicians could be said to be
competing with one another to say the stupidest possible thing.

In 2006, the Congressional Quarterly and the London Times conducted a
survey of Mideast experts (Democrats and Republicans), and found that
they couldn't answer simple questions like whether al-Qaeda was a
Sunni or Shia organization. (As I recall, most thought they were
Shia.)

You know, I really do despair that the country is being run by total
idiots. And the "experts" in China are also idiots. But this is why
we're headed for World War III.