In case you haven’t been following closely lately, we’re currently in the “let’s attack a decorated war veteran and retired astronaut” portion of the collapse of Republican morality.

And in this latest round of collective Conservative cultism, the Right Wing outrage machine is breathlessly targeting Senator Mark Kelly, a man who tangibly embodies what it means to be a patriotic American.

For correctly reminding members of the Military that they are not required to obey illegal orders, Kelly has been labeled seditious and threatened with death by a president whose election a year ago is quite literally the only thing keeping him from a prison cell for his high crimes against this nation.

Trump’s sycophantic footsoldiers, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Congressional Republicans, Fox News hosts, MAGA influencers, and your unhinged, conspiratorial uncle, have all thrown themselves into performative histrionics, calling for Kelly’s court-martial, imprisonment, and execution—all for having the stratospheric audacity to ask our servicemen and women to honor their oaths and not the whims of a cognitively failing, revenge-addled narcissist directing one of the largest and most violent examples of racial profiling we’ve witnessed in our lifetimes.

The juxtaposition of these men is almost beyond belief.

Mark Kelly flew combat missions in the Gulf War.

Donald Trump dodged military service due to non-existent bone spurs.

Mark Kelly retired from the Navy and NASA to care for his wife, Gabby Giffords, in her recovery following an attempted assassination.

Donald Trump had sex with a porn star while his third wife was with their four-month-old son.

Mark Kelly is a decorated war hero.

Donald Trump is a convicted felon.

Mark Kelly piloted four space shuttle flights, travelling over 4.8 million miles, orbiting the Earth 186 times.

Donald Trump was in Home Alone 2.

Mark Kelly has received two Defense Superior Service Medals, one Legion of Merit, two Distinguished Flying Crosses, four Air Medals, two Navy Commendation Medals, one Navy Achievement Medal, two Southwest Asia Service Medals, one Navy Expeditionary Medal, two Sea Service Deployment Ribbons, a NASA Distinguished Service Medal, and an Overseas Service Ribbon.

Donald Trump incited an insurrection on our Capitol in an attempt to overturn a free and fair election and commandeer our Government by force.

Despite having lived through the last decade and watching tens of millions of Americans abandon critical thinking, moral convictions, and working empathy in real time, moments like this remind us once again, (in case we’ve forgotten) just how widespread Conservative brain rot is and how far gone so many people around us are.

Mark Kelly is the absolute best of this nation. His sixty-one-year body of work is marked by the kind of courage, sacrifice, and decency that MAGA’s platitudes claim to value.

Donald Trump has left a 79-year-old slime trail of bankruptcies, financial improprieties, hush payments, indictments, felony convictions, sexual assault allegations (one affirmed in court), broken marriages, acts of treason, and the cultic indoctrination of people we loved, respected, and have lost for good.

Kelly is the patriot, leader, husband, father, and human that Donald Trump will never be, the kind his supporters tell us they respect and aspire to.

At every turn, Conservatives traffic in flag-waving, firework showy patriotism, but when the rubber meets the road, they will always side with the snarling, barely coherent, treasonous career criminal and serial predator in whom they have placed the entirety of their identities.

They are simply incapable of parting with him because doing so would mean confronting their culpability in the irreparable harm he has done to our nation.

And so they denigrate an astronaut and defend an ass.

God bless America…

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