Who exactly does Kay Ivey think she’s helping with “Alabama-made” missiles?
It's time for warmongering Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey to log directly off
Time to Log Off is a weekly series documenting the many ways our political figures show their whole asses online.
As Russia’s despotic invasion of Ukraine pushes into its second week, and the ongoing destruction being wrought upon Ukrainian cities and civilians — no matter how valiantly they fight to defend their homes — comes into sharper relief, one of the major open-ended questions facing the world remains: to what degree, if any, will the United States act to end the bloodshed in Eastern Europe?
For the time being, the U.S. is treading a very careful line between aiding its NATO allies to constrain and counteract Russian President Vladimir Putin’s expansionist agenda, while not actively engaging in outright hostility that could quickly spiral into something far, far worse — a possibility hinted at by Putin himself, who has put his nation’s nuclear arsenal in a “special regime of combat duty” to dissuade anyone from standing in his way.
It is into this delicate China shop of a geopolitical mess that Alabama Republican Gov. Kay Ivey has decided to attempt her best impression of a bull, stampeding in with enough yeehaw hubris to make the second hand on the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock quiver.
One could, I suppose, understand Ivey for being excited on behalf of the several hundred Alabamians who work at her state’s Lockheed Martin’s Pike County Operations center, but how, exactly, does she expect this whole thing to play out? What sort of warped, blood-drenched Dr. Strangelove fantasy is she advocating for here? In her mind, is some rogue Ukrainian militia member going to burst through the walls of the Kremlin, five hundred miles away from Ukraine’s capital city of Kyiv, and yell “dosvedanya, motherfucker! Alabama sends its regards” before they starts blasting away? Is she volunteering?
In fairness to Ivey, this sort of empty, jingoistic posturing is her whole thing; earlier this week she signed a memorandum demanding the removal of all Russian liquor from her state’s ABC liquor stores, calling it a “small but meaningful way to take action,” which is an incredible overstatement on both counts considering the large alcohol brands most often associated with Russia are from entirely other countries altogether.
Regardless, despite essentially advocating for a thermonuclear exchange between two global superpowers, Ivey is still heavily favored to win reelection this coming November, thanks in part to her track record of anti-women, anti-gay, pro-alleged-sexual-predator stances. But before then, perhaps she could take a break from tempting atomic fate and simply log off instead? Might be for the best.
