The leaders of three branches of the U.S. military slammed Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) over his monthslong blockade of senior military promotions Tuesday, with one accusing the Republican senator of “aiding and abetting communists.”
“For someone who was born in a communist country, I would have never imagined that actually one of our own senators would actually be aiding and abetting communists and other autocratic regimes around the world,” Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro — a Cuban-born Navy veteran — said Tuesday during an interview on CNN alongside Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall and Army Secretary Christine Wormuth.
“This is having a real negative impact and will continue to have a real negative impact on our combat readiness,” Del Toro added.
While I agree with everything else you’ve said this bit kind of undermines your point. Left/Right particularly with regards to the US is almost irrelevant. The terms liberal and conservative are probably more useful/relevant although increasingly you could just say fascist/non-fascist as well unfortunately. Use of Left/Right to refer to Democrats and Republicans is really just historical shorthand at this point, particularly since Democrats are only Left relative to Republicans.
Furthermore the whole thing is stupid because there really aren’t any communists (as the term is meant when used by these people) left for the most part. Only one I can think of off the top of my head is North Korea. There’s also the fact that it has always bothered me that Communist as it’s typically used very much combines two different concepts/systems into one, that is economics and government policy/decision making. It’s like arguing that Britain is a Feudalist society just because they have a monarchy (although that’s not a great example since the monarchy is pretty damn vestigial at this point). Similarly it bothers me that people will use Capitalist as some kind of shorthand for Democratic as if Capitalism is a requirement of Democracy and vice versa.