The Marjorie Taylor Greene disease


There she goes again, opening her mouth and saying stupid shit.

Appearing before the Dalton, Georgia, City Council on June 15, 2020, Greene complained about the movement to remove statues of the pro-slavery Confederacy and Christopher Columbus.

We’re seeing situations where Christopher Columbus, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, all kinds of statues are being attacked, said Greene. It seems to be just an effort to take down history.

She went on to note, And whether I see a statue that may be something that I would fully disagree with, like Adolf Hitler, maybe a statue of Satan himself, I would not want to say take it down, but again, it’s so that I can tell my children and teach others about who these people are, what they did, and what they may be about.

I don’t believe for a moment that a statue of Hitler is something she would fully disagree with.

Also, the problem isn’t “attacking” statues, it’s attacking the ideas that those statues represent. We put up statues of famous men and then ignore the flaws in those people, so it’s the opposite of teaching history to idolize individuals. What am I supposed to teach children when we stroll by a statue of Hitler in the park? That you aren’t supposed to feel sick to your stomach, that you should respect the principles he stood for?

Marjorie Taylor Greene is stupid and demented. And she doubled down!

Over the weekend, Greene had said during an interview that COVID-related mask rules in the House of Representatives are reminiscent of a time in history where people were told to wear a gold star and they were definitely treated like second-class citizens — so much so that they were put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany, and this is exactly the type of abuse that Nancy Pelosi is talking about.

A mask is a functional item that benefits the wearer, and most importantly, the people around them. It discriminates against respiratory viruses, nothing else. But maybe she’d like to erect statues to coronaviruses?

It’s not just one loon babbling, either. The whole dang Republican party seems to support her.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy released a statement describing Greene’s newest comments about the Holocaust as “wrong” but also attacking Democrats.

At a time when the Jewish people face increased violence and threats, anti-Semitism is on the rise in the Democrat Party and is completely ignored by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, he wrote.

Boy, they really hate Nancy Pelosi. But that’s all backwards — the Republicans are where we find the white nationalists and white supremacists and the people who are trying to restrict democracy and oppose immigration. And they call the Democrats anti-Semitic?

I think what they’re referring to is that there are more Democrats willing to recognize the authoritarian oppression of Palestinians by Israel. That’s not anti-Semitism. That’s opposition to genocide by Israeli “defense” forces. It’s also weak sauce, since the Democrats haven’t been particularly effective in opposing the violence.

But the Republicans will just go on propping up the kind of antic poison that will rip this country apart.

Comments

  1. christoph says

    She just says stupid hateful shit because it gets her some attention, kind of like the Westboro Baptist Church. Remember them? I do, vaguely.

  2. kome says

    @1
    MTG is what happens when we don’t take seriously the threats to morality and intelligence presented by the WBC. The WBC are only less relevant today than they were a decade ago because things have gotten worse.

  3. raven says

    MTG: …a time in history where people were told to wear a gold star and they were definitely treated like second-class citizens

    Her analogy is flawed in many ways.

    Marjorie Taylor Greene is a Plague Rat.
    A member of the Friends of the Covid-19 Virus fan club.

    The correct analogy would be if she was made to wear a gold PR star or a yellow rat shaped badge.

  4. Artor says

    “I don’t believe for a moment that a statue of Hitler is something she would fully disagree with.”
    I also don’t believe for a moment that MTG would support a public display of that beautiful bronze Baphomet the Satanic Temple offers to provide as a religious statue when ignorant Republicans insist on allowing them on state properties.

  5. says

    Remember, too, that all of the peoples of the ancient Levant are “Semites.” Whether that includes both those with a couple thousand years of living in Eastern Europe and those who stayed around is one of those arguments that nobody can win, though.

    The obvious problem is one with boundary-drawing a century ago by upper-class white men who had no clue concerning the history of the region or of the people they were moving in (instead of, say, establishing Praha as an alternative). Yeah, everybody will stay in their places and follow the directives of Lord/The Right Hon. Muckymuck (whether English, French, or otherwise is largely irrelevant) for the next century despite the preceding nineteen. OK, not so much.

    The less-obvious problem is the multiple theocracies in the region, which necessarily creates bloodshed. There’s plenty of blame to go around.

  6. lumipuna says

    Marjorie Taylor Greene is a Plague Rat.
    A member of the Friends of the Covid-19 Virus fan club.

    The correct analogy would be if she was made to wear a gold PR star or a yellow rat shaped badge.

    One could argue that when anti-maskers resist mask wearing in environments where mask wearing is very common, they are visibly and inadvertently outing themselves as all-around covid denialists, vaccine refuseniks etc. (or are perceived as being such, even if they aren’t).

    Then again, I don’t think what MTG meant. She literally doesn’t make any sense.

  7. mnk7 says

    Statues aren’t how we remember history, it’s how we glorify it. If the person isn’t worthy of glory, neither is the statue.

  8. Pierce R. Butler says

    The whole dang Republican party seems to support her.

    I move we dub them the Greene Party from now on.

    It’s not like anybody in the US is doing anything useful with that name anyway.

  9. birgerjohansson says

    When they finally get chased out of public office in the USA there is a non-zero risk they might go to Britain and join the incredibly harmful and toxic Tories. They would fit right in, possibly with the exception for the gun fetischism.

  10. says

    When the Rs succeeded in equating criticism of Netanyahu’s administration with antisemitism what McCarthy said becomes easy and Faux will support him.

  11. says

    You’d think there would be a deluge of conservatives flocking to Confederate statues to teach people about how awful the subjects were to prove that the statues are there for that purpose.

  12. flange says

    I think we could put the US “Defense” Department in the same class as Israeli “defense” forces.

  13. monad says

    There are to be sure problems with Lincoln but have his statues really been attacked? Because most of what I hear about are about the statues of the traitors who took up arms against him for not being sufficiently keen on slavery, which the self-titled “party of Lincoln” have been strangely defensive about.

  14. Tethys says

    The Q arm of trumplicans is well known for its utter disregard for reality, and has adopted cheetolini’s tactics of spouting the most hateful lies they can imagine to rile up the bigot base and fill their coffers.

    It very sadly works, as there are plenty of white middle class xtian idiots who are willing to believe anything that validates their irrational fears of people with melanin being treated equally to their pale hateful selves.

  15. PaulBC says

    Artor@4

    I also don’t believe for a moment that MTG would support a public display of that beautiful bronze Baphomet the Satanic Temple offers

    Well, she says she wants to teach children “who these people are, what they did, and what they may be about”. Based on the statue, I conclude Baphomet is a dignified goat-headed gentleman with a lean, yet muscular, physique. He has stately horns and beautiful feathered wings. He wears a caduceus for some reason (it “symbolises trade, negotiation and reciprocity” had to cheat on that one). Also, he is beloved of well-groomed children who look up to him in reverence.

    …which is all good I suppose. It surprises me that this is the message she wants kids to take away (though I agree she’d be totally happy with a monument that showed Hitler in a similar light).

  16. quasar says

    Pierce R. Butler @8 said:

    “I move we dub them the Greene Party from now on.”

    Please no. Discussing American politics here in Australia is already confusing enough, what with our conservative party being called the “Liberals”.

    Why can’t we just name parties after the idealogy they follow? Democrats would be the “Conservative Centrist party” and Republicans would be the “Fascist Autocrat Grifter party”.

  17. says

    @2: WBC pretty much fell apart. Without Freddie boy, they couldn’t seem to hold it together. That, and they’ve actively been kicking out some of the family members. If you remember Kevin Smith’s “Red State”, Shirley Phelps-Roper threatened to sue him. Years later, she sent him a letter of apology because she’d been ex-communicated.

    Basically, the monster ended up eating itself once the main face was gone.

  18. PaulBC says

    @2 @17 Sorry, what’s WBC? I know “white blood count” from reading family medical charts. I can find “World Boxing Council” but I doubt that’s what you mean. White Boy’s Club? Seriously… I reread the post, your comments and did some web search and I’m still stumped.

  19. PaulBC says

    I also have trouble keeping it straight in my head which is the real one and which is the parody: Westboro or Landover.

  20. Pierce R. Butler says

    quasar @ # 16: … Republicans would be the “Fascist Autocrat Grifter party”.

    The acronym for that might provoke controversy from certain circles, though it would agitate the Repubs fabulously.

    And – I dunno but doubt this has reached much of Australia – the US Greens have (in no small part) fairly explicitly aligned themselves already with the Repubs as a spoiler party and crank magnet, with no visible efforts at self-redemption.

  21. says

    @#22, Pierce R. Butler:

    the US Greens have (in no small part) fairly explicitly aligned themselves already with the Repubs as a spoiler party and crank magnet, with no visible efforts at self-redemption.

    Only in the same sense that the Democrats, by repeatedly running centrists who have spent their careers sabotaging the base and helping Republicans achieve their policy goals, have explicitly aligned themselves with the Repubs as collaborators.

    What’s that? You don’t think that’s a fair characterization, and would mean that people like you who support the Democrats are useful idiots who slit their own throats by letting their objections to Republican policy be harnessed to support people who support it? Golly, that’s terrible. The sauce was fine when it was on the goose, though.

  22. PaulBC says

    I’m not even going to criticize US Greens as spoilers. They’re just ineffectual. When every party member who holds office is listed on a Wikipedia page, it is not a serious party.

    Take it from a running dog lackey of the bourgeoisie, some of us actually do care about winning elections.

  23. says

    They aren’t only anti-Semitic; they’re also anti-semantic. They’re against words having meanings.
    For instance, recently MTG said, “This woman is mentally ill.” She was referring to Pelosi, but I say that she was really referring to herself.

  24. says

    WBC pretty much fell apart. Without Freddie boy, they couldn’t seem to hold it together.

    That does tend to happen with groups or political parties that depend on a demagogue. They can fall apart as wet wipes soon as the dear leader is discredited, leaves or dies.

    Demagogues talk a mean talk, but are like as not to fuck up by the numbers when confronted with a reality they can’t control. See e.g. Trump in the US, Johnson in the UK, Erdogan in Turkey, Modi in India, Bolsonaro in Brazil.

  25. raven says

    Almost On Topic.
    An antivaxxer plowed her care through a vaccination site in Tennessee.
    She didn’t run over anyone but it was close.
    She is now charged with 7 felonies.
    BTW, this site was protected by the police.

    We are seeing similar things out here on the west coast.
    The antivaxxers haven’t attacked vaccination clinics but they are out protesting around them.
    There are a lot of Friends of the Covid-19 Virus fan club also known as Plague Rats.

    Tennessee anti-vaxxer arrested after deliberately plowing car through vaccination site
    Matthew Chapman May 26, 2021 Raw Story

    On Wednesday, WSMV reported that a woman in eastern Tennessee was arrested after she drove recklessly through a drive-in COVID-19 vaccination site to protest the administration of the vaccine — nearly hitting several health workers in the process.

    “Deputies arrested Virginia C. Brown, 36, of Greenback, TN, on Monday morning after she drove through a vaccination center set up at the Foothills Mall,” reported Chuck Morris. “Deputies assigned to assist at the site saw a blue Chrysler SUV traveling at a high rate of speed through a closed cone course and through an enclosed tent with several Health Department and National Guard personnel working under the tent. The deputy observed the Chrysler SUV exit the tent and continue to drive recklessly through the cone course. A deputy was able to follow Brown after she drove through the site and arrest her. She was charged with seven counts of felony reckless endangerment.”

  26. raven says

    Anti-vaccine group protests outside Ridgefield High School in Washington state…www.kgw.com › news › health › coronavirus › vaccine

    14 hours ago — A few dozen protesters were outside the high school Wednesday as the school held a vaccine clinic. They held signs like “no masks, …

    I’d ask what the hell is wrong with these people. They are targeting children here. But why bother.
    We all know what is wrong with them.

  27. Pierce R. Butler says

    The Vicar … @ # 23: You don’t think that’s a fair characterization…

    Not unfair – just totally knee-jerk dumb.

    Propose a better (more effective) alternative.

  28. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    MTG used the common invalid argument of using a FalseAnalogy.
    comparing wearing masks to combat transmission of a deadly disease is in no way analogous to the symbol one ethnicity was forced to wear to identify their ethnicity for discrimination and eventual collection.
    It is awful how many side with her and accept that false analogy as a valid one. WTF.

  29. quasar says

    Pierce R. Butler @22

    Oh shit! I swear to any gods that won’t be listening, that acronym was entirely unintentional.

    Here in Australia we have preferential voting, so third party votes automatically go to the lesser of the two evils when the third party fails to win Thus, voting pragmatically and voting my consious here usually align. Relieves the mental exhaustion on my part, and the greens actually get to wield some tiny tiny fraction of the total political power in the country to boot.

    Far less than they should, admittedly (the Greens get around 10% of the vote nationwide but less than 1% of the parliament members because we still think land should wield more power than people), but still, it’s a much better system than first-past-the-post.

  30. Chakat Firepaw says

    @quasar #32:

    Doing that accidentally is certainly believable. Here in Canada, the first attempt to “unite the right” by merging the Progressive Conservative¹ and Reform parties resulted in them coming up with the name “Canadian Conservative-Reform Alliance Party”.

    They quickly shortened that to “Canadian Alliance”, but not before comedians had a weekend to have fun with it.

    1: Yes, I know it’s an oxymoron. It came about because the PCs were themselves a merger of the Conservative and Progressive parties back when the Conservatives were in many ways the centrist party and the Liberals the pro-money party.