As millions in this country struggled with the economic realities of life under the pandemic, as schoolchildren and their parents fell into social isolation-related depression together, as women dropped out of the workforce because what we’re asking of them is simply impossible, as minimum wage “essential workers” pondered paying for health care with memories of condescending evening applause, as the number of “deaths by despair” climbed, as the number of Americans who have died from COVID-19 sped toward the half-million mark, the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday voted to kick a woman who used to film herself yelling at the parents of kids who died during school shootings off of the committee on education.
The vote was mostly along party lines, with just 11 of 208 Republicans joining every Democrat to relieve freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments. One hundred and ninety seven Republicans went on the record supporting one of the most repulsive people to serve in congress in my lifetime (and that includes prolific child molester Dennis Hastert and prolific sexual abuse ignorer Jim Jordan).
It’s a shame, too, because while Greene’s theatrics may be raising her own profile by putting her sassy masks on the news a lot, they’re doing so at the expense of her own constituents. What do they get when their representative has no power? Nothing. Not even liberal tears. The libs have not been owned. The libs are in charge. Greene isn’t living rent-free in Democrats’ heads. Greene’s theatrics are paying their rent. And yet, Republicans stood behind Greene. This is the hill they’re going to be space-lasered to death on. This is their platform: We stand with the crazy assholes.
The polite thing to say would be that it brings me no joy to write these words. But the polite thing wouldn’t be the true thing (besides, politeness died with the rise of the “fuck your feelings” party). While everybody who works in and around the Capitol complex deserves to work in a place where they don’t have to risk crossing paths with somebody as deranged as Greene, it brings me (and, judging by how eagerly she pounced on Greene, Speaker Pelosi) incredible satisfaction to witness the GOP finally implicitly admitting that Greene is who they are now.
She is the GOP without airbrushing, Fox News without the hair and makeup, or the Ivy League Vaseline on the lens obscuring the pock marks. She’s Sarah Palin, but not occasionally charismatic. She’s Steve Bannon, but not occasionally smart. She’s Donald Trump, but not occasionally funny. She’s the moral ugliness of the modern party laid bare, all the reasons that upstanding citizens shouldn’t vote for any Republican, conveniently combined into one person.
There are some who want to dismiss Greene as an insane hillbilly. That’s simply not true. Greene is from a wealthy suburb of Atlanta, and only represents the district she represents because a member of congress retired, and she carpetbagged. So, yes, Greene is insane, but she is not a hayseed, a country bumpkin, a hick, a yokel, or a clodhopper. She is among the more privileged members of American society, and has built a political career around lunatic fantasies that serve to explain why she hasn’t been given even more, which she sells to whoever will buy.
Republicans’ pushback on keeping Greene on the Education Committee (couldn’t they have picked a less ironic committee for her?) has been: But if Democrats can strip members of the opposite party of their committee assignments, then what’s to stop the ruling party from doing that to the minority party in the future? This is a tedious argument. Democrats gave Republicans the chance to discipline Greene, and Republicans didn’t take it. Any party would be well within its rights to at the very least strip committee assignments from a member of their caucus that had, at any point in the past, publicly and on-the-record encouraged the murder of other members of Congress—a teenager would get fired from working the after school shift at The Dairy Queen for much less.
By now, Greene’s particular brand of lowbrow obscenity is well-known. In addition to posting videos of herself berating the parents of dead children to social media, she’s also called for the execution of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic lawmakers, promoted the idea that California wildfires were caused by a laser that the “Rothschild Inc, international investment banking firm,” if you catch her drift, had somehow placed in space, questioned whether the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, actually happened, boosted content related to the QAnon conspiracy alleging that Hollywood celebrities and elites were molesting children (my god, how did the Jews find time to put a laser in space while also eating all those babies?) and, since being elected to Congress, promoted the Big Lie that the 2020 election was fraudulently stolen, which led directly to an attack on the US Capitol, and, while that attack was happening and she and her coworkers were sheltering in place, laughed at a colleague who offered her a mask to mitigate the spread of COVID. Multiple colleagues of Greene tested positive for COVID-19 after that incident, including New Jersey Democrat Bonnie Watson Coleman, who was immune-compromised because she’s recovering from cancer.
Greene hasn’t actually apologized for any of it, save expressing suspiciously timed regret about posting some QAnon content to her social media, which she turned into another excuse to blame “the media” for reporting on the things she herself had posted.
Republicans argue that Greene shouldn’t be punished for how she acted before she was elected, ignoring the fact that Greene’s insistence that she be allowed to masklessly aspirate her germy breath in the halls of Congress may very well have endangered the lives of her colleagues, their staff, and their families. Again, the kind of conduct that would merit disciplinary action or dismissal in most other jobs. Not to mention the fact that the petri dish lockdown happened on account of an attack that Greene encouraged.
Congressional Republicans either agree with Greene or they’re too scared of the possibility of upsetting people who do to take a stand against her. They are either on board, or too timid to turn the ship around. And both scenarios effectively mean that Greene is the GOP and the GOP is Greene.
If Marjorie Taylor Greene is nuttier than Mr. Peanut’s jockstrap, so is everybody else with an (R) by their name. At least, until the vast majority of people on that side of the aisle who stood behind her on Thursday get the nerve to actually do something about it.
