Marjorie Taylor Greene = MTG = Meet The Grinch
Who Is Trying To Steal Our American Democracy
I feel a bit like a rodent watching a king cobra weaving and a-bobbing before the strike. It’s hypnotic watching this unrivaled display of sheer lunacy from anyone, let alone a member of Congress. Is she for real? Is she an anomaly or a future leader of the GOP . . . a viable replacement for Trump? How ridiculous and absurd can one person get?
I mean it as a real question, like a math problem. Clearly conspiracy theorists like her are intending to cultivate the gullible and those prone to obsessing over an idée fixe. How outlandishly low can she go to attract the naïve and lunatic fringe?
We are exploring brand new territory in mathematics here but I believe the first equation must look something like R + O = ________ where R = Ridiculous and O = Outlandish and the answer, to be solved, would necessarily involve an unknown degree or power of magnitude.
The next step therefore is R + O = Sn where S = Stupid and “n” equals the power of magnitude of the lunacy under examination, namely, hers.
Furthermore we can stipulate . . . .R + O = S + L to balance the equation more firmly:
statements that are Ridiculous and Outlandish can be measured, or at least approximated, for the degree of their Stupidity and Lunacy by determining the magnitude of their exponential.[1]
I will not try to regale the reader with a list of the impossibly stupid utterances that have fallen from MTG’s lips other than to say she can tell whoppers. As for motive(s), we can divide that problem into a series of separate categories, so M x R = a whole number greater than Zero and less than Infinity, where M = Motive and R = Reason, thus we get:
M = Shock Value
M = Financial Gain
M = Right-wing Propaganda
M = Ignorance
M = Lunacy
In brief, M x R = M x 5 = one very shocking, greedy, reactionary, ignorant lunatic = named Marjorie Taylor Greene [Not to forget human nature; she just may be a naturally mean, cynical, argumentative bitter old witch; some age before their time and lose all grace of youth.]
She is over-matched from the get go when confronted with intelligent critics armed with facts. She doesn’t see herself as others see her; she doesn’t sense her own weak powers, barely above impotence for a person entrusted with making laws for the country. The travesty of her antics speaks of a pathetic human being with no sense of compassion, proportion, or justice.
The $64,000 question arises: does MTG believe half the nonsense she spouts? Americans with a clear mind should not rush to answer since her skill in duplicity here is like nothing most Americans have ever seen. Currently she is a successful snake oil salesman as distinct from those who are exposed as frauds. Still, she has trapped herself in a fire-pit of hell and yet lacks the common sense to recognize what a laughing stock of a fool she’s become. She’s little better than a court jester.
Therefore, to the question “Does she believe her own lies?” the answer is both yes and no, depending as it does on circumstances and convenience of the moment. It is one of the best tricks of the Trumpesque Truth Distorters to walk a fine line between “believing” and “pretending-to-believe” their own nonsense, depending entirely on the occasion.
She picks the most ridiculous propositions on purpose, not because she really believes them but that’s where the gold-mining works best—fool the gullible with a Big Enough Lie and you can start picking their pockets from here to doomsday. She’s a bit of an actress, too: not a very good one, but good enough to separate suckers from their hard-earned money.
She could make a career out of acting the part of a perturbed monkey at the zoo about to fling her feces if you get her mad enough. She’s probably a better actress than a thinking elected representative, obviously—yet even the “stupidly behaved” sometimes have a keen nose for where the real money is. She’s into the sensational and irrational noise-making at the moment, like it’s a ride at some bizarre amusement park–and appears to be enjoying the ride immensely.
Her moment of epiphany was to figure out there’s more to be gained from ridiculous behavior than normal behavior; when Trump Craziness got rolling she simply decided it was easier to join the parade than stand on American democratic and constitutional principles.
That tells us how cowardly she is! She lacks a conscience and a sense of purpose wherein elected representatives fight for the American people rather than take the path of least resistance toward self-aggrandizement and pools of money. Acting crazy works, financially!
She appears more than willing to be the poster child for this new brand of unexpurgated lunacy, female style. She’s an insult to her gender, her race, and her nation—she is attacking, besmirching, and maligning a body of honest, hard-working elected representatives. She doesn’t believe in or belong in Congress; she belongs in a psychiatric office, a mental asylum or a circus side-show featuring freaks that aren’t entirely legible or rational in thought and feeling.
In front of her followers—the mob she excites like a cult leader on a mission to achieve an apocalyptic catastrophe–she’s utterly “sincere” in a most transparent manner: that is, it’s the same sort of artificial and practiced “sincerity” that all phony snake oil salesmen learn to con people. Indeed, the degree of feigned sincerity makes all the difference in the world between falling flat and successfully hoodwinking people, between nickels and dimes and hitting a treasure trove of big money.
Trump talked about the election as though he won; everybody knows he didn’t except for the delusional who donated to him tons of money: a couple hundred million. And that’s for an election loser! He’s profiting from his failure! Greene is smart enough to smell and follow a lucrative money trail. She’s getting adept at practicing his schizophrenic two-step. She’s a Tigress of Falsehoods when it suits her mood, drumming up support and beating the bushes for cash. In a different context, however–especially when legal problems appear on the horizon–these so-called alternate-reality hoaxers strike a different tone.
There comes a moment when she finally realizes that to persist means trouble; her personal and legal problems begin rapidly mounting. She crossed a line too far and didn’t realize it in time. Now she panics, or fakes her panic, to get out from under the weighty response: lawmakers and millions of Americans are expressing their disgust and disdain for the little actress and her unpredictable mood swings.
When about to be removed from her committee assignments in Congress (with talk of expelling her) the same R + O equation kicks in: Ridiculous and Outlandish is supposed to overcome all criticism and opposition. Unfortunately, four years of Trump helped prepare Americans to recognize with lightning speed the new phony in the mix as soon as he or she appears.
She thinks she’s a Liar Specialist and yet she is really quite ordinary; plenty of Trump cronies were much better than she could ever hope to be. She’s so transparent! Ms. Liar Specialist fakes an effort to appear just a teensy-weensy bit contrite: not enough to offend the majority of her misguided followers but enough to claim she never said or did anything remotely like what she actually said and did.
The Liar in her contradicts herself with more lies: truly a strange phenomenon! Suddenly, her switchiness appears:
“Okay, maybe 9/11 really did happen and a plane really did hit the Pentagon” as MTG begins conceding ground and back-pedaling . . . she’s forced to admit the Gargantuan Imbecility of Her Claims because of the size of the Push Back which is about to clean her clock.
Whew, I can’t tell you how many people like me are relieved to find out that MTG thinks Sept. 11, 2001 really happened! Otherwise, we would be banging our heads against the wall and feeling foolish for not having noticed how a photographer or somebody faked the collapse of the Twin Towers and huge orange balls of fire exploding skyward from the Pentagon Building.[2]
Am I accusing her of lunacy, you say? Yes, but a carefully plotted money-making lunacy. You don’t draw dollars out of the pockets of followers with little anecdotes that barely stretch the truth a nickel’s worth. That’s how the snake oil salesmen and political chameleons operate: they always move toward the Maximum of Ridiculousness (M + R = $) to see how much poisoned garbage their “clientele” can swallow.
It’s kind of like Bitcoin or the Stock Market if LIES could be traded and the monetary value of falsehoods varied from day to day, going up if pitched just right in the excitement and confusion of a manufactured crisis, dropping like a rock in value and needing to be reduced to a smolder or jettisoned entirely when the political waters get too hot.
It’s like a Stock Exchange for the Stupidest Lies and Most Absurd Claims imaginable with the Far Right Hypocrites following the usual business principles of profit-taking: markets can contract or expand and the Leaders of Lunacy learn when to buy, sell, lie, cheat, scream, indulge histrionics or backpedal toward the normal world for short visits when resistance and criticism prove too much for their ridiculous lies!
One day, a new absurd claim: the next day a denial, a retreat, a concession . . . followed by even crazier lies or perhaps a doubling down on an old one: proposed, denied, proposed again. It’s all a juvenile attempt to throw up a smokescreen and confuse people but really it’s fairly easy to see through the smoke and fog of a liar’s breath. They’re not fooling anyone but themselves, convinced they can distract people from thinking about real issues and real solutions by offering them a dazzling display of incompetency and sheer lunacy.
In short, they develop a most curious habit: they willingly go beyond the regular circle of phony threadbare lies and fabricated arguments to test the waters of the farthest absurdities—which actually makes it easier for them when they come back to Earth with their regular witches’ brew of obscene prejudices and wicked calumnies. Then they can once again concentrate on promulgating vicious stereotypes against the target of the day. Illogical reasoning and insupportable falsehoods start to look deliciously palatable after a hair-raising, pulse-pounding excursion into the Right’s Science-Fiction Wonderland.
Okay, 9/11 maybe was real after all (conceded at last!) . . . . Maybe students DID DIE at Parkland High and Sandy Hook Elementary (the massacres weren’t “staged”) and maybe one of the four airplanes hijacked by the terrorists even hit the Pentagon . . . BUT there are still Jews! and not just Jews but Muslims, Immigrants, Democrats, Election Day Officials, Judges, Jurists, Professors, Scholars, Poets, Artists, Civil Servants, Philanthropists and even ordinary Americans defending the Constitution. Those are real enemies and not imaginary ones!
It’s a trading technique: dream up the wildest and most outlandish claims conceivable and choose the right moment to abandon the hype-and-hoax to settle for something more familiar, more comfortable. In the Old South it would be like a racist demagogue claiming Georgia was being invaded by Martians . . . until threatened with expulsion from political office and suddenly having a change of heart, “conceding” that there was no factual basis for the Martian invasion story . . . but reminding his faithful followers (and bigtime financial contributors) that there are still plenty of Black People trying to vote! Forget the aliens: there are people with different skin color living right here in America!
Social media is producing and amplifying plenty of nuts and there are people with hardly any scruples, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who see the phenomenon–the rightwing generation of conspiracy theories–as a money-making bonanza. She abandons entirely the notion–and pledge– that diverse men and women in their respective fields should always do their best to be honest and fair in all their actions, statements, and dealings with other people.
Marjorie fancies herself the next Trump, one supposes, but she’ll need to keep a hundred different lies in the air at one time to achieve one tenth of the support he garnered. Say what you will about him, he was a Grandiloquent Narcissist whose ability to blind and deceive people came quite naturally and reached prodigious proportions. The charisma of a Natural Born Liar cannot be imitated so readily by upstarts like MTG.
By comparison, she’s a squeaky little pimple on the ex-president’s swagger whose pitiful attempts to puff up her own little conceited fiefdom is doomed to self-destruction. Even as a liar, a hypocrite, a conspiracy theorist and a hoaxer she doesn’t have what it takes—and as regarding any sort of judgment regarding true American values and virtues, she fails miserably as an elected representative, as an American citizen, and, quite frankly, as a normal human being.
She has locked herself into the role of lunatic–not knowing, apparently, that the road of lunacy ultimately goes nowhere. Her “success”, if any she has, will prove brittle and hollow, shallow and fleeting—the human spirit does not welcome the mocking of the human race by two-bit petty con artists and shucking actresses.
She cannot escape our judgment–or the judgment of history–any more than the Narcissist-in-Chief could warp reality to fit his own delusions. If Trumpism is her model, her career is destined to crash and burn, sooner or later—hopefully sooner than later.
Ridiculous + Outlandish equals Stupid to the unknown power of n.
R + O = Sn
Only the extent of the magnitude of the exponent Sn remains to be determined.
[1] It’s somewhat like measuring how far a really bad fart travels through a roomful of people before the smell reaches Point A, Point B, Point C, etc. a point in time which generally can be determined by observing closely the facial muscles that start twitching when the odor reaches each person’s nose (This note is for my critics who claim I don’t use enough footnotes!)
[2] It goes without saying that if MTG were a guide to that field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania where another plane crashed, visitors would soon hear that the debris and human remains scattered wide and far did not resemble an airplane crashing at all! [Footnote #2!]
