Doug's Darkworld

Yes, Trump and company aren’t the only ones who do stupid things. Hell, everyone does something stupid now and then. This is what I am talking about: House votes to remove Republican extremist Marjorie Taylor Greene from committee roles. The honorable Ms Greene is in fact the author of the above tweet. I’ll go into that in a bit. For now, she’s gotten a lot of flak for some of her past social media posts. Yes, she is the “Jewish space lasers” gal. And a major proponent of Qanon “theories.” (I’m being polite by not calling it a hoax, or worse.) Hell, here’s a rundown of some of her posts, including essentially threats to Democratic leaders. Marjorie Taylor Greene removes social media posts amid scrutiny of past controversial comments. Yerp, she went from Trump’s  “Lock her up!” to “Hang her!” Well, it was a logical extension of Trump’s views I suppose.

So no, I’m not a fan of Ms Greene. Her views are ridiculous too offensive, sometimes both. And she’s not the brightest candle on the cake as the above twitter exchange shows. I mean, one is a public figure but can’t be bothered to check one’s spelling? Also, as my brilliant potential assistant pointed out, she’s a blonde or a blond woman, but “blonde woman” makes no sense in American English. Blonde is a noun for females, blond is the adjective. And the idea that AOC is stupid, boy, amazing how the right has conflated “they’re liberal” with “they’re stupid.” I guess it plays to the base, but boy, they sure sound stupid when they trot it out. AOC whatever one thinks of her views, like Obama, is pretty smart. That’s a fact. Sadly it appears facts no longer matter, or even intrude, on people like Ms Greene’s world view now.

Ok, so why do I think removing her from her congressional committee assignments was one giant mistake? First off, let’s be perfectly clear. The House didn’t vote to strip Ms Greene of her committee assignments, the Democrats did. The vote was essentially on partisan lines, so this is the Democrats punishing Ms Greene for her “extremist” views. Views held by tens of millions of Americans. And how will they view this? As proof of “cancel culture” and a liberal conspiracy to shut down the Evangelical Right. It makes Ms Greene a martyr to her cause. And what a precedent to set, now the next time the GOP has a majority in either house, they can do the same to kick Dems out of committees. The committee system is horrible and undemocratic, now it’s partisan. Great.

I don’t think giving the opposition what they want is shrewd politics. This was the Dems pandering to their base with no thought to the political consequences. What the Dems should have done, is stand back and let Ms Greene shine her crazy lamp through. It’s not like she was going to do any harm on committees, instead she would have made a fool of herself and the nonsense she espouces. So the Dems accomplished nothing by doing this except pleasing their base and giving GOP extremists a new cause. And denying Ms Greene the opportunity to make a fool of herself. How, exactly, is that helping?

Call me a cynic, but I see two possibilities here. The Dems are lost in space, and not able to produce a rational political response to a clear opportunity to have the QAnon evangelicals for breakfast; or worse, they don’t care and are just continuing to play good cop/bad cop where the Dems are the “good” cop. I just don’t see any benefits for actual progressive politics in the Dems decision to punish Ms Greene for exercising her freedom of speech. Her employer can punish her for what she says, her constituents can punish her for what she says; the Democrats are neither and their action in this regard is the opposite of the democracy they ostensibly serve.

Convince me otherwise. Stay safe and warm everyone.#StaytheFHome #WearaDamnMask #FelesRegula

Copyright © 2021 Doug Stych. All rights reserved.

(Image: A twitter exchange between Ms Greene and AOC. Likely Public Domain under US copyright law, claimed as Fair Use under same.)