From bored housewife to national powerhouse in five short years
If you want to read a fascinating portrait of Marjorie Taylor Green, this piece in the Atlantic is a good place to start. I’m not sure it fully explains how this suburban Atlanta housewife became the shrieking harpy she is today but it’s interesting nonetheless. It seems as if she was just a bored wealthy woman who found herself on the internet and loved the attention. (She never had any interest in politics before Trump.) But I suspect there’s more to it than that. One thing is clear — she has often gotten excited about things and then lost interest. I wonder if that will happen here?
Anyway, here’s the conclusion and I think it’s on the money:
What Marjorie Taylor Greene has accomplished is this: She has harnessed the paranoia inherent in conspiratorial thinking and reassured a significant swath of voters that it is okay—no, righteous—to indulge their suspicions about the left, the Republican establishment, the media. “I’m not going to mince words with you all,” she declared at a Michigan rally this fall. “Democrats want Republicans dead, and they’ve already started the killings.” Greene did not create this sensibility, but she channels it better than any of her colleagues.
In her speech at the Cobb County GOP breakfast, Greene bemoaned “the major media organizations” for creating a caricature of her “that’s not real” without ever, she said, giving her the chance to speak for herself. Afterward, I introduced myself, noted what she had just said, and asked if she was willing to sit down for an interview. “Oh,” she said, “you’re the one that’s going around trying to talk to [all my friends]. This is the first time you’ve actually tried to talk to me.” I explained that I had tried but had been repeatedly turned away by her staff. “Yeah, because I’m not interested,” she snapped. “You’re a Democrat activist.” Some of her supporters looked on, nodding with vigor.
Whether Greene actually believes the things she says is by now almost beside the point. She has no choice but to be the person her followers think she is, because her power is contingent on theirs. The mechanics of actual leadership—diplomacy, compromise, patience—not only don’t interest her but represent everything her followers disdain. To soften, or engage in better faith, is to admit defeat.
I think often of Greene’s blog post from July 26, 2014, and the question she posed to herself during her crisis of confidence. “Why not me?” she had written tentatively, trying it on for size. I think of it whenever I see Greene onstage, on YouTube, on the House floor, making performance art of rage and so clearly at ease with what she is. Were the question not in writing, I’m not sure I’d believe there was a time in her life when she’d been afraid to ask.
There have always been these nutty types in the GOP. Michele Bachman comes to mind. But Green seems to me to be something different. I don’t think she’s earnest, as Bachman was. She is portrayed in the profile as being quite self-aware — she cultivated her online image and shape shifted as she saw her audience’s reactions. And she created myths about herself that have no basis in fact.
She’s more than just another right wing nut. And she really gets off on power.