I was watching a Bulwark “Focus Group” podcast the other day with commentary by NY Times reporter Robert Drapre. He had some interesting thoughts about the MAGA crack-up and seemed to have some insight into Marjorie Taylor Greene which I found quite interesting. Today, I see that he’s written a long profile, focusing on her evolution and current apostasy. I‘ve included a gift link here if you want to read the whole thing.
He’s been interviewing her for quite some time and observed her changing as she grew more experienced in politics. I confess that I was surprised that she went the direction she did:
But Greene — who for years took a back seat to no one when it came to reactionary rhetoric, going so far, before she was in office, as to accuse Democrats, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, of treasonous conduct and adding that treason was punishable by imprisonment or death — realized that she had suddenly lost all appetite for vengeance. She later told a friend, who confirmed the exchange: “After Charlie died, I realized that I’m part of this toxic culture. I really started looking at my faith. I wanted to be more like Christ.”
That was when the stress fracture that had been steadily widening between Greene and her political godfather became an irrevocable break. She had increasingly taken stands apart from the president and the Republican Party: declaring the war in Gaza a “genocide”; objecting to cryptocurrency and artificial-intelligence policies that, from her perspective, prioritized billionaire donors over working-class Americans; criticizing the Trump administration for approving foreign student visas, for enacting tariffs that hurt businesses in her district and for allowing Obamacare subsidies to expire.
Most significant, she defied the president and compliant House Republican leaders as she argued that all investigative material pertaining to Jeffrey Epstein should be released. “The Epstein files represent everything wrong with Washington,” Greene told me in December. “Rich, powerful elites doing horrible things and getting away with it. And the women are the victims.”
This seems more than a little bit convenient. How could someone who was the most toxic person in the U.S House (and that’s saying something) change so quickly? But as I read through it I actually recognized some aspects of her evolution in myself.
Bear with me here.
Greene came into politics with absolutely no experience or knowledge. She lived in Georgia among hardcore Republicans and automatically identified with that party. She got involved with MAGA facebook groups, QAnon and other aspects of that wild right wing faction early in the Trump administration. She easily adopted the attitude and behavior that Trump modeled and found that the power in being rude and crude and aggressive is intoxicating. This was how she defined politics. She didn’t know any other way.
But it’s exhausting and ultimately self-destructive and if the story is reflective of her actual journey, I’d say she gradually awakened to the fact that she was being an assassin for an unworthy master. For better or worse, this is a person who realized somewhere along the line that she’d been taken for a fool.
The reason I say that I can relate to this is because when I first started blogging I had some of that ‘take no prisoners” attitude as well. I was a student of politics for many years and didn’t have the learning curve that she clearly had but while I was never as crude or nasty as Greene there was an element of my writing that could be cruel and I came to regret it.
At the time I was writing pseudonymously, with few social limits. But I don’t think I changed because I revealed my identity. I had changed before that. My work was being circulated and I had become uncomfortable with the immature way I was often portraying people. I was becoming too enamored of my gift for the scathing insult and I realized that I was admiring people that were unworthy of my admiration. (“Yes, they’re horrible people but they’re my horrible people…”) So, I dialed it back, along with the rampant profanity. (I still use it of course — sometimes it’s the only thing that fully expresses a sentiment.)
I’m not trying to excuse her. She’s still a horrible person. Her treatment of trans kids alone would be enough to challenge all of her claims to being a good Christian. But I can sort of see the dynamic that has brought her where she is. In her case, I do think it has a lot to do with chafing at being Trump’s toady and now being excommunicated because she disagreed with him.
Well, that’s a tough lesson, isn’t it? You sign up with the fascists, they own you.
But I find her evolution interesting because there are so few Republicans who seem to be even slightly uncomfortable with being a Trump sycophant. Former adversaries like Marco Rubio are becoming more sycophantic as time goes by, fervently embracing their position as Trump flatterers. Greene went the other way and she’s a unicorn. I think that says it all about the allegedly tough, macho American right wing.