Attack of the Clowns
One of the dumbest members of Congress is coming to Ohio's capital on Saturday.
On Friday, I wrote about Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) being the future of Republican campaigning in that she understood modern politics is much like “the promo interview” in professional wrestling.
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I had no idea how prescient my words would be. A little over 72 hours later, the first Congresswoman in United States history forced to declare she believed “9-11 absolutely happened” announced her intention to descend upon our fair state where she no doubt has her fair share of supporters:
Ah yes, nothing quite screams “Freedom” like pledging fealty to the foot soldiers of fascism. But, hey, it’s not like people who look like Taylor Greene are the ones getting shot dead in the street. This country would look a lot different if they were.
Taylor Greene would be the first to declare herself as “pro-life,” and yet on Saturday the conspiracy theory monger herself will travel to Columbus to grandstand on the grave of a 16-year-old child who was murdered by the state while she defended herself.
We saw the 14 seconds of the altercation that the Columbus Division of Police wanted us to see, which is why they released the bodycam footage before Ma’Khia Bryant’s body was cold while they cautioned the rest of us “not to rush to judgment.” They knew how their narrative would be seen within the echo chamber of right-wing media.
Footage that wasn’t tailored by the cops, however, tells a much different tale in a Twitter thread you will have to click through to read:
The only quibble I take with the thread is “the girl in pink” is not a girl — she is a grown-ass woman who accompanied a minor to assault another child. She knowingly entered the fracas and was only saved from her fate from the actions of a cowardly Republican cop who lives in Sunbury.
It’s the exact self-defense scenario that “Stand Your Ground” freaks love to fantasize about. Unless, of course, it involves a 16-year-old black girl who is murdered by a white police officer while defending herself from a group of people who came to her foster home to do her harm. Then, suddenly, it’s a “grown woman who got what was coming to her.”
I have no doubt that armed, out-of-town agitators will descend on the Statehouse on Saturday. They will be white men who consider themselves “militias” while they stomp around on public grounds for a couple of hours, hobnob with the police, and then retire to places like Westerville and Newark for an evening of punishing their colons with obscene amounts of red meat and Busch Light.
Rep. Taylor Greene will be welcomed to town by the same police department that maced Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Columbus) this summer. The “law and order” nonsense only exists when the protestors are black and demanding that their colleagues stop shooting minorities dead in the street.
Taylor Greene is coming to Columbus looking for conflict. That is her method of operation. Considering she got stripped of her Congressional assignments, it’s really the only tool she has available in getting her name out there.
If things go sideways, as they easily could given her inevitably inflammable rhetoric, they will blame Antifa supersoldiers just like they did on January 6th.
Saturday will showcase where Columbus is as a city. A fucking loon who backed a failed putsch at the Capitol nearly four months ago will be given a microphone to babble on about how only her ilk can save American democracy as we know it.
It sounds like a sick joke until you remember that’s what they considered Hitler. Right until he wasn’t.
THOSE WMDs. The ease of tracking mobile phones of U.S. soldiers in hot spots… Marianne Taylor talks about her bird obsession… The pandemic erased entire categories of friendship… What Joe Biden owes essential workers… Why so many evangelicals are susceptible to QAnon craziness.