Democrats, Time to Call the Question on MTGCuckoo

Media reports, https://wapo.st/3blQSS0, for example, indicate that Marjorie Three Names, real name Marjorie Taylor Greene, known to me as MTGCuckoo, has once again violated House rules and norms of behavior by openly confronting Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez outside the House chamber, screaming at her and calling her names. WAPO reports that this led “the New York congresswoman’s office to call on leadership to ensure that Congress remains “a safe, civil place for all Members and staff.”

Indeed. It can be frustrating at times to observe the extreme formalities used by Members of Congress in addressing each other during hearings and debates, but those formalities serve a vital purpose. They are a device for keeping the focus on the issues being discussed and to reduce the flaring of tempers and personal recrimination that serious disagreements about serious matters can inspire. By and large they work.

Or at least they worked until the arrival of Donald Trump on the American political scene. Trump consistently behaved like the trashy human being he consistently proved to be. He labeled his political adversaries in his own party with offensive nicknames, made derogatory remarks about their physical appearance and their families, mocked a disabled reporter and on and on and on. His Republican competitors vehemently objected to Trump’s schoolyard behavior until he won the presidency. Then, like the miracle that was supposed to end the COVID crisis at its inception, they bent the knee to him, seeking jobs, swearing fealty to him personally and adopting his constant lies as “alternative facts.”

Trump inspired a new wave of Republican leaders who have adopted his tactics, among them is MTGCuckoo, a QAnon conspiracist among her other charming propensities. She cares nothing for tradition, standards of personal respect or any other norm of civilized conduct, just like her idol, Trump. With the support of 11 Republicans, she was stripped of her committee assignments in February because her extremist remarks that included

questioning whether deadly school shootings had been staged and whether a plane really hit the Pentagon on 9/11.  A supporter of the fantastical QAnon conspiracy theory, she also shared videos with anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim sentiment, and expressed support for violence against Democratic leaders in Congress.  [https://cbsn.ws/3yazBF6] ….

Greene has made a number of incendiary and false statements in recent years, among them that Black people “are held slaves to the Democratic Party,” that Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) — the first two Muslim women elected to Congress — represented “an Islamic invasion into our government offices,” and that Jewish megadonor George Soros collaborated with Nazis.

She had previously harassed David Hogg, one of the teenage survivors of the Parkland school shooting, on the Capitol grounds and, reportedly, another member of Congress in a hallway dispute over Greene’s refusal to wear a mask.

This obnoxious and dangerous behavior has not harmed Greene’s appeal with the Trump base. She continues to collect large donations from them. In typical fashion, Republican House leadership has done nothing meaningful to rein in Greene’s manic conduct.

This is on the Democratic leadership. MTGCuckoo is violating every rule  and norm of behavior for a Member of Congress. She craves attention and will do almost anything to get more of it. One of these days someone is going to get hurt because of her low class schoolyard behavior. It may be her or someone else, but Democrats control the House and should put a stop to this immediately before it gets further out of hand. Many of the Trump sycophants look to people like MTGCuckoo for guidance regarding their own behavior. She doesn’t care a bit if she inspires some craven Trumper to act out their violent fantasies on a Member of Congress or someone else.

Closing Note: no doubt someone will decide to chastise me for hypocritically name-calling Greene in the fashion that I am criticizing her. Guilty as charged. Now they don’t have to bother. Greene has earned the nickname I gave her on Twitter, and I’ll continue to use it as long as she behaves like a tantrum-throwing child who makes statements that are, by any standard, beyond the realm of rational behavior. She belongs in rehab, not in Congress. My choice of nickname relates to her behavior, not to her appearance or her family. Apologies, however, to cuckoos.

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