There's Nothing Fun or Funny About Marjorie Taylor Greene (The Atlantic & worth the read)

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

The day after she was stripped of her committee assignments in the U.S. House of Representatives, Marjorie Taylor Greene said that she found the whole thing very funny. “I woke up early this morning literally laughing thinking about what a bunch of morons the Democrats (+11) are for giving some one like me free time,” the congresswoman from Georgia tweeted on Friday, referring to the lawmakers—the “+11” are fellow Republicans—who voted to penalize her for endorsing baseless conspiracy theories that fueled the insurrection at the Capitol. The replies to her post were swift and plentiful, and the gist of many of them was simple: We’re the ones laughing—at you.

“Looney tune!” one commenter declared. Another shared an illustration of Greene in circus makeup and labeled her a “Qlown,” a reference to her endorsement of QAnon. One meme listed other conspiracy theories that Greene has promulgated: Barack Obama is a secret Muslim; Sandy Hook and the Las Vegas massacre were staged; California wildfires were started by space lasers. Emblazoned in red lettering next to a photograph of her face were the words Crazy Marjorie.

Crazy is a word often attached to Greene. But although the ideas she endorsed as she shot to national prominence are ludicrous, they didn’t come out of nowhere—which is to say that they make a perverse kind of sense. Pull back the absurdist veil and you’ll find fears and bigotry so familiar, they’re downright American. And even the most outlandish conspiracy theories can be stepping stones to dangerous extremism. None of us should be laughing.

Conspiracy theorists aren’t just cranks in tinfoil hats drifting around the margins of society. A December poll found that fewer than half of Americans would say that the core idea of QAnon—“a group of Satan-worshipping elites who run a child sex ring are trying to control our politics and media”—is definitively false. Nearly 40 percent believe the QAnon tenet that the “deep state” is out to get Donald Trump. Almost half agree with the lie that the majority of the summer’s Black Lives Matter protests were violent, and one-third believe that voter fraud helped Joe Biden win the 2020 election. /SNIP

The rest at https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/02/dont-laugh-marjorie-taylor-greene/617971/

[elleng]

1. 'fears and bigotry so familiar, they're downright American.'

[Sedona]

2. Big takeaway at the end

If a person is already primed to accept conspiracy theories, the descent from strange beliefs to overtly hateful ones can happen particularly fast, which is why the post-inauguration period is so scary. QAnon’s many followers thought that a “storm” was coming—a reckoning that would destroy the pedophile cabal once and for all. When that didn’t happen on January 20, acolytes were left asking why. Some realized their grievous error in judgment; others doubled down in their zealotry. Another cohort was left to seek a new dogma. They are easy prey for extremist hucksters eager to sell them a new lie.

Already, researchers are noting chatter among white supremacists geared toward recruiting QAnon’s low-hanging, disillusioned fruit.

[Hortensis]

3. I don't believe those poll figures. Some are merely carrying the footballs

their faction passes off to all of them to run. A role they've been playing loyally for decades of this factional warfare now. They've learned the power of lies fired in implacable, aggressive barrages.

[YoshidaYui]

4. Its EASY

She is a professional troll.

[Haggard Celine]

5. That's all she is. That's all Trump ever was.

He said all that shit because it pissed off liberals and RWers ate it up. It's the same with her and Gaetz and Gohmert, to a large extent. Assholes give them money to do it, so they keep it up. We need to ignore them more, though. When they piss us off, they feel like they've succeeded.

[niyad]

6. Traitor greene is dangerous.

[niyad]

7. Traitor greene is dangerous.

[Progressive Jones]

8. She has the same value as a rabid dog. nt

[dalton99a]

9. Kick