A US Rep. supporting armed insurrection isn’t big news?
If you had told me 10 years ago that a sitting US Representative would openly say that if she would have been involved in an insurrection against the Capitol, “we would have won” and “it would have been armed,” I wouldn’t have believed you.
Not only that, if you told me that it would hardly make a blip in the day’s headlines, and that there wouldn’t be an immediate censure at the very least by the House, and/or mass calls for her to resign, I would have been absolutely shocked and outraged.
It’s 2022, so I’m not shocked this happened, but I am outraged. If you haven’t seen it yet, here’s segment from The Young Turks that shows at the beginning of the video what Greene said, and then follows with analysis of it.
To TYT’s credit, they led with this story. I didn’t see it on the top stories of Yahoo News, CNN, or The New York Times, which either means a current Representative saying she would have liked and led an armed coup against the United States apparently wasn’t among mainstream media’s top stories — or if it was, it was only briefly so before the mainstream media moved on to things like Yahoo News’ article titled “'I'm with Wildlife. You have a lion in your backyard.”
The coverage it’s getting isn’t top stories, but it is being covered to some extent to be fair. But the media seem to be doing their usual “he said she said,” reporting what she said, giving the reaction of a few Democrats (the White House timidly weighed in), and then her response that it was “sarcasm” or a joke.
Whether it was a joke or no joke (in other words, given the fact that it wasn’t a joke) will Marjorie Grenne face any actual backlash for this from within Congress? Unfortunately, I agree with Cenk Uygur’s reply to my live comment during the show asking if there is any way to hold her accountable
The answer is “no.” The Democrats will not even try to hold her accountable […] Marjorie Taylor Greene says “Maybe next time we’ll come with guns” [and] there won’t be any action at all.
As Cenk mentioned, they found a way to get bipartisan support to go after Ilhan Omar for criticizing the corruption of elected officials taking money from Israel-backed anti-Palestinian lobbists (she said “It’s all about the Benjamins,” an obvious reference to the song but twisted to claim she’s anti-semitic). But there will be near-silence from both parties on a Representative suggesting an insurrection should be armed and that she would have led the charge.
To show how (not) seriously it’s being taken, the White House had deputy press secretary Bates (not important enough for the main press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre apparently) send out a statement about it. While the wording is strong “It goes against our fundamental values as a country for a Member of Congress to wish that the carnage of January 6th had been even worse,” there’s no call to action.
Plus, there’s no indication that Dem. leadership will actually do something about it before Republicans take control of the House in January, and there’s no reason to think the GOP — one of the two major parties in the country — will hold one of their members responsible for it once they’re in control.
I’m beginning to think I’ve been asking the wrong questions about the current state of our country. I shouldn’t be wondering “when will we get back to ‘normal’ corrupt politicians who aren’t trying to end democracy with the support of almost half of the voting population.” The question is really “will we get back to ‘normal’ corrupt politicians who aren’t trying to end democracy.”
And the answer appears to be “not if the Democrats or the mainstream media have anything to do with it.”
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