Opinion: Rep. Greene’s prejudices make her unfit for public office.
Last night, I wrote an article about the dangerous pattern of conspiracism among Republicans and how it has culminated in the storm that is Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Much of my commentary was dedicated to shock at the strange nature of her statements, the violence therein, and the effects her presence would have on Congress’s business. Indeed, a portion of my Saturday podcast was dedicated to her.
But I did not detail the unrelenting prejudice that was painfully evident in her conduct and how it is part of a broader problem with the Republican party. That is something that needs to be discussed openly and directly.
Greene is a first-year congresswoman representing Georgia’s 14th district, which she was elected to represent in the 2020 election. Her Democratic opponent, Kevin Van Ausdal, withdrew from the race due to the district’s intensely red nature. Ausdal, who had tried to play the part of a reasonable candidate with a moderate streak, was met with death threats.
Before Greene was a member of the House of Representatives, she was a rampant conspiracy theorist. She posted that Jewish Space Lasers were responsible for the California fires. It was this peculiar claim that was the reason for my previous article’s strange title.
Greene also said that Obama was secretly a Muslim and that George Soros was a “Nazi.” George Soros is Jewish and survived the Nazi regime in his youth because of the fake identification papers he had received.
Though Greene would deny this is bigoted, it is par for the course with her. In a video that Greene herself posted, she argued that Representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib had to reswear their oaths on a Bible, as she proclaimed that their oaths were illegitimate if they swore on a Koran.
It has been repeated before, but the fact of the matter is that such a requirement does not exist in American law; it never has—quite the opposite, as Article 6 of the U.S. Constitution explicitly prohibits such a requirement. The Constitution explicitly states that:
“no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”
One must question why someone such as Greene —an elected representative who swore to uphold the Constitution— is not aware of the unconstitutionality of what she is proposing. Why the theocratic requirement? What about swearing on a bible makes an oath or promise more sacred? If Ilhan Omar swore on the Bible—a book she doesn’t hold to be sacred—wouldn’t that be an act of deception? Wouldn’t it cheapen the oath of office? The official in question would be swearing on something with which they hold no attachment, after all.
At the core of Greene’s problem is her objection to the presence of people who don’t fit with her ethos, people who are not like her. To Greene, the greatest problem lies not in the Constitution but in her inability to see people who are different from her tribe as American.
That’s precisely why she should not be in the House in the first place, and if the people of Georgia don’t rectify their mistake by recalling her, the House should do it for them via a vote of expulsion.
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