The measure of the insanity of the political world is that one thinks nostalgically of former far-right caricatures like former US President George W. Bush and his vice-president, Dick Darth Vader Cheney, both of whom are now relentless detractors by Donald Trump.
What I wonder is whether the day will come when we will also remember Trump as an example of moderation, good taste and common sense. I say this with Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene in mind. Don’t know who Marjorie Taylor Greene is? Well, it’s time, because Trump has acknowledged that he has her on the “list” of possible vice-presidential candidates for the general elections in November.
In other words, one day not too far off this character could become the first woman to hold the presidency of what remains by far the most influential country on Earth. Who is? We will first define it in general terms.
Think of all the worst of politics, what has led a man as wretched as Pedro Sánchez to feel so disgusted that he says he is thinking of leaving it. Consider the ignorance, vulgarity, cynicism, lies, shamelessness, and irresponsibility that define the political discourse of the American right and that is commanding more countries every day. Think of the principle of winning to win that defines both the left and the right everywhere, as if it were a sport, but a sport without rules where anything goes. Consider all of this, add a bottle of vodka to the cocktail, sprinkle it with cocaine and steroids, play heavy metal in the background (Black Sabbath’s Paranoid, perhaps), and the result, ladies and gentlemen: Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Before going into details, I leave the step of those who could accuse me of being sexist. It is precisely because I believe in the principle of gender equality that today I give a woman the opportunity to place herself next to men, always men, whom I have a habit of identifying as the idiots and evil men of the land I confess that I have sinned sexism by not having done it sooner.
And although I am one of those who sense that if women ruled we would live in a world where empathy, finesse and peace would prevail over the barbarism that has defined much of our species during the long reign of patriarchy, I believe that because responsibility and critical spirit I have to question my instincts and at least consider the possibility that there are exceptions to the rule.
Taylor Greene, 49, would be one. More Trumpian than Trump, almost as adored by the MAGA (“Make America Great Again”) masses, Taylor Greene was elected to the House of Representatives in 2021 after a campaign in which banners filled her state from Georgia with photos of her posing Rambo-style with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. As part of her appeal to voters she posted videos on social media in which she was seen chasing down and insulting an anti-gun survivor of the 2019 Parkland school shooting (yes, with an AR-15), in that 17 people died.
Taylor Greene is not only in favor of ending all laws restricting the sale of firearms, but also of banning abortion in all circumstances and abandoning all measures aimed at curbing climate change. She offers harangues every day against illegal immigrant “rapists,” against black activists she describes as “terrorists,” and against all her political rivals, starting with President Joseph Biden, who she says are communists and pedophiles. Incoherently, let’s say, he supports Israeli killings in Gaza, but declared during a forest fire in California that it had been caused by Jewish space lasers.
Recently known as Moscow Marjorie, she defends Putin’s war in Ukraine, repeating in Congress the Russian propaganda that the Ukrainian government is a Nazi. Defender of the thesis that NATO was the cause of the war, the “special envoy of Vladimir Putin to the United States Congress”, according to a Democratic rival, declares that “the Government of Ukraine is attacking Christians. The Government of Ukraine is executing priests. Russia doesn’t do that.”
When David Cameron, former prime minister and current head of British Foreign Affairs, criticized the congresswoman’s pro-Russian position, her response, very true to his style, was: “Cameron can kiss my ass.”
It’s no surprise that she has become an idol on Russian state television, where she is described among other things as “a beauty of a woman.” A couple of weeks ago he addressed an audience in Florida chanting “Putin! Putin!” while she denounced the attempts of Congress to approve military aid to Ukraine. After the motion’s success this week, Taylor Greene has asked for the head of his party’s leader, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives and ardent Trump supporter Mike Johnson.
Is there really a chance that this character will become Vice President of the United States? Well, Trump always calls it wonderful, since he doesn’t have a more staunch supporter, and he hasn’t denied that he’s seriously considering her as a candidate. The main argument against it is not that Taylor Greene is about to close, but that the devotion he inspires in the MAGA world is such that it threatens to take all the attention from Trump, with a narcissism that admits no rivals.
If I had to bet, I’d say Trump won’t pick Taylor Greene. But if I had to bet in 2016, I wouldn’t have risked a cent that Trump would be the Republican presidential candidate, or that he would then beat Hillary Clinton. Nor would I have imagined, after his electoral defeat in 2020 and the invasion of Congress on January 6, 2021, that he would not only run again for the presidential election, but that today he would be the favorite to win- the
So it is not out of the question that the biggest mess in the history of democracy in the United States, or anywhere, will be overcome. I wrote in my first column in 2024 that my greatest wish for the good of the world was that Trump would die. I’m not so sure anymore.
