by Zachary Petroff | staff columnist
April 28, 2022
There has been a trial filled with lies, deceit and absurdity that truly seems stranger than fiction.
However, it did not involve high profile actors. But there has been the same amount of ridiculousness.
It is an attempt to throw Marjorie Taylor Greene off the ballot in Georgia, under a provision of Section three of the 14th Amendment, and it states:
“No person shall be a senator or representative in Congress, or elector of president and vice-president, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States … shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”
While Greene is not one of the nearly 800 people that have been charged, a group of voters are looking to disqualify her from holding public office at the state or federal level in the future.
While the effectiveness of this political tactic will likely not yield the desired result, this is setting up to be more of a test run to stop Trump from holding the presidency. Trump has publicly committed to running for president in 2024.
Greene is a freshman congresswoman representing Georgia’s 14th congressional district. Her platform is widely based on far-right ideology and fringe — and often easily debunked — conspiracy theories such as white genocide, “pizzagate” and various antisemitic ideologies. Though she has denied it publicly, many of her talking points mirror that of the cesspool conspiracy, Q-Anon.
We have a member of congress that believes that John F. Kennedy Jr. – a democrat – faked his death and hung out underground for 20 years collecting secrets from the military deep state, only to emerge to aid former draft dodger and reality television show star Trump in his quest to rid deep-rooted enemies of the state. Those enemies are mostly democrats, Black leaders and actors in Hollywood.
And JFK Jr. only wants to communicate with people through the internet site 8-chan.
This, unfortunately, is not her most outlandish conspiracy theory.
There has been much written and talked about when it comes to the insurrection that took place at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. While the January congressional committee — composed of members from both parties — are currently serving subpoenas and questioning various members of the House and Senate to see if various members of our government incited a riot.
Spoiler alert — they did.
There is enough confirmed information out in the public to where it is beyond reasonable to conclude that various members of Congress and the Senate were actively trying to get people to overturn the results of a clear and fair election.
Unqualified opportunists holding office is not a new trend. Fringe conspiracy theorists grifting an uneducated and naive section of the population is not a new phenomenon, either. What has shifted ever so gradually is the government’s ability to hold those in power accountable.
We have seemed to stop being Americans and have transformed into two underwhelming political parties. We have let those whose political platforms mirror our own beliefs get away with so much.
Greene is an exaggerated example of being able to be an underwhelming public servant because she can use her political party as a shield. Those who watched Greene answer questions under oath for hours cannot come away with anything other than the overwhelming fact that she utilized her rabid voter base to incite an insurrection because her guy did not win.
She is a loud woman who uses party divisions and unfabricated claims and dog whistling racism to motivate her low-information voter base to cause hysteria and sow discontent.
Greene and other members of the far-right Q-Anon electorate are manifestations of elected leaders throughout various levels of government not being held accountable by those already in power and the American people.
She is not the first to erode the foundation of American democracy for a personal agenda, nor will she be the last, but if she and her counterparts are not held accountable for their actions the diminishing of our long-held institutions hang in the balance.
This is not a fringe right issue, this is an institutional issue. Democrats in power have utilized politically based agendas to fuel re-election attempts and have also turned a blind-eye when their leadership has abandoned the ideals that fuel the democratic party.
Often criticism coming from within the party is met with the threat of ostracism.
America has always been an experiment in democracy. There of course are going to be times when lawmakers and the American people just get it wrong. What we cannot allow is letting disconnected and opportunistic lawmakers run rampant on the American system of democracy.
