An Unlikely Hero
When you are drowning and somebody on board tosses you a line, you don’t question their motivation. You don’t care about their personal qualifications.You grab the rope because it’s your one chance to not die.
That’s how I see Americans in their desperation to save democracy. We’re willing to trust anybody who has the temerity to stand up to the absurd fascist takeover of the country, even if that’s somebody with obvious shortcomings.
Like right now, I’m liking Marjorie Taylor Greene. Once upon a time, as recently as a few months ago, my knee jerk reaction to the mention of her name would have been visceral disgust and indigestion followed by quick anger and disbelief that this QAnon sub-literate could be a representative of any segment of our sprawling and sickly populace. But now, I want to cheer. Yay girl. Those features and that voice, what a salt of the earth teller of the way that it clearly is.
Lo And Behold: She’s become a champion on Gaza.
By calling it a genocide without question or quibbling, I want to believe in her as a champion of the “truth” writ large, ie, somebody who might give a fuck about the country as a beacon of democracy and try at the last minute, with a Hail Mary conversion, to prevent a slide into right wing, totalitarian, oligarchic state repression and a Trump regime dictatorship, even if one’s boyfriend were part of the cheering crowd of bootlickers.
Maybe it’s more nuanced. Maybe it’s the battle of the Steves. The Steve Bannon faction knifing the Steve Millerites in the back with MGT as the spearhead of this intra-MAGA battle. But then again, maybe it’s even better. Perhaps the Koolaid effect of the Trumpo magic show is losing its appeal at last.
All I know is that given the silence of leadership in the Democratic party on this issue: the suffering of Palestinians and the total American complicity not to say engagement in this horrific tragedy and the descent into madness in the Holy Land, I am desperate and so are millions of us here and around the world. And we’ll take our heroes where we can get them.
Go Marjorie Taylor Greene. Keep calling it for what it is. You can be a lifesaver.
