Citizenship has rights, but also responsibilities.
For example, citizens have a right to vote, but should vote responsibly, although that’s as unenforceable as anything gets.
On Sunday, April 16, 2023, Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) called Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene “terribly irresponsible” for defending the National Guardsman who stole classified information and posted it on the internet (apparently to impress his gaming buddies).
That individual now faces charges that could send him to prison for 10 years. True, he’s presumed innocent until convicted in a court of law, but that’s not where Greene was coming from. She defended what he’s accused of doing.
By way of explanation, and I’ll be brief, most of the disclosures involved Ukraine, and Greene is a Russia suck-up.
The latter is her privilege; whether the U.S. should be supporting Ukraine is a legitimate policy question, and members of Congress have every right to debate such issues, oppose administration policy, suggest doing something else, and so one. I don’t agree with her policy stance on Ukraine; Russia invaded Ukraine, not the other way around. But if that’s how her constituents feel about it, and her job is to represent them, that’s within fair bounds.
Which brings me to her constituents, in the rural northwest corner of Georgia (see map here). Stay the hell away from there; drive around. Those people are crazy, and there’s no telling what they might do to a traveler just passing through. They not only elected this woman to Congress, they re-elected her.
Which brings me to my point of posting this article. People like Greene are going to be born; that’s an inescapable statistical fact. They probably can’t even help being what they are. Sen. Graham missed the target; the real problem isn’t Greene, but the reckless voters who elected and re-elected here. The first time might be understandable, but there’s no excuse for the second time, because by then she was a known quantity.
If Greene wasn’t in Congress, or any other public office, she wouldn’t be a problem to anyone except her family. (Which she is; Greene, a gym owner, was divorced by her husband for banging a trainer behind his back.) She’s certainly not free of blame for her actions, but Graham (and everybody else) sh0uld be going after those voters with a metaphorical stick, because they empowered her despite knowing perfectly well she shouldn’t have any power.
As I said above, the duty to vote responsibly is mostly unenforceable; the worst that happened to her constituents is they had no representation on House committees for two years, while she was barred from committees for advocating murdering Democrats. (This doesn’t have anything to do with whether you like Democrats; political violence and government-by-assassination is bad for everybody.)
But that doesn’t stop us from judging them. Voters are responsible for who they vote for, and these voters choose to be represented by a person who defends violating the Espionage Act. That’s not defensible, and there’s no way we should let them off the hook. These voters are ****ups. I wouldn’t want to be in a foxhole with any of them. I wouldn’t let my sister date one of them. And I sure won’t drive through their district. That would be like leaving America and being in some other place.
It’s too bad Sen. Graham can’t figure out who to blame for Greene’s antics. But he’s a good friend of Trump, too. He’s just not very smart about anything, and although he prays a lot (see photo above), it seems even God has given up on trying to get through to him.