The measure of the dementia that the political world possesses is that one thinks nostalgically of old caricatures of the extreme right such as former North American president George W. Bush and his vice president, Dick Darth Vader Cheney, both today implacable detractors of Donald Trump.
What I wonder is if the day will come when we also remember Trump as an example of moderation, good taste and common sense. I say, thinking of Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. Don't you know who Marjorie Taylor Greene is? Well, it's time, because Trump has acknowledged that he has her on his “list” of possible vice-presidential candidates for the November general elections.
In other words, one day not too far away this character could become the first woman to occupy the presidency of what is still by far the most influential country on Earth. Who is she? We will first define it in general terms.
Think about all the worst things about politics, what has led a guy as seasoned as Pedro Sánchez to feel such disgust that he says he is thinking about leaving it. Think about the ignorance, vulgarity, cynicism, lies, impudence and irresponsibility that define the political discourse of the right in the United States and that infects more countries every day. Think of the principle of winning for winning that defines both the left and the right everywhere, as if it were a sport, only a sport without rules in which anything goes. Think about all this, add a bottle of vodka to the cocktail, sprinkle it with cocaine and steroids, put on heavy metal as background music (Black Sabbath's Paranoid, perhaps) and the result, ladies and gentlemen: Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Before going into details, I will address those who might accuse me of being sexist. It is precisely because I believe in the principle of gender equality that I give a woman the opportunity today to stand alongside men, always men, who I have the habit of identifying as the idiots and evildoers of the earth. I confess that I have sinned against sexism by not doing it before.
And although I am one of those who sense that if women were in charge we would live in a world in which empathy, finesse and peace would prevail over the barbarism that has defined a large part of our species during the long reign of patriarchy, I believe that Out of responsibility and a critical spirit, I must question my instincts and at least consider the possibility that there are exceptions to the rule.
Taylor Greene, 49, would be one of them. 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 of Georgia with photos of she posing like Rambo 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 and insulting an anti-gun survivor of the 2019 Parkland school massacre (yes, with an AR-15), in which 17 people died.
Taylor Greene is not only in favor of ending all laws that restrict the sale of firearms, but also of banning abortion in all circumstances and abandoning all measures aimed at curbing climate change. She delivers daily harangues against illegal immigrant “rapists,” black activists she defines as “terrorists,” and against all of her political rivals, starting with President Joseph Biden, who she claims are communists and pedophiles. She hardly coherently, let's say, supports the Israeli massacres in Gaza, but she declared during a forest fire in California that she had been started by Jewish space lasers.
Lately known as Moscow Marjorie, she defends Putin's war in Ukraine, repeating within Congress Russian propaganda that the Ukrainian government is Nazi. A defender of the thesis that NATO was the cause of the war, Vladimir Putin's “special envoy to the United States Congress,” according to a Democratic rival, declares that “the Government of Ukraine is attacking Christians. The Ukrainian Government is executing priests. “Russia doesn’t do that.”
When David Cameron, former prime minister and current British chancellor, criticized the congresswoman's pro-Russian stance, her response, very faithful to her style, was: “Cameron can kiss my ass.”
It is no surprise that she has become an idol on Russian state television, where she is described among other things as “a beautiful woman.” A couple of weeks ago she addressed an audience of faithful in Florida who chanted “Putin! Putin!” while she denounced the attempts of the Congress in which she serves to approve military aid to Ukraine. Following the success of the motion this week, Taylor Greene has called for the head of her party leader, the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives and ardent Trumpist, Mike Johnson.
Is there really a chance that such a character could become vice president of the United States? Well, Trump himself always speaks wonders about her, since he has no more unconditional follower or follower of her, and he has not denied that he seriously thinks about her as a candidate. The main argument against it is not that Taylor Greene is to be tied, but that the devotion she inspires in the MAGA world is such that it would threaten to take the entire spotlight away from Trump, whose narcissism brooks no rivals.
If I had to bet, I'd say Trump won't pick Taylor Greene. But if I had to bet on 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 in the presidential elections, but that today he would be the favorite to win them.
Therefore, it is not ruled out that the greatest nonsense in the history of democracy in the United States, or anywhere, will be overcome. I wrote in my first column of 2024 that my main wish for the good of the world was that Trump died. I'm not so sure anymore.
