Courtesy of wikipedia.org
Marjorie Taylor Greene (MTG), a U. S. Republican House member from Georgia is a believer. She believes in Donald Trump. She believes in MAGA’s anger. She believes in Q-Anon conspiracy theories, one of which holds that Donald Trump is secretly fighting an international cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles. When Trump told her to buy stocks, she bought stocks and they made her a profit. Some wondered what she knew about those stocks and when she knew. A more important question, in my view, is “Does Super-MAGA Green have ethical values?”
Criminal minds exist in all parts of society. Pastors and priests have been arrested for offenses ranging from pedophilia to murder. Everyone possesses a heart of darkness. I discovered mine in Africa. Donald Trump revels in his malevolence every chance he gets. I find it chilling that our President has no plan to rescue an innocent man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, whom he locked away in a foreign prison by mistake. In Dante’s Inferno, treachery is the ultimate sin, and the reason is simple. Without trust, civilization is impossible. Only the law of the jungle exists.
Righteousness and evil shouldn’t be bedfellows but too often they are more than that. They are lovers. The former deflects the obscenity of the latter with protests and pointed fingers. The more hideous the sin, the more boisterous the denial. For example, evangelicals know Trump is more sinner than a saint. They have not gone mad. What they have done is convince themselves of a delusion –that his corruption is secondary to his role in hastening the Second Coming.
Not all MAGA followers are evangelicals, of course. Many of them are Christian nationalists. But joined with the evangelicals who represent 6% of the population, the number of the righteous swells to 35% among the citizenry. Of the two political parties, Republicans lean most toward Christian Nationalists. In addition, a wider swath of the population is also sympathetic. (Why so few reported Christian Nationalists” by Scott Knickelbine, Freethought Today, April 2025, pg. 12.)
That sympathy creates headwinds for those who support cultural diversity. It also explains the fear of immigrants. That bias may never erupt in demonstrations but in times of political unrest, it may give license to intolerance.
Take the case of Mahmoud-Khalil, an Algerian graduate student at Columbia University. A permanent resident, he was targeted for deportation because he expressed support for Palestinians in the Gaza war. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, signed the order to expel him, saying he feared Mohamoud-Kahlil might utter some unwarranted expected beliefs or statements in the future.
To strip a person of his or her rights because of what that person might say or think in the future belongs to the dystopian fiction of The Minority Report. In that film, innocent people were placed in suspended animation, not for crimes they committed, but for crimes they might commit.
There is no defense against suspicion. Imagine having one’s fate left to the tender mercies of Marjorie Taylor Greene and her Q-Anon tribe. Or to Trump’s thirst for vengeance? Or to a neighbor who hates your dog?
The breach of one person’s rights is a breach of all our rights. If we are silent, one day, someone will come for us. Never ask for whom the bell tolls. We know the answer. To do nothing is to be nothing.
BOYCOTT TESLA
