Greene displaying break from reality

What is this lunatic doing in Congress? No, seriously. It’s a real question. There comes a time when the diplomatic niceties of political discourse must give way to bluntly spoken truth. When a sitting member of Congress repeatedly displays classic symptoms of psychosis — that is, a literal, psychological break with reality — it must be addressed head-on. We refer to (who else?) U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. Yes, her frequent outbursts of crazy can be entertaining in a parlor-game sort of way. But the fact that she and a small cadre of fellow fringe-dwellers have effectively been allowed to take the U.S. House hostage speaks to a deadly serious symptom of the poor health of the republic just now.

For anyone who has lost track of Greene’s latest descent into madness (it’s easy to do), she has suggested that last week’s East Coast earthquake was God’s warning to America to “repent.” Also: The eclipse! On Friday, a 4.8 magnitude earthquake shook New Jersey and New York City. It was an unusual location for a major quake — but not, it must be said, anything requiring a divine explanation. Ditto with the rare-but-perfectly-natural (as opposed to supernatural) full solar eclipse that occurred Monday, right on its long-calculated schedule.

But don’t try telling that to Greene, a self-described Christian nationalist whose typical right-wing footsie-playing with racists and antisemites is augmented, in her case, with a less-typical belief system that is somewhere between religious fanaticism and science fiction.

“God is sending America strong signs to tell us to repent,” Greene wrote on X (formerly Twitter) on Friday. “Earthquakes and eclipses and many more things to come. I pray that our country listens.”

“Repent” for what? She didn’t say. We’re guessing it’s not for the congressional dysfunction that actually should require repentance — dysfunction for which Greene herself has been largely responsible.

When others on the social media platform predictably factchecked the fact-averse congresswoman, she bemoaned being “mocked and scoffed at,” quoted the Bible and wrote: “Yes eclipses are predictable and earthquakes happen and we know when comets are passing by, however God created all of these things and uses them to be signs for those of us who believe.”

Huh?

Disturbingly enough, this is nowhere near the most unmoored rhetoric from Greene since she babbled and heckled her way onto the national stage. That distinction would probably go to her suggestion that California wildfires were caused by a space-based laser controlled by Jewish investors.

Not all of her piffle has been that random. Her contributions to our poisonous political divisions today have included suggesting a “national divorce” between red and blue states, limiting the voting rights of anyone who relocates between those states and disenfranchising anyone who doesn’t make enough money to pay taxes.

When Democrats controlled the House, they removed Greene from her committee assignments (with the help of almost a dozen Republican votes) for espousing political violence.

But when the GOP took over last year, not only was this cultural arsonist invited back into the fold, she was elevated to key committee posts during Kevin McCarthy’s brief stint as House speaker.

McCarthy needed Greene to shore up his tissue-thin margin of support for his speakership. As we wrote back then, he endangered his own caucus and the very functionality of the House by inviting her back in from exile.

We now find that prediction prescient — though, in all modesty, it was a common and stunningly obvious one.

In flailing desperately to attain and keep his speakership last year, McCarthy agreed to a process that allows any member of the Republican caucus to call for a vote to oust the speaker. That was ultimately McCarthy’s undoing.

Now Greene is using that provision to threaten current House Speaker Mike Johnson. His offense? Working with Democrats to prevent a government shutdown and potentially moving ahead with crucial aid to Ukraine in its fight for survival against Russia. In Greene’s MAGA-addled mind, the latter is “one of the most egregious things that he can do.”

Democrats, too, have their fringe extremists. St. Louis is home to one of them, Rep. Cori Bush, whose loopier pronouncements have included suggesting that Israel’s war with Hamas is somehow an expression of “white supremacy.” (Again: Huh?)

Here’s the difference: Bush is part of a hard-left sideshow that distracts the mainstream of the Democratic Party from its leadership responsibilities now and then, but which remains (appropriately) on the outside of the core of party power.

Greene and her fellow right-wing extremists, conversely, are a core of party power for the GOP. In real ways, they are running the Republican table. They are the reason the House today is so dysfunctional it can barely keep the government open, let alone protect democracy in Ukraine.

For the record: Earthquakes happen when tectonic plates slip against one another deep underground. Eclipses happen when the moon drifts between Earth and the sun.

It’s all physics. It has nothing to do with messages from God to an unhinged member of Congress — nor to the party that has recklessly empowered her.