QAnon lunatic who harassed shooting survivor need not fear GOP reprisal

Two years ago, the cringe evoked by the video of Marjorie Taylor Greene harassing young David Hogg might have given way to a shrug. Repulsive stuff, you’d think, but inconsequential. Just a demented exile from civil society spewing lies about the most horrifying day in Broward County history.

Nothing worth remembering, other than this no-account woman’s audacious awfulness. Livestreaming on Facebook, Greene called the young Parkland survivor a coward, an outrageous slander considering the trauma the kid endured on Feb. 18, 2018. Otherwise, Greene could be dismissed as just another envoy from the Land of Nonsense.

That was then. Before Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, QAnon, the January 6 seditionists and the personality cult formerly known as the Republican Party sent us tumbling into the rabbit hole. To where up is down, down is up and the hateful lunatic chasing after David Hogg spouting unhinged accusations has herself a seat in Congress. Call her Alice in Wantonland.

Nowadays, Marjorie Taylor Greene represents a district in the hills of northwest Georgia and a constituency unfazed that their congresswoman hails from the far reaches of QAnon, where the Parkland, Sandy Hook and Las Vegas slaughters are dismissed as false flag theatrics. “I am told that Nancy Pelosi tells Hillary Clinton several times a month that ‘we need another school shooting ’ in order to persuade the public to want strict gun control,” she wrote on social media.

Oh yeah. The 911 attack on the Pentagon was also another bit of government fakery. “It’s odd there’s never any evidence shown for a plane in the Pentagon,” she confided to Facebook followers.

She’s all-in with QAnon’s insane claim that big-name Democrats operate a baby-eating pedophile ring out of the basement of a Washington D.C. pizza joint (which has no basement). And that Bill Gates and George Soros (QAnon’s favorite evil-Jews-run-the-world mastermind) invented COVID-19 as an excuse to inject us with microchip-infused vaccines that interact with 5G cellphone towers. To what end, who knows? Apparently, voters in northwest Georgia didn’t sweat the details when they elected Greene in November.

It’s enough to make your head explode, knowing that the nutball chasing after David Hogg demanding a response to her conspiracy fantasies back in 2019, now has a seat in the very Capitol her fellow travelers breached and vandalized and turned into a murder scene three weeks ago. Who could have imagined such a thing? Well, Fred Guttenberg. That’s who.

Guttenberg, who lost his 14-year-old daughter Jaime in the Parkland horror, posted the Greene video Wednesday on his Twitter account after a number of her other social media craziness had been unearthed, including suggestions that the Parkland massacre was a “false flag” government-orchestrated fake and that Hogg, whom she called “little Hitler,” was a “bought and paid little pawn.”

Along with the video, Guttenberg tweeted, “@mtgreenee, is this you harassing @davidhogg111 weeks after the Parkland shooting, that my daughter was killed in & he was in? Calling him a coward for ignoring your insanity. I will answer all of your questions in person. Get ready to record again.”

Hogg, whose advocacy for tighter restrictions on gun sales has aroused hatred, death threats and the Marjorie Taylor Greene harangue, tweeted, “In that video you see a group of people most of whom are 18 or 19 acting calm cool and collected — what you don’t see are the sleepless nights, the flashbacks, the hyper vigilance and deep pitch black numbness so many of us feel living in a society where we are told our friends dying doesn’t matter.”

Thanks to Guttenberg, Greene’s 2019 video has suddenly gone viral, generating lots of outrage. But to not much effect. She has remained militantly unrepentant. “She hasn’t said, ‘I was wrong’ or ‘I’m sorry to the families I’ve hurt.’ She hasn’t said that she accepts the truth about Parkland, Sandy Hook and 9/11,” Guttenberg said.

The video and other posts from her days as an “internet provocateur” — including stuff about executing Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama — generated considerable outrage in Washington. But not so much among Republicans. Not publicly, anyway. They don’t dare sanction Greene, knowing that the vindictive Donald Trump has blessed her, calling her “great” and “future Republican Star.”

The Republican leadership, wary of crossing their Dear Leader, have ignored demands to expel Ms. QAnon from Congress. Instead, House minority leader Kevin McCarthy has indicated he intends to appoint the woman who pretends that school kids faked their own murders at Parkland and Sandy Hook to the House Education Committee.

Because, for the Republicans who’ve tumbled into Donald Trump’s rabbit hole, up is now down. Very down.