It’s the Marjorie Taylor Greene era of idiocy, and we’re just living in it. She somehow finds a way to say something every day that’s so outrageously preposterous, it feels like a parody of itself. Her latest move is saying the “Black Lives Matter” group is violent and attacks police, but the people on Jan. 6 “went inside open doors peacefully” and are treated terribly.
She laid down quite the diatribe, and honestly, this “blame the other side” narrative is just so easy and schoolyard that it’s laughable how people keep falling for it. Really, all you can do is laugh. This argument is so misinformed and manipulated, there’s no way anyone could believe it. Wait, unfortunately, there is (looking at you FOX News)!
This is another example of a politician playing dumb to appeal to a base that’s fed on lies and conspiracy theories. In fact, let’s just look at some facts here. Take a look at what she had to say:
First of all, The BLM movement came about because of the repeated murder of Black men at the hands of police officers. The Jan. 6 protesters came to the Capitol because Donald Trump asked them to so he could steal the election. One group — fighting for equality and peace. Another group — storming the nation’s capital to keep a demagogue in power.
A report by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) analyzed 7,750 BLM demonstrations through all 50 states and Washington D.C. from May 26, 2020 to August 22 of that year. More than 93 percent of those demonstrations were peaceful. There was one demonstration at the Capitol. It featured “unlawful entry into the U.S. Capitol building” and “various other alleged criminal violations, such as destruction of property, assaulting law enforcement personnel, targeting members of the media for assault, and other unlawful conduct,” according to the FBI.
And while we’re at it, Antifa, according to PBS, has no “membership uniform or calling card, and the movement lacks the numbers to mobilize nationwide in such a dramatic, forceful way.” Antifa is a ghost used to fire up support and distract from Jan. 6. This is a clear-cut case of the logical fallacy of false equivalence, where you take two things that seem the same because there are a few similarities but you discount the differences completely. An easier way to think of this is called comparing apples to oranges.
The idea that the demonstrations on the Capitol were peaceful, when they clearly were not, is a two-pronged attempt to appeal to a base hungry for conspiracy theories and perpetuate a racist agenda that creates division. Division is the politics of the day. The more divided a populace is, the easier it is to serve your own needs. This isn’t a complicated equation. It’s a very simple tactic used to further one’s own wants and needs once in a position of power. When it comes to politics, facts don’t really matter in this age. No one’s mind is changed by clear-cut facts, but maybe some logistical reasoning is worth a try.
When Marjorie talked about the protests on Jan. 6, she said “few were violent & fought police, yet the federal government has/is hunting them all down and keeping them locked away and are treated worse than any criminal in America.” This is clearly anecdotal evidence, which is a conclusion not supported by any sort of data.
If everyone is so concerned with “being a sheep” and “seeing what’s really going on,” maybe start with the identification of half-baked, easy-to-disqualify information from people in power. What if — and stay with me here — the politicians were lying to you? Sure, this woman is entertaining and hilarious, but she’s also setting the table for something that’s going to alter the country significantly if others with her brand of politics come into power. Truly sad.