MT Greene rants about Democrats, Republicans, the ‘elites’, the ‘highly-educated’, and ‘preppies’

The decline and fall of American conservatism

If you downed a shot every time M.T. Greene says “the American people” or “real Americans”, you would be under the table before she took her first break. In a four-minute ranton Steve Bannon‘s podcast, she mentioned them 22 times and that doesn’t include the times she used “they”. And why is Greene dragging the American people into the conversation, as nauseam? Because Greene is going to war for them. And she says,

“I represent the American people,” and “I'm happy to be the face of the American people."

Does she represent the American people? Hardly. She represents George’s 14th congressional district. A district where Blacks make up less than 10% of the population in a state where 33% of the population are African-American. In America as a whole, 19% of the citizens are rural. In the 14th, over 40% are. And the district is overwhelmingly conservatives, with the Republican candidate usually winning by 50 percentage points.

Greene doesn’t speak for the Puerto Ricans and Dominicans in New York City or Blacks in Chicago. Nor does she represents the Chicanos in Los Angeles or the Chinese population in Seattle. Or any of the 81 million people who voted for Biden. But Greene has shown no limit to her arrogance and self-regard.

And her fight is not just with Democrats. Her enemy includes the wrong sort of Republicans — to wit, the “elites”, the “country club set”, the “preppies” wearing “beautiful sweater vests”. And worst of all, the “highly-educated”. She claims her real Americans are being oppressed and sneered at, saying

“These are the same people they [thoughtful conservatives] look down on. These are the same people that they forget about. These are the same people they can't even relate to because they are so stuck up because they are so highly educated and because they think they are so much better than everyone."

She goes on to say traditional Republicans have caused,

"alcoholism, drug abuse, depression, failed marriages and caused traditional families to fall apart and small towns to crumble."

And what set her off this time? An article by David Brooks in the Atlantic in which he rues the death of his cherished, traditional American conservatism. A conservatism which he says has been replaced with the nihilism of Trumpism.

Whatever your opinion of Brooks is, his article was a well-structured essay with pinpoint quotes and precis of various political philosophies. It gives a brief history of the origins of conservatism. How it is different in Europe and America. And how it has been taken into a back alley and had its throat slit by Trump and his MAGA morons.

Greene disagrees with the conclusions that Brooks has reached. But she has no cogent response. No reasoned counterargument. She says that Brooks has no right to define conservatism or Trumpism. Two thoughts. One, Brooks can damn well define what conservatism means to him. There is no single definition of conservatism anymore than there is a single definition of liberalism. (Note: in Australia, the conservatives belong to the “Liberal Party”) Two, Greene does not bother to define conservatism or Trumpism. Essentially her argument is the playground rejoinder, “is not”.

In the absence of definitions, she brings what the unimaginative believe is the coup de grace by calling Brooks and people like him “fake news”. But Brooks’ article is an opinion piece. There’s no such thing as a fake opinion. And while we’re on the subject of Greene’s stupidity, let's note she’s one of the people who says “I could care less” when they mean “I couldn’t care less”.

As she whines,

"I could care less who David Brooks is! I came here to fix it and I'm bringing the American people with me."

Whatever.

Bannon stirs things up by noting that Katty Kay of ‘Morning Joe’ accused Greene of creating "false narratives" about critical race theory and vaccine mandates. In response, she goes full, “the lady doth protest too much, methinks”.

"We haven't made anything up! We've told the truth! And we're going to continue to tell the truth. And let me tell you something, this is going to be a long-term war in our country and it doesn't have to be a bloody war. But it is a war that we have to continue to fight."

Who is her ‘we’? She enumerates them in DC - Gaetz, Gohmert, Gosar, and “all the real fighters in Congress”. And in the rest of the country, I imagine she’s referring to all the angry, ill-educated, white, rural, racist bigots — aka the members of her tribe.