Marjorie Taylor Greene Wants a So-Called ‘National Divorce’: What Does That Even Mean? Representative’s Marjorie Taylor Greene Twitter feed is a cesspool of vitriol and divisiveness.
And yet, even amongst MTG’s perpetual feed of vitriol and divisiveness, a February 20th tweet stood out, generating national headlines at the time.
“We need a national divorce,” MTG tweeted. “We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government. Everyone I talk to says this. From the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats to the Democrat’s traitorous America Last policies, we are done.”
A national divorce? Meaning what exactly? Secession?
Marjorie Taylor Greene: Another Idea…
The complaints aired in MTG’s quote are pretty basic, garden variety conservatism.
Woke culture is an unfortunate outgrowth of liberal America, which is standardly criticized from the right and the center.
Painting American foreign policy as America Last is hyperbolic but echoes legitimate concerns that the US’s foreign policy does not serve the US’s best interests.
Shrinking the federal government is basically the central tenet of conservatism.
But the remedy MTG suggests, “a national divorce,” has caused a media frenzy.
MTG’s tweet caused a media frenzy
“So why did it prompt such breathless, sweeping outcry,” Phillip Bump asked in The Washington Post at the time.
“First, because calling for secession on Presidents’ Day, the holiday on which we remember Abraham Lincoln, is an interesting move. Second, because it was a holiday people had more free time to get angry and less other news to get angry about.”
“But, third,” Bump continues, “Greene is in a very different position than she was when she made this claim in years past. Now, she’s part of the House majority and someone with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) ear. She is part of the Homeland Security Committee’s majority – as she advocates for the homeland splitting apart.”
Whatever the precise reasons, the reaction has been strong, with many painting MTG’s tweet as a call for civil war.
Patricia Murphy, for example, writing in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution back in February, suggested that Marjorie Taylor Greene was divorcing herself from reality and that she was calling for civil war.
“It’s hard to say which is worse,” Murphy wrote, “a Georgia congresswoman calling for a civil war, which is what she’s calling for, or one so fundamentally divorced from the reality of the state she’s supposed to represent in Congress.”
To be clear, Marjorie Taylor Greene tweet does not explicitly call for civil war.
The tweet calls for a “divorce,” which could be achieved through non-violent, non-warring methods.
But the end result of MTG’s proposed divorce is deeply concerning: the conclusion of the United States as we know it.
How Do You Analyze Her Idea?
MTG’s proposal is preposterous of course – a national divorce split along party affiliations. It’s dismissively ridiculous were it not coming from a member of Congress. But since the suggestion is coming from a member of Congress, let’s consider the ridiculousness more closely.
How do you suppose MTG proposes we accomplish a national divorce based on party affiliation, red and blue states separating from each other? What do we do about swing states, like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, or MTG’s own home state, Georgia?
What do we do about states with distinctly blue portions and distinctly red portions?
Like Oregon, where the I-5 corridor, Portland through Eugene through Ashland, is remarkably blue, whereas the rest of the massive state is ruby red?
Is she suggesting the finished product would be two nations comprised of various states, spanning 3,000 miles, that are not physically connected?
Like California and Connecticut are both in the “blue country” but are separated from each other, like a Pakistan and East Pakistan situation (which of course ended in East Pakistan becoming it’s own thing: Bangladesh)?
It’s just so ridiculous.
Harrison Kass is the Senior Editor at 19FortyFive. An attorney, pilot, guitarist, and minor pro hockey player, Harrison joined the US Air Force as a Pilot Trainee but was medically discharged. Harrison holds a BA from Lake Forest College, a JD from the University of Oregon, and an MA from New York University. Harrison listens to Dokken.
