Empathy GOP 2: Regular Buggaloo

No, I don't know anything about journalist
Allison Royal, but she's letting Taylor Greene's
bullshit go unchallenged, so, not a journalist.

When asked by someone doing a so-so impersonation of a journalist what Congress should do about Monkey Pox, Marjorie Taylor Greene launched into a her standard nonsense. Monkey pox is, according to Taylor Greene, a threat to some people in the population before falsely stating that monkey pox is basically a sexually transmitted disease which, it's not. It can be spread sexually but so can a lot of things. You know how I know that? I looked it up. Took me like three seconds, but science is for liberals and socialists. 

Anyway, the standard nonsense:

Hey, guess who's not a doctor? Here's a
 hint: she's a congressperson from Georgia.

"We just have to reject it. It is, of course, a threat to some people in our population, but we know what causes it. And, and that's pretty much, it's-it's basically a sexually transmitted disease, so it's not a threat to-to most of the population and so it's not a global pandemic, it's really not and people just have to laugh at it, mock it, and reject it, so it's another scam."

-Majorie Taylor Greene, on the

benefits of disease shaming

The Obama family, of course, infamous
for many scandals including that time
the President wore a taupe suit.

The interviewer then went on to talk about scandals among prominent families like the Biden family (Hunter Biden something something?) the Bush family (you know, because she's fair and balanced) and the Obama family (remember all the Obama scandals? Yeah, me neither) and how it seems like they're never held accountable. Which is hilarious because the coup. So, you might have noticed the "some people in our population" which, of course, refers to gay men. Certainly if you call her on it she'd tell you that you're putting words in her lie hole, but we all know she's full of shit. 

"Mostly I just railed against the rich and 
preached kindness to one another, so..."

-Jesus, pointedly

Of course she meant gay men and of course she meant to suggest that we should all have a good laugh at monkey pox because it has spread most widely--for now--among men who have sex with other men. Something that Taylor Greene feels very strongly about because Jesus spoke so clearly and so often against homosexuality in whatever made up version of the Bible she's constantly thumping. But what bothers me beyond the normalized homophobia, stunningly unselfconscious hypocrisy, and underlying parallels between her screeds and the apathy during the early AIDS crisis, is the total absence of anything approaching empathy.

Biologists believe that elephants are the most
empathetic of all animals, making it particularly
ironic that they've come to symbolize the GOP.

And it's not that I'd suddenly expected Marjorie Taylor Greene to care for another human being that wasn't Marjorie Taylor Greene. It's that she, in one interview sums up so perfectly the underlying problem with everything in the world: the idea that if it's not happening to her, then it's not a problem. A decent human being sees things bad things happening to others in the world and feels empathy. But she doesn't. A virulent disease starts spreading across the country, and her response is to laugh at it?

Laugh at it because it only affects some people. But pretty much everything only affects some people in our population. Cancer only affects some people. Hurricanes only affect some people. Doesn't mean we laugh at the victims. Usually we try to, you know, help. We have fundraisers, or send in FEMA. Not Marjorie Taylor Greene though. She sees suffering in the world and makes the conscious decision to add to it because it might score her some points with a hateful and ignorant base. I mean, goddamn.

Transphobia, for example, only affects some people and some people are actively 
spreading it and so deserve nothing more that our rejection and ridicule.