The battle over the Speakership dreams of Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., was a cataclysmic event, in terms of the media's increasingly ineffective efforts to convey to news consumers what is actually going on. Most press coverage portrayed the struggle as one between a more moderate faction supporting McCarthy and a far-right splinter group who opposed him. In reality, however, the fight was merely showboating from a small group of trolls who wanted attention, with no real substance to any of the disagreements. Indeed, pro- and anti-McCarthy groups are in fierce agreement on nearly all major policy issues, including the question of whether democracy is a good thing worth protecting. (Both sides believe it is not!)
For proof there's no real daylight between the two factions, look no further than the fact that the biggest Republican troll in the House, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, was on Kev's side from the get-go. Greene has become one of the most famous — and powerful — Republicans in Capitol Hill by sheer dint of her gleefully unapologetic fascism. She's one of the biggest apologists for Donald Trump's Big Lie and the violent insurrectionists who attempted to overthrow democracy on January 6, 2021. She's a grade-A conspiracy theorist who rode into Washington spouting QAnon nonsense. Once in office, she went straight for the third rail in American politics, showy antisemitism, downplaying the Holocaust and raving about how Jews were setting wildfires with space lasers. She hits all the major stations of the conspiracy theory cross, from dismissing mass shootings as "false flags" to vaccine denialism to, naturally, 9/11 trutherism. She, of course, has also gotten that sweet, sweet attention by calling for the execution of her political opponents.
