Marjorie Taylor Greene is Nobody’s Fool
Let’s fix a myth: Marjorie Taylor Greene is not from the North Georgia District she won in. I lived in Rome, Georgia. I went to school there. It’s a lovely place full of kind-hearted mountain folks and some brilliant minds, and a wonderful college – Berry College – which I loved attending.
Marjorie Taylor Greene was born in Milledgeville, Georgia. She grew up in a wealthy home. She attended South Forsyth High School in a suburb of Atlanta. She attended the University of Georgia, which runs about $27,000 a year for non-scholarship students. She and her husband Perry own a $1 million, 5bdrm, 5bath home on 4 acres of wooded land in an Atlanta suburb. Her father sold the couple the family business. Perry runs it.
While it is true that her school was evacuated in 1990 when an armed student, Randall Floyd Addis, took two classes hostage, Greene was not in either of those classes (I fact-checked with the school) and was not under any threat or danger, despite her claims to knowing the fear Parkland students faced. Even if it were true that she knew such fear, how does she then rationalize dogging a 18-year-old Parkland survivor and verbally abusing him? (A confidential source told me there have been mental health issues in the family that have led to institutionalization. That might help explain the conspiracy thinking).
Georgia’s 14th Congressional District is sparsely populated – about 732,00 people, a quarter of whom don’t have a high school education. Only 16 percent of the population has a college degree. It is primarily white, primarily Baptist. The average income ranges from $20,000 to $38,000.
I point all of this out to say, Greene knows exactly what she is doing. Salon.com reported that despite her opposition to the stimulus funding and the PPP loans, her family’s company, Taylor Commercial, received a six-figure PPP loan worth between $150,000 and $350,000 in 2020. The New York Magazine reported that her name had stopped appearing on the company’s registration forms in 2012 but was added back in 2019. Greene, loaned her campaign $900,000, then donated $450,000 to her campaign about two months after the family business collected the PPP loan, according to FEC filings.
She could not get elected from the Alpharetta/Roswell district where she lived, so she chose one of the poorer, least educated regions of Georgia to run a big dollar campaign. She told those people in North Georgia that she was a Christian. She told them that Democrats wanted to take away their guns. She told them Democrats were going to ruin their lives. She has made black people and Jews and anyone not from the hill towns of Georgia, where family land is a person’s legacy, that they were going to lose everything unless they voted her in. She pretended she was one of them. She is still pretending.
People in these mountain communities are raised up on myth. Storytelling has long been part of their DNA. So when someone comes in spouting conspiracy theory, it doesn’t sound much different than the stories they’ve heard all their lives. Mark of the Beast. Winged creatures. Burning bushes. People turned to pillars of salt. Whores seducing good men. These are the stories they’ve heard and repeated for generations upon generations. So the notion of a coming battle between good and evil is something they have been primed for.
To them, MT Greene looks like the aging homecoming queen. She feels like somebody they have known all their lives. That’s her attraction. They think they know her. She reminds them of someone they knew in their high school days. They don’t see her for the devil in disguise that she is. She hides her money, her family business, her connections. She purposely creates that vacuum so that those who elected her can fill in the background they want to believe.
It makes me sad to hear national media and others trash the people of Greene’s district, or to paint them as some rendition of a James Dickey novel. The people who elected Greene were duped. They were deceived. There’s a reason propaganda comes with such a high price tag.
Those high-powered propaganda lawyers and media firms that helped put Greene in office cost a pretty penny. Maybe even our pennies, if those PPP loans are any indication.
Don’t mark her up as a fool. Fueled by her Daddy’s money and ours, she is a threat to this Republic and to Democracy.
Karen Spears Zacharias was raised up right in Georgia. She is the author of numerous books including Christian Bend: A Novel (Mercer University Press, Macon).
25 Comments
AF Roger
about 4 years agoThanks for the home tour. I couldn't live there, and Lord knows that will never be an option for my wife and me. It does seem that Ms. Greene is who she is because she can afford to be. A question I always have for leaders and would-be leaders is, "What has it ever cost you to live here in USA, on this earth?" Yes, she does know what she is doing. I think that's a given. More importantly, do we?
ReplyKaren Spears Zacharias
about 4 years agoHey Roger: Good to hear from you. Hope you are doing well. Yes, of course, plenty of us know what she is up to but we didn't put her in office. She is exploiting Jesus for political gain to do that. Of course, that's become commonplace in today's GOP. Shameful.
ReplyDennis Gilbert
about 4 years agoCompare her to AOC! The hypocrisy is breathtaking. I just discovered your writing. It seems you've found your gift. Well done!
ReplyKaren Spears Zacharias
about 4 years agoThe comparison is hardly fair given one uses her faith and power to build others up, to empower them, to help in a time of need, while the other exploits the name of Jesus in order to demean and devalue and judge and tear down people. One is brilliant. The other is simply exploitative.
ReplyRaymond Gonzales
about 3 years agoKaren, I just came across your article. I cannot express what a well written article this is. Thank you for what you are doing by informing the public the hypocrisy of MTG.
AF Roger
about 4 years agoWhat MTG is doing is quite obvious, I think. My question was not whether we know what SHE is doing but whether we know what WE are doing--as a nation, as human beings, and as people of faith. How can be we something besides the zero-sums bunch of polarities we have become?
ReplyCecelia Haugh
about 4 years agohowdid she run in an area she doesn't reside??
ReplyKaren Spears Zacharias
about 4 years agoWould you care to explain your question?
ReplyJohn McCarthy
about 4 years agoHas MTG ever actually debated anyone? Rep or Dem.
ReplyWalter J
about 3 years agoThanks, this was pretty informative. I came across your article while looking for any information about MTG's high school and college years and how she was as a person. Being that you live near where she grew up, I think it would be very interesting to interview people who went to either high school or college with her. Like you stated in your article. "She hides her money, her family business, her connections. She purposely creates that vacuum so that those who elected her can fill in the background they want to believe." I would love to hear what people who knew her before she was famous have to say about her and her character.
ReplyMidge
about 3 years agoAfter hearing her use "Gazpacho Police" for Gestapo and today's atrocious grammar with "your" for "you're" and "Commander and Chief", with her general lack of knowledge, I don't think she graduated from college. She claimed she married Perry her sophomore year? Really? It just doesn't all add up or make sense.
ReplyJessica McCann
about 3 years agoI am from Rome, Ga. Born and raised. Rome is not the backward, uneducated town you described. There are many educated people in Rome! Rome has 2 colleges, a trade school and a junior college. The elite Darlington prep school is located in my hometown. The Tennis Center for Georgia is in Rome. It also has a thriving and growing business community. Rome’s Broad St. is experiencing a comeback. Rome also has a thriving medical community with 2 hospitals and great doctors. Rome does NOT agree with MT Greene’s CRAZY and RACIST beliefs!!!
ReplyKaren Spears Zacharias
about 3 years agoJessica: Please go back and reread the post. I think you've mistaken what I've written. I went to college in Rome. I know it well. I love it there but the stats I provide are those provided by the state. These are just facts. MTG is a byproduct of those who vote.
ReplyKanika
about 3 years agoWow. I just read the article. I totally agree with you. Many politicians are only in politics just for their own benefits and business. They are dividing people in the name of religion and then gaining profits from it. I hope people will realize this soon.
ReplyAndy Hoerer
about 2 years agoI used to think her ignorance and crazy ideas were funny. Not anymore. She is a danger to democracy. Spreading lies and misinformation is a real threat to our country right now. I have written to MTG a number of times, asking her to stop spreading lies, offer evidence of her outrageous claims, and begging her to quit. Ironically, the emails I sent put me on a mailing list of her supporters. If you think the stuff she says on tv is ridiculous, you should read what she says to her followers. In the latest email I received, she was bragging about bringing a bill to the floor to impeach Garland. Anyone who seeks the truth about Trump is an enemy, and will be attacked. She has shown herself to be unreasonable, unkind, and dishonest. Thanks for this article.
ReplyKaren Spears Zacharias
about 2 years agoYou are welcome, Andy. And yes, she is a danger. So are all those spouting lies. I recently watched a documentary on the Cambridge Five and was reminded once again how easy it is for good intentioned people to be misled and into traitorous actions. So many people following MTG, Boebert, and that ilk are doing so with the best of intentions but their actions are in direct conflict with democracy and freedom and direct violations of Scripture, which they think they are upholding. Proving once again that Belief in something doesn't make it true.
ReplyJoanne Denious
about 4 months agoI keep reading that Greene was in Central State Mental Institution after trying to set a black person's house on fire when she was a teen. Ant truth to this?
ReplyKaren Spears Zacharias
about 3 months agoI don't know. I hadn't heard this but I'll look into it.
ReplyAlice A Wilkinson
about 1 year agoI am wondering about the mental capacity of MTG. I have watched some of her performances in the House of Representatives, she sounds mentally unstable, her vocabulary is lacking, and she touts lies about the current administration, laying the blame on this administration for failures in the trump Administration. She accuses people of threatening her if they disagree with some of the far-out lies she spouts: Jewish space lasers start forest fires, don't think so. She also agrees with trump that Democrats kill babies born at 9 months, isn't that a little far out? She also spouts the lie that Jan,6 insurrectionists are being held in a DC jail for being mistreated, which was another lie, because there was a fact check on that statement. I could go on and on,,,,,,,,BUT, do the fine people of Georgia really believe and want this loose cannon who has accomplished nothing but, she does defend trumps lies? DO YOU WANT HER BACK IN CONGRESS, SHE IS A DISGRACE TO THIS COUNTRY.
ReplyMary B.
about 1 year agoHi Karen, thank you for speaking out on MGT's real roots! As a UGA graduate (BSW 2001) who started at GSU, I've had the privilege of hiking, camping, enjoying Georgia Outdoors in almost every corner of the state (and on GPB:) ! I have dear friends that live in Rome, GA to this day - and are totally opposed to MGT! This Maryland native knows the voters of the 14th have been dupped! MGT is dangerous, most likely mentally ill, and seems to be good at one thing for sure - writing fiction! From all accounts, MGT's personal historical narrative she currently uses is her best work of fiction by far! MGT is a trust fund kid, pure and simple! Take it from a real woman who worked her way through three degrees with the help of student loans that just got forgiven after 10 years of working in public service as a social worker and a nurse! Thanks again for spreading the word about the good folks from Georgia! As well as MGT, an apple rotten to the core and rancid enough to infect our democracy with her evil lies!
ReplyKaren Spears Zacharias
about 1 year agoyep, she has duped those people into believing she is some kind of "Christian" and more than anyone I've ever met, she takes the name of Jesus in Vain.
ReplyAl Haynes
about 1 year agoHi Karen, I thank you for this article on MTG. I think it really isn't her that is dangerous there is ALWAYS someone who may look walk, and talk like they have a functioning brain, but when they start to speak, they reveal that they have a "screw" missing. The danger is when people don't listen or educate themselves to the point where they can identify "folly". MTG is a national example from the fine state of Georgia of how gullible some Americans are. "Those Americans" are dangerous. The real tragedy is that this woman traded a family (which she said she valued) for a political stage and boyfriend. Sadly enough, the lives that are left in her wake are three children and an ex-husband who is bearing witness to all of this. It will end, one day, maybe then they will take her back.
ReplyKaren Spears Zacharias
about 1 year agoHer children would be better off if MTG were rendered mute.
ReplyRick Shaddock
about 1 year agoMarjorie Taylor Greene is high in IQ and morality. She sees through Biden's corruption and holds his administration responsible. She speaks the truth and is for America First.
ReplyKaren Spears Zacharias
about 1 year agoDear Rick: You aren't thinking clearly. You should see someone about that.
Reply