Why words no longer mean anything in politics

Thanks, Marjorie Taylor Greene.

(Marjorie Taylor Greene)

The reactions among Republicans to Donald Trump’s third(!) indictment of the year were utterly predictable.

Just as they had after his first two indictments, Republicans generally lined up behind Trump — insisting that he had been the victim of a weaponized Justice Department.

But one statement in particular stood out to me — and not for a good reason.

Here it is:

“I will still vote for Trump even if he’s in jail. This is a communist attack on America’s first amendment to vote for who THE PEOPLE want for President by an attempt to take Trump off the ballots through a politically weaponized DOJ. People know exactly what this is.”

That statement came from none other than Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of the most high profile voices within the Republican party these days.

And it literally makes no sense. Especially this line: “This is a communist attack on America’s first amendment to vote for who THE PEOPLE want for President by an attempt to take Trump off the ballots through a politically weaponized DOJ.”

I want to zero in on the word “communist”.

Just so we’re clear on terms, the word means this, according to Brittanica.com:

“A political and economic doctrine that aims to replace private property and a profit-based economy with public ownership and communal control of at least the major means of production (e.g., mines, mills, and factories) and the natural resources of a society.”

Ok, so how then, exactly, is the indictment of Trump by special counsel Jack Smith a “communist attack” on the First Amendment?

Is there some sort of redistribution of wealth involved in the charges? Is Jack Smith trying to get Trump to donate all of his wealth for the collective good?

Or is Greene just lazily throwing around a political buzzword — knowing that the fact that it makes no sense won’t be any sort of impediment to her supporters liking it?

Yeah, I think it’s that one.

This may seem like a minor point but it’s not. We have so devalued political discourse and rhetoric in this country that you can literally just string a bunch of buzzwords together and be celebrated for it!

The truth is that what MTG said makes zero sense. Like, none. Communism has nothing to do with whether or not Trump should have been indicted. If you spend 5 seconds thinking about it, you would realize that.

But no one — or at least MTG’s target audience — doesn’t spend those precious seconds thinking about it. They see the word “communist” and immediately rush to mash the “like” and “retweet” (or whatever it’s called now) button.

That this sort of lowest common denominator stuff works is depressing. We need a politics where the language you use is tied to some sort of shared reality. And where just popping off and labeling everything “communist” doesn’t, well, work.

Rant over. Thanks for listening.