by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Well, if you like my personal brand of “hysterical doom shit,” then I got my new favorite fear to talk to you about: a member of Congress pulling out a gun and shooting their peers.
Now, obviously, there are two people who are the most obvious suspects for this future and hopefully forever abstract fear: Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert.
Both of them have the means, motive and opportunity to stage a mass causality event on the House floor. Green already runs around getting into heated arguments with her peers as it is. It’s not too much to imagine her, at some point, taking it to the next level and using a gun to intimidate — or worse. But they are just the most conspicuous — there are probably a dozen MAGA New Right Representatives who could grow deranged enough to do it.
It makes you wonder what the reaction would be if something like that did happen. Before the January 6th Insurrection, I would have been able to give you a pat answer of the country would be outraged and for a moment we would all be united in grief.
Lulz!
Now, I think the bodies would still be warm on the House chamber floor when Bannon and others would begin to spin how the murders were “justified” because “liberals drove the person to it.”
Or, as the esteemed Jesse Kelly would say, “Welcome to the New Right!”
The two sides would inhabit their echo chambers with talking points and spin and there would even be a bi-partisan commission of why the event happened. The even would just be another data point towards are march to GQP autocratic managed democracy or some sort of civil war.
Do I think something so horrible might happen? That’s a tough one. The conditions are there for something like that to happen. But that doesn’t mean jack shit. The mood of the country is growing darker by the moment for various reasons, so anything is possible.
But, for the time being, this really is just “hysterical doom shit.” I think if it did happen it would probably be at some point after the GQP took flipped Congress. Or, maybe if the House was controlled by Democrats by a 1 or 2 seat margin. I know we’re just about there now, but the idea that a Congress person would murder their colleagues is so dark I want to give myself some “hope” that that won’t happen anytime soon.
