Don’t Be Fooled by the New Marjorie Taylor Greene

When Marjorie Taylor Greene starts sounding reasonable, it says more about us than about her.

My mom told me the other day she’d seen Greene on The View.

“She actually sounded really reasonable,” she said. “Clear-headed, even.”

What in the world???

For years, Marjorie Taylor Greene has been one of the most unhinged voices in Congress, like a walking headline factory for chaos. So when my mom said that, I had to pause. Does my mom now trust Marjorie Taylor Greene? Or, is she like a lot of Americans, exhausted? Because exhaustion changes what “reasonable” sounds like.

When the world feels out of control, even the familiar villains can start to sound like voices of calm. Greene, ever the opportunist, knows how to read the room. When the government was relatively stable, she stood out by being loud, erratic, and conspiratorial. But now that the government itself feels erratic—when shutdowns, purges, and political theater have become the new normal—she’s pivoting. Suddenly she’s the sober one in the room, talking about the needs of the working class and the importance of sensible governance.

It sounds like she’s changed. But I don’t think so.

I don’t believe she’s being sincere. I think this is strategy. She’s a political actress, doing what she’s always done: sniffing out where the attention is and sprinting toward it. If outrage gets her noticed, she’ll be outrageous. If calm gets her noticed, she’ll perform calm.

But what’s more interesting to me than her pivot is our collective reaction to it. When someone like my mom—smart, grounded, liberal—feels a sense of relief hearing Marjorie Taylor Greene talk like an adult, that says something about how desperate we’ve all become for normalcy.

People are looking for any flicker of sanity in a landscape that feels like an asylum. That’s what happens when the center collapses: even the most extreme figures can start to look stable in comparison.

So when my mom said Marjorie Taylor Greene sounded “reasonable” and “well spoken,” I thought: Don’t take the bait. But she probably will—because that’s how deep the fatigue runs, and how desperate we’ve become.

When chaos becomes your baseline, competence doesn’t have to be real to feel like relief.