Everything that’s wrong with politics in America has been on display in Central Virginia this past week.
Militants from the deep-blue Peoples Republic of Charlottesville and activists from one of the reddest congressional districts in the country collided like flint and rock. Republican candidates for Congress continued their fratricidal struggle over who is most loyal to former President Donald Trump. Adding to the mayhem, showboating Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, joined the fray and amped up the rhetoric.
Everyone behaved badly, although Greene managed to pose as the victim when a lefty crowd shouted down her speech and hurled mindless obscenities.
Civility is dying. The partisan extremes goad each other into greater extremity. Politics has become theater with everyone playing to the cell phone camera and lining up the next post on X or YouTube.
This account is based on the reporting of Cardinal News and The Daily Progress.
By way of background, Congressman Bob Good is running against State Senator John McGuire to represent Virginia’s 5th District. Good, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, is one of the most conservative members of Congress, and he has aligned himself with Trump. But Trump, unforgiving after Good’s earlier endorsement of Ron DeSantis in the Republican presidential race, has endorsed his opponent, McGuire. The rhetoric between two candidates of remarkably similar views has gotten vicious.
Good appeared at a candidate forum May 30 at Spring Creek Golf Course in Louisa County that also featured Democratic candidates. Due to threats, allegedly from a McGuire supporter, organizers took the precaution of arranging two sheriff deputies to maintain a presence nearby.
At the forum, Good defended Trump after his conviction by a New York jury for felonies arising from hush-money payments. His remarks elicited cheers and groans from the audience. One man walked out, proclaiming, “I can’t listen to this anymore. It’s a lie. He’s a crook. This is bulls–t.”
Moderator Bob Bayok asked for decorum multiple times before the crowd settled down, according to The Daily Progress.
The candidates retreated to different corners of the room, where they could interact with the public. An attendee, Richard Jenkins, confronted Good about remarks he made about the gay marriage law. He began shouting at the Congressman, and a Good supporter pushed him. Jenkins was escorted out of the building.
The big fireworks exploded yesterday when Greene, an outspoken Trump ally in Congress and a McGuire supporter, rolled into Albemarle County in a campaign bus for a campaign rally. A crowd variously estimated to be between 50 and 100 in size shouted her down even as she spoke into a bullhorn. People got into one another’s faces and began screaming. Police formed a semicircle around the McGuire/Greene group to separate them from the protesters.
“The crowd was … I’d call them insane. They were just out of control, screaming, shouting, coming extremely close to me,” Greene said in a phone interview after the event. “One woman actually came around back and grabbed me, I had to push her off. These people were very aggressive.”
Greene seemed to enjoy the confrontation. As seen in a Cardinal News video, she grinned broadly as she was followed by a rag-tag group of protesters, one of whom screeched, “you f—ing bitch!” For Greene, the optics couldn’t have been better.
We have entered the world of Irish playwright William Butler Yeats:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world….
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.