Marorie Taylor Greene cannot handle the truth: She is a leader in the Flat Earthers society

A Few Good Men:  Lieutenant Kaffee: I want the truth❗

Colonel Jessup: You can’t handle the truth❗

Echo essay by Ramon Presson published in the Williamson Herald, a Tennessee newspaper"

t’s one of the most iconic punch/counter punch moments in film history. Three decades now since its release, this courtroom exchange between Cruise and Nicholson’s characters seems to have prophesied and describe our present strained relationship (or perhaps divorce) with truth and facts.

Before today’s conspiracy theories enjoyed the fuel and fertilizer of the internet and social media, the positively absurd was once largely limited to cover stories in the National Enquirer. I remember waiting in grocery store checkout lines and seeing actual Enquirer headlines such as “Redneck Aliens Take Over Trailer Park” 👿👺and “Half Man, Half Dog Baffles Doctors.”  MTG (Marjorie Taylor Greene😕) and OMG❗

Instead of “truth is stranger than fiction” we’ve arrived at “fiction is my truth.” And there is no better fiction writer at the keyboard today than Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green (MTG) who recently doubled down on her post-Helene & Milton claims that “they” are controlling the weather. On Oct 3 she tweeted, “Yes, they can control the weather. It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.” On October 7, Green tweeted “Climate change is the new COVID. Ask your government if the weather is manipulated or controlled. Did you ever give permission to them to do it❓Are you paying for it? Of course you are.” 

Green is implying that “they” are somewhere, somehow manufacturing deadly Category 4 and 5 hurricanes to prove a point and advance an agenda, and you’re naïve if you don’t believe that.

This is from the woman who claims that 9/11 was an inside job and that there is no evidence that a plane actually hit the Pentagon. She maintained that the horrific shootings at Sandy Hook, Parkland and Las Vegas were staged. In 2018 MTG made headlines for claiming Jewish space lasers were operating for leftist agendas, specifically insisting that wildfires in California had been started by PG&E, in conjunction with the Rothschilds, using a space laser, in order to clear room for a high-speed rail project.

Conspiracy of the Month Club:  MTG serves up platters of extreme examples, but what’s frightening is that thousands of people believe her. Conspiracy theories certainly got a boost during Covid regarding the virus, vaccines, masks, social distancing, etc. That anyone could say with a straight face that a virus that has killed 7 million people worldwide, 1.1 million in the United States alone, was a “hoax” is beyond my comprehension.

But there are large numbers of Flat Earthers and Holocaust deniers, so I don’t know why other crazy claims surprise me. And that doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the tip of the bizarre and outrageous QAnon iceberg that rose up in 2017 from a large ocean of shared misinformation. The wife of one of my patients believed that lizard people were running the government and that the only people who could recognize them were other lizard people.

Why are we susceptible to falling for conspiracy theories?Our brains have trouble managing ambiguity and uncertainty. We say we love mysteries, but what we really love are solved mysteries. We are wired to try and connect the dots and discern cause and effect.
In the absence of clear information, truth and facts, our imaginations will fill in the gaps to come up with explanations.

When we don’t understand, agree with, or like the explanation for an incident or for someone’s actions, we’ll even make something up.
Sometimes the actual facts and truth are not very interesting, opening the door for a strange alternative explanation to be more engaging and entertaining. It’s true of social media and all marketing: uninteresting things don’t go viral.

Sometimes the actual facts and truth are disturbing and can leave us feeling partly responsible for the damage and/or necessary change. Denial, minimizing, and blame shifting are always easier than accepting even partial responsibility for the problem and thus a role in the improvement. As a couples therapist, I’ve seen this play out right in front of me for 30-plus years.

What we make up (or believe from elsewhere) will fit our personal ideology, politics and/or theology. We are very seldom willing at any given moment to challenge our biases and cherished beliefs.
We like to believe we have insider information, exclusive and valuable intel that most others don’t have but that everybody needs. Said the aforementioned wife to her family, “Can you see I’m trying to help you?”

There are Gaslighters among us who would have us doubt what we’ve witnessed. They are like Chico Marx who said, “Well, who you gonna believe —me or your own eyes?” When challenged, they will not only repeat the falsehood, but double down on it. It’s good to remember what Abraham Lincoln famously said, “Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.”😁

I see something in the public forum that I see in too many marriages—the inability, or at least the unwillingness, to say either of these two things: "I don’t know - or/ But, I was wrong."

Marjorie Taylor Greene (MTG) and the Flat Earth Society

How refreshing it would be if politicians, business leaders and spouses could bring themselves to say those two things. Yea, I know; that’s crazy talk right there.

Ramon Presson, PhD, is a licensed marriage & family therapist in Franklin, (www.ramonpressontherapy.com) the author of multiple books, and a member of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. He can be reached at ramonpresson@gmail.com