I have never attempted to pull together a list of the worst people to serve in Congress during my lifetime. In fact, I'm not sure the idea had crossed my mind until approximately 10 minutes ago. No, there's no reason to get excited. I still haven't done it, and that isn't what this post is. I'm just sort of thinking aloud about what such a list might look like. As for who gets credit for putting this thought in my head, that's easy: Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). The more I hear from her, the more I find myself thinking that she'd be on the list somewhere near the top. She seems like a truly vile human being.
But since one name doesn't make a list, I have been thinking about who else might deserve to be on it. The problem with opening it to anyone who has served in Congress during my lifetime is that this would require me to go way back to people who were in Congress when I was a child. It seems like some of them would have to be as bad if not worse than almost anybody today. After all, Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-SC) served until 2003, and he was an actual segregationist. I'm not saying that Rep. Greene isn't, but I think he was more open about it during his 8 terms in the Senate. I'm also not claiming that I was a child in 2003, as that would be little more than wishful thinking. But something tells me that Sen. Thurmond's record long before 2003 would more than earn him a spot.
Then again, what I remember about Sen. Thurmond was that he had some objectionable ideas and not that he was hopelessly deranged to the point of being dangerous. When I consider more recent candidates, like Rep. Greene, I don't think I can say the same. She seems to have ideas every bit as bad as someone like Michele Bachmann (another good choice for the list) but without the intelligence or impulse control. As a result, she comes even closer to being dangerous, or at least closer to being dangerous in a different and more extreme way. Poor Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) is going to have to step up his game to stay competitive!
But seriously, the problem with even thinking of a list like this is that there are far too many good choices. If we limited ourselves to people who are currently in Congress, that would be difficult enough. When we have to consider people like Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) who haven't been in Congress for some time, the task seems daunting. Even establishing some selection criteria doesn't help much. For example, one of my main criteria would be that someone would have to be a blatant Christian extremist to qualify. That sounds good initially but doesn't help us narrow the pool. After all, it seems like everyone we might consider for such a list is a Christian extremist!
I didn't have anybody in mind besides Rep. Greene when I sat down to write this post. Now, more many more names are popping up as good choices besides those few I have included here. I find myself feeling depressed by the horrible truth that underlies this entire enterprise. These awful people don't just magically appear in our Congress out of thin air; our neighbors are electing them. And what's even worse than that is trying to comprehend how many of them our neighbors have elected and are continuing to elect. Just think, Rep. Greene is in Congress because a bunch of people in Georgia want her to be. I'd call that depressing, not to mention terrifying.
