Greene peddles Burning Man conspiracy. This GOPer has power to shut government down?

Because we live in an age of near-unfathomable stupidity, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Farcical) sat down with reviled conspiracy theorist Alex Jones over the weekend and revealed THE TRUTH about this year’s rain-and-mud-soaked Burning Man festival.

The first part of the previous sentence – the part in which a bafflingly influential Republican lawmaker lets herself be interviewed by an unhinged quack who has been ordered to pay nearly $1.5 billion for defaming the families of eight school shooting victims – would, in a normal version of American politics, be a scandal. But there’s nothing normal about our politics these days, so let’s focus on the second part, which somehow manages to be even nuttier.

Burning Man, the annual desert festival of art, self-reliance and celebrity weirdness, became a quasi-disaster this year as heavy rain turned the usually bone-dry Nevada desert into slick and impassable mud, temporarily stranding the 70,000-plus attendees over the long Labor Day weekend.

After suggesting the rain was sent by God (she didn’t provide a reason for God’s wrath, just a vague suggestion the almighty is out to get the liberals), Greene addressed this muddy quagmire by telling Jones it was all part of a radical left-wing plot to get people to care about climate change.

Marjorie Taylor Greene sees conspiracy behind Burning Man's mud

Here are the actual words that fell out of Greene’s mouth: “There are 73,000 or 75,000 people in the Nevada desert now at this Burning Man. They're locked in. They're not allowed to leave. And they're basically, probably being brainwashed that climate change is the cause of all of it, it's the root of all evil and it's going to destroy the earth and they’re feeling the panic.”

Curses, she figured us out! For months, my tight-knit liberal cabal has plotted to lure nearly 75,000 people – most of whom already recognize climate change is real – into the desert so we could soak them with rain and mud then brainwash them into believing climate change is real. I should’ve known a sharp critical thinker like Greene would suss out this conspiracy.

She continued: “After this is over at Burning Man and these 75,000 people disperse and they go back home, they're gonna have these stories to tell and how terrible it is and how we have to do everything possible to stop climate change, it's caused by humans and it's carbon. And it’s the amount of carbon that we put out. It’s manufacturing. It’s our gas and diesel engines.”

You're right, MTG: We liberals made Burning Man muddy to make a point

There’s certainly nowhere else these festivalgoers might have learned of a connection between gas engines and climate change. No, they had to be dragged to the desert, muddied-up and brainwashed by … someone?

And now they’ll spread this information throughout their social networks, and before long cars and manufacturing and meat will be banned and we’ll all be eating crickets and working in liberal reeducation camps.

Is Joe Biden coming for our beer? No, but we Republicans will still be outraged!

Or something to that effect.

If all of this makes your brain want to vacate your skull and move somewhere more sensible, congratulations – you still have both oars firmly in the waters of reality.

Greene has too much say in Republican Party to ignore her

But that doesn’t mean we can ignore Greene’s willingness to sit next to someone like Jones and gin up conspiratorial Burning Man nonsense.

During a town hall meeting with constituents last week, Greene said: “I’ve already decided I will not vote to fund the government unless we have passed an impeachment inquiry on Joe Biden.”

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To date, Republicans have provided zero evidence that President Biden has done anything worthy of impeachment. His son, Hunter Biden, is being investigated by a special counsel, but any wrongdoing on the part of the president remains purely speculative.

If the government shuts down, people like Greene will be to blame

That clearly won’t stop Greene, or any number of small-minded far-right congressional goofballs, from willingly shutting down the government in promotion of a still-baseless conspiracy.

After all, Greene sees a conspiracy in an inordinately wet Burning Man festival. She proudly sits next to a man who has spun some of the most hateful and damaging conspiracies imaginable.

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The Republican Party has been overrun by fools like her, and with a Sept. 30 government funding deadline looming, Greene and her far-right compatriots have the power to wreak havoc.

She’s not a serious person, but she has conned her way into a position that allows her to cause Americans serious problems.

It may all seem overwhelmingly ridiculous, and it is. But we ignore her, and the off-the-rails party that has fostered her, at our own peril.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Twitter @RexHuppke and Facebook facebook.com/RexIsAJerk

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: MTG touts bizarre Burning Man conspiracy, but we can't just ignore her