By MICHAEL DAVIDOW, Radio Free New Hampshire

Marjorie Taylor Greene is quitting Congress. Georgia’s famous spewer of hate has become disillusioned. Trump let her down on the Epstein files; they have also parted company on Gaza and Iran. She no longer thinks he’s serious about putting America first. He seems too willing to risk our soldiers’ lives. She was even reportedly sickened by the attitude he flashed at Charlie Kirk’s funeral, when he talked about hating his enemies, even as Kirk’s widow spoke of grace. That shocked her conscience (though to this listener, it sounded like her own vocabulary). She has apologized for the role she herself once played in degrading our national discourse.

That last was a bridge too far. She didn’t spoil our national discourse; she was never that powerful. Rather, our national discourse decayed to the point where she could join it, and her leavetaking won’t help a thing.

Query whether she is as pure as she claims. She presents as a chastened idealist with a sincere belief system (space lasers, powerful Jews, child molesters) who spoke her mind regardless of consequence; an amateur, unable to process the professional cynicism surrounding her. So when people opposed her, they were opposing her personally, the self-made woman with flashing eyes and the initials MTG (the better to match her opposite, AOC). They were certainly cruel, and she responded in kind. They made fun of her appearance, they made fun of her intelligence; she did the same in turn. Things often got ugly with MTG in the room, but it always took two to tango, and she never lacked for partners.

I hope for her sake this is all an act. Trump himself excels at acting. He is known to be as privately gracious as he is publicly obnoxious; his erstwhile sympathies for liberal causes (gay rights, abortion, what have you) were never hidden, nor hidden particularly well; his public persona is that of an entertainer, and he has both an entertainer’s gift for capturing an audience and an entertainer’s pleasure in making strangers happy. For good or ill, he has imported that Hollywood calculus into our national politics, and we will be dealing with the consequences for a long time.

If her story is true, though, then I feel bad for her. I dislike her politics and I am glad she is gone, but I wish her well regardless. It’s hard to go through life as sensitive as she claims to be. Most people stop pursuing that level of sincerity in their every personal relationship by the time they hit fifteen. While we continue to ask for honesty from those closest to us, we learn to expect little more than simple civility from our neighbors and acquaintances, and we often expect even less from our co-workers. We can try to keep our posturing to a minimum, and it’s sad and unhealthy when the falseness gets out of hand, but a basic emotional distance not only allows us to get along with those who are different from us; it also lets us admire and appreciate them. It helps to get things done. It makes for a happier world. It fosters actual connection in the long run.

Good fences make good neighbors, wrote Robert Frost. He could have added that good manners make good politicians. If MTG really was that raw, so incapable of protecting her heart, so unwilling to lose an argument and so hurt by being betrayed by those she thought liked her, then she had no business in Washington. And for once, that is not a critique of Washington.

I only wish the rest of her earnest breed would follow. They live on both sides of the aisle. The Democrats have the Squad; they have Mamdani in New York; they have Bernie, who has forgotten that he represents Vermont because Broadway’s lights are so much brighter; while the Republicans have so many adolescent wonders these days, I’ve lost track. But the most problematic of them all are those dreamers who want to make America great again in the way they alone think is great; and if your idea of greatness differs from theirs, then yours is wrong and you need to change. On the right or the left, that attitude carries with it that same mix of holiness and self-regard you find next to Kalashnikov rifles in the backs of Toyota pick-up trucks in broken societies world-wide. Or, for that matter, perched by the windows of coffeeshops in Brooklyn, where the student radicals drink their matcha lattes and sing the praises of Hamas.

Good bye and good luck, MTG. Try being a poet next time. Not much pay, but easy virtue.

Davidow writes Radio Free New Hampshire for InDepthNH.org. He is also the author of Gate City, Split Thirty, and The Rocketdyne Commission, three novels about politics and advertising which, taken together, form The Henry Bell Project,  The Book of Order, and The Hunter of Talyashevka, Chanukah Land can be found here. And his latest novel Interdiction can be found here.