One of the best parts of being a writer is the necessity to check our spelling.

When we go back to make sure we’ve spelled everything correctly, put a comma where a comma should be, and make sure there’s a period at the end of every sentence, we also have an opportunity to revisit our thinking. “Is that what I meant to say?” Or “Do I really believe that?” While the written word doesn’t guarantee we won’t write something stupid, it’s a lot safer than talking.

I spent twenty-five years yapping on the radio five hours a day, five days a week. No script, no rehearsals, just me and a live microphone. Talk about an accident waiting to happen. Amazingly, I managed to sign off forever before I stuck my foot so far inside my mouth whatever idiotic thing I said would be included in the first paragraph of my obituary.

Politicians talk a lot, too.

They also text, email and post. Frequently, they make headlines via these free-form means of communications, and not always in the way they want.

Or do they?

Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, is a headline machine, frequently saying, texting or posting something outlandish even by congressional standards. She often fundraises off her outrageous statements, rolling up $3.2 million in donations in her first three months in office alone. Recently, she outdid herself, doubling down on a previous reckless call for red and blue states to “divorce”, meaning of course, secession.

As in the Civil War.

“We need a national divorce,” tweeted Greene last week. “We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government.”

This is not the first time Congresswoman Greene has called for the Red States to take their marbles and go home. In October of 2021, Greene suggested disunion, prompting podcast host Steve Bannon to push back. “It’s something that I’m adamantly obviously opposed to,” said Bannon, in this instance the voice of reason which says everything we need to know about Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Congresswoman Greene is not the first nor the only person to raise the specter of secession. In Northern California, a significant movement is working to create a new libertarian-based state, “Jefferson,” incorporating parts of Idaho and eastern Oregon. A native Hawaiian independence movement has been percolating for decades. Black Nationalists have pushed the idea of separate states for people of color, while in the Pacific Northwest (including parts of British Columbia) radical environmentalists dream of creating a new nation based on the ideas found in Ernest Callenbach’s 1975 novel, “Ecotopia: The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston.”

That MTG, an elected member of congress sworn to uphold the Constitution, advocates the dissolution of the United States of America into two separate nations, “Liberal America” and “Conservative America,” can’t simply be dismissed as loose talk, the kind of beer-blabber formerly reserved for barrooms and backyard BBQs after Uncle Carl has a few too many. Survey after survey shows Americans are increasingly warming to the idea of a permanent split along ideological lines.

This is a dream come true for both Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping, who are not only counting on the internal collapse of America, but continue to fund propaganda designed to speed that collapse along.

It’s one thing for fringe groups to talk of insurrection and treason, but now those fringe groups have a seat in the House of Representatives, including on important committees. Last December, at a gathering of the New York Young Republicans Club attended by Donald Trump Jr., Greene boasted that if she had organized the January 6th attack on the Capitol, “We would have won and we would’ve been armed!”

Marjorie Taylor Greene needs to take a breath before her treasonous talk spells disaster for the country we love.

Doug McIntyre can be reached at: Doug@DougMcIntyre.com.