Nothing makes a politician madder than a complex reality they don’t understand. It’s like watching a dog try to open a door—pure determination, zero comprehension, and a lot of barking.
The latest example? The absolute meltdown over Treasury payments, with certain politicians shrieking that the U.S. government is “funding terrorists.” Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has as much intelligence experience as my neighbor’s cat, led the charge, screeching about corruption, incompetence, and “outright rot.” The reality? A well-established intelligence strategy that’s been used for decades to track criminal networks. But nuance doesn’t win Twitter fights, so instead, we get performative outrage from people whose entire national security experience consists of angrily watching Fox News.
Here’s the thing: counterterrorism isn’t about flailing your arms and screaming “Cut off their money! Shut it all down!” It’s about watching, tracking, waiting. You follow the money, map out the players, and then you cut deeper—dismantling entire networks instead of just making criminals shift to a harder-to-trace system. But to people like Greene, who seem to think intelligence agencies work like an action movie where the hero busts into a room and starts yelling, none of this makes sense.
This kind of stupidity flourishes because it’s profitable. The cycle is predictable: first, someone leaks an out-of-context snippet of information. Then, the outrage machine picks it up, and politicians who have never so much as glanced at a counterterrorism manual start demanding answers. But of course, there’s no follow-up, because actually understanding intelligence work doesn’t make for a good campaign ad. Instead, they move on to the next manufactured scandal, leaving the actual professionals to clean up the mess while the general public is left dumber, angrier, and more convinced that stopping bad guys is as simple as “just blocking their transactions.”
Meanwhile, the people who actually know how this works—counterterrorism analysts, intelligence officers, financial investigators—can’t exactly hop on Twitter to set the record straight. National security doesn’t work that way. There’s no “well, actually” moment where an FBI analyst gets to reply with, “Hey Marjorie, here’s the full classified breakdown of why you’re an idiot.” So instead, these people are forced to sit back and watch while the loudest, least-informed voices shape public perception. Imagine being a heart surgeon and watching a bunch of conspiracy theorists insist that open-heart surgery is a scam because they saw a meme about essential oils. That’s what this feels like for intelligence professionals.
The worst part? The damage doesn’t stop at stupidity. Every time a politician like Greene manages to convince enough people that intelligence work is actually just a big, corrupt mess, there’s a risk that real policy changes will be made by people who also don’t understand the game. Over-aggressive financial restrictions can push criminals into using harder-to-trace systems. Intelligence agencies can lose valuable tools because some politician needs a quick PR win. And before you know it, we’re less safe, not more, all because some populist grifter needed a new talking point.
And let’s be clear—this isn’t just about Marjorie Taylor Greene, though she does tend to be the loudest and most allergic to facts. The entire populist outrage machine is built on this model: take something complicated, strip it of all nuance, and then use it to whip people into a frenzy. It doesn’t matter if the reality is the exact opposite of what they’re claiming, because the goal isn’t accuracy, it’s attention. Outrage equals engagement. Engagement equals donations. And somewhere along the way, the actual business of keeping people safe gets shoved aside in favor of a viral moment.
So maybe, just maybe, people who have never worked a single day in intelligence or counterterrorism should sit this one out. Because every time someone like Greene opens her mouth about national security, we don’t get safer—we just get dumber. And honestly, we can’t afford that.
