Who is this guy?
1 Who but a devotee of Trump would say such a thing?:
“I have just called President Trump to say this: “Stay strong and keep fighting, sir! The nation is depending upon your resolve. We must exhaust every available legal remedy to restore Americans’ trust in the fairness of our election system.”
That anyone could, over time and after the evidence obtained showed otherwise, still believe that there was some sort of conspiracy that voting machines were rigged would have to be considered as mentality unhinged as Trump himself.
Later, the same man was one of 147 Republicans to contest the results in key states; even after a pro-Trump mob attacked Congress on January 6, a riot developed, and we now know that it was linked to nine deaths and hundreds of convictions. But that is not all. That the Republican Party has placed yet another Christian literalist at the cusp of power is frightening. At a time when the Democrats are trying to restore a broken democracy that was almost destroyed by a cognitively impaired Donald Trump, it is unbelievable. To elect a Christian literalist as Speaker of the House when all this is taking place is an American madness.
2 He is a devout Evangelical Christian who literally believes Romans 13, which says, “Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.”
Which, in its stupidity, more or less says that you may as well not vote because it is God who places people in authority, not you. Or you are being manipulated by God.
“The Bible is very clear that God is the one that raises up those in authority … each of you, all of us,” he said.
I am often staggered with the vigour American atheists use to confront religion. However, when one examines the conduct of religious institutions in that country, I cannot say I am the least surprised.
3 The same man has claimed that a “‘homosexual agenda’ will destroy Christianity and society.”
4 He once worked for the “Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF),” a designated hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks US extremists.
5 The ADF is accused of supporting the:
“… re-criminalisation of sexual acts between consenting LGBTQ+ adults in the US and criminalisation abroad; defended state-sanctioned sterilisation of trans people abroad; contended that LGBTQ+ people are more likely to engage in paedophilia.”
Rev Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, executive director of the Campaign for Southern Equality, said:
“Johnson has made a career out of attacking the LGBTQ+ community at every turn. His positions are out of touch with the clear majority support for LGBTQ+ equality in our country.”
6 The newly elected speaker of the House of Representatives has little respect for our changing climate:
“He has questioned climate science, opposed clean energy and received more campaign contributions from oil and gas companies than any other industry last year.”
7 He is firmly anti-abortion. Last year, when Congress removed the right to abortion, he celebrated “a historic and joyful day.”
8 He is against divorce. In 2016, as he ran for Congress, he told the Louisiana Baptist Message he had:
“… been out on the front lines of the ‘culture war’ defending religious freedom, the sanctity of human life and biblical values, including the defence of traditional marriage.” [He is an advocate for ‘covenant marriage.’]
9 Allegedly, he believes that mass shootings are caused – among other things – by the teaching of evolution.
Who is he? He is Mike Johnson
A “little-known Louisiana Republican” who champions Donald Trump and believes the last election was rigged. His emergence as the latest speaker is noted by his staunch opposition to all things considered progressive.
Tony Carrk, executive director of the watchdog Accountable.US, called Johnson:
“a far-right extremist who led a desperate attempt to subvert democracy … [who] boasts a voting record deeming him one of the most extreme members of the Republican conference.
“A Speaker Johnson means more of the same from the Maga [pro-Trump] majority: pointless partisan political stunts, peddling dangerous conspiracies and ultimately undermining American democracy.”
Personally, I find the most objectionable feature of a conservative attitude is its propensity to reject well-substantiated new knowledge, science in other words, because it dislikes some of the consequences that may flow from it. Yes, there are known facts in the world.
Around the world, we are at a point in time in our history where ‘change’ demands it be listened to. Where the events of recent times scream for it. It only requires a voice to order it on behalf of the people. American conservatives will soon have to realise that for the good of the country, their politics will have to change. That they cannot resist change in the foolish assumption that they can make permanent that which makes them feel secure. They must realise that change is, in fact, part of the very fabric of our existence.
But what is it that occupies the minds of men and women of the American conservative right that they need to be so malevolent in their thinking? The power of wit, truth and persuasion with reasoned thinking and argument no longer suffices. That sledgehammer thinking will win every fight. What is it in the backgrounds of these people that causes their narcissism, their inability to accommodate difference or equality?
My thought for the day
Commitment to the use of critical reason, factual evidence, and scientific methods of inquiry, rather than faith and mysticism, is the best way of providing solutions to human problems.
American exceptionalism has a lot to answer for.
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23 comments
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Consume Less
Return to home pageSince 1945, when has any country having the USA (United States of Apartheid) as an ally and military arms supplier needed any other enemies?
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Now which Australian allies oversaw the Dismissal of the Gough Whitlam LABOR government in 1975?
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Now which Australian LABOR government is prepared to pay $368 BILLION vassalage for USUKA subs debacle that will likely be redundant before they hit the water?
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Better for Australia to follow non-aligned path ….. or have the foreign owned multinational mining corporations discovered the Australian mineral wealth and decided that Australian COALition misgovernments are too easily bought off?
Some say that this is a sophisticated Russian sponsored conspiracy to attract the gullible, [Mike Johnson seems to fit that description] return Trump to the Presidency, disrupt American democracy and undermine America’s global influence.
As far as Putin is concerned there is more than one way to skin a cat !
Dangerous absolutely rabid religious right wing Trumpian fanatic. Dog help the US and the rest of the world if the orange maniac gets back in with Johnson in charge of congress.
Being in the US and staying with a mate of 34 years , a rabid trump fanatic and devourer of Pox (fox) I remarked not much difference with their supporters and North Korean leader supporters . After seeing the program on Hitler’s beer hall putsch again it was similar to trumps supporters . I am amazed at everyday Australians that think trump is the words best thing since sliced bread , but some of these acquaintances do have some mental depression issues .
Who is this guy? Well, for starters, he’s from Louisiana, a backwater part of the states where some citizens have barely progressed beyond knuckle-dragging and intrafamilial incest, as a plank in the story of who Mikey is. A jumped-up ignoramus raised on a diet of gumbo, shrimp & grits. Whether he fits the Peter principle, or the Dilbert version is moot but suffice to say that given it’s the Republican party there’s no bar too low that can’t be edged even further downward, and ol’ Mikey’s merely the latest manifestation of the GOP’s tendency to attract thick-as-a-brick and dumb-as-a-box-of-horseshoes characters into its fold and then place them into positions of responsibility.
Lettuce spray to our deer lord, may gawd bless America, and hawg into the jambalya & po’boy, y’all. Yee hah!
My initial reaction was that the quote was attributed to morrison, an understandable error.
The USA is headed for Christo-Fascist dictatorship under Trump. Australia should back away. Fast!
There’s nothing weird about Mike Johnson. He’s just a normal Republican. 😁
These people are impossible to reason with. By the time the conventional old-style conservatives realise that things have to change, it’ll be too late. The US is in a bad, bad way. That ill-qualified extremists are able to reach positions of power and seriously assert the primacy of their fundamentalist religious beliefs in arriving at their ‘policies’, is staggering. Australia would do well to detach itself from such dangerous liaisons as exist between us and the US.
David,
It’s way too late to seperate us from the Yanks. The pollies have been sucking up to them for so long that there are now well worn lip kiss dimples on their bum cheeks marked “For Australian Use Only.”
I am currently reading “The Echidna Strategy”, by Sam Roggeveen, where he guides his readers through an exercise with a pathway avoiding the USA.
Sticking with this bunch of clowns is only going to make our future less safe, and more dangerous.
When it comes to picking leaders its the west in general, and the USA in particular, where it is essential to have a faith (the nuttier, the better), but in China, where the State is first, then the reverse is the case.
Its a distinction that has left me pondering which side I am more comfortable with.
Was it the doctrine of discovery that liberated America into existence?
Was it the liberation of Black Africans into America that made it great?
Was it the introduction of smallpox that liberated America?
Was it America’s liberation of Europe that made America great?
Was it the welcoming of European refugees that liberated America?
Was it the extirpation of Reds that liberated America?
Was it the assumption of World’s policeman that made America great?
Was it Californication that liberated America?
With so much to chew on, was it indigestion that liberated America?
With such an inheritance, seems as long as it’s got guns and evangelists, America doesn’t need to agree on liberty or greatness.
DP, having lived in China for five years and been witness to many conversations around the subject of the CCP’s strategies and aims I say with utter confidence that Australia is not now nor likely in the future to be threatened by that country. They have concerns, naturally, with regard to their territorial integrity but zero interest in any extra-territorial gains.
As a country with the depth of history that they do, and acknowledging that they had a sophisticated society when the Europeans were still hunters & gatherers and America wasn’t even on the radar for English colonists, they do have as part of the long-term process to once again be recognised as a worthy member of the global community, rebuilding after the relative disasters of European and Japanese interference, and they’re certainly committed to regaining what they deem to be their lands, Taiwan obviously being the outstanding example, but as far as designs on other sovereign lands I’d say zip, nada, nil, zero.
It’s a view that doesn’t sit well with the militarists and geostrategists whose job it is to to find threats where none exist and channel massive amounts of ill-spent funding into preparations for those shadow imaginings but that’s life, paranoia being part & parcel of the human lot.
It’d actually work very well in Australia’s favour to dump their alliance with the USA and swing in behind China, but it ain’t going to happen anytime soon.
It is staggering to think that so many people actually think tRump has any qualities which make him fir to be any type of leader. When in reality he has always been a loser. How many bankruptcies has he claimed so he didn’t have to pay back all the American people he cheated out of their savings. I’m sure many of them are the same brainwashed morons who idolise and worship him. The great American dream, being ripped off by the president. How can so many people from America be so gullible and believe one word of the shite that dribbles from his mouth every time he opens it. Now with another religious nutter behind him in the speaker’s chair the real lunatics will be pushing hard to get America’s biggest ever embarrassment reelected. Look out world!
Lurking in the background of many religious extremists like johnson is a penchant for something perverse, in this case an agreement with his son to monitor each others pornography intake! (Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Huff Post) Appointing himself a moral policeman is pure hypocrisy.
Canguro.
Reminds me of “Hammers”.
One of our workmates….
Dumb as a box of……
He never caught on.
Could be applied to the orange person me thinks; and his followers/advocates.
Canguro et al,
I try to view USA in a perspective from your average yankee.
My sister lives there and tells me there is no such thing as your average American.
Trump may qualify as “hammers”, but crikey just look at his oposition.
They are all mad bastards over there.
And I get pollies like Marles gravely telling us thats where our future lies, no longer building cars in SA but lethal weapons , and like any old evangelical, thats to be our salvation.
I know what happens over there is important to us right now, but we should be able to think this thing through, and sense that our alliance has now timed out.
Cited ADF in article, that’s one of Abbott’s favourite Christian outlets in the US and now UK too.
One would presume Johnson is linked to the Christian Conservative CNP Council for National Policy, ‘owns’ Trump via Evangelicals, and like Freedom Caucus etc., supported by (Atlas) Koch Donors Network.
Lucy Hamilton recently cited Anne Nelson’s book ‘Shadow Network that explains CNP GOP, while alleged links to Anglo RW grifters and Russia, and here is SPLC’s take:
‘The Council for National Policy, a highly secretive group, is a key venue where mainstream conservatives and extremists mix.
For 35 years, a shadowy and intensely secretive group has operated behind the scenes, providing a venue three times a year for powerful American politicians and others on the right to meet privately to build the conservative movement.
The Council for National Policy (CNP) is, in the words of The New York Times, “a little-known club of a few hundred of the most powerful conservatives in the country,” an organization so tight-lipped that it tells its people not to admit membership or even name the group. It is important enough that last fall, according to an account in The National Review, Donald Trump and five other Republican presidential candidates each took 30 minutes to address the group; the conservative journal reported that Trump was by far the favorite candidate.’
https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016/05/17/council-national-policy-behind-curtain
Canguro, I had girlfriend in Taiwan many years ago and the resolve to not be part of china is pretty strong.
And yes, to invade australia you need a logistical miracle. Unless you think people smugglers are also secret military, nobody gets to australia without a struggle.
So what is the purpose of our military stance?
yes that new fellow running the “show” is a nutter. But he is also a dangerous nutter because he wouldnt question the “order”.
Just imagine him in charge of the german army in WW2, do you think he wouldnt get carried away and try to exterminate people?
Very much of that mindset. A Determined cultist . God stopped for a tosca when they made him, lol
Good one JL.
This conversation frightens the helll out of me.
I fear not for me, but for my family, I wonder if they will see a fascist USA, I wonder where would Australia fit ?
The no shows how much we deserve dutton and the american society needs trump to go down fighting when the himalayan pact is signed.
ps
there are some 16 distict aboriginal groups in taiwan and they should send the chiang kai shek’s mob’s descendants back to china.
How very unsurprising from the Meta android, if it can make even more money then what the hey:
https://edition.cnn.com/business/tech/meta-political-ads-2020-election-lies/index.html
Well said John Lord, could not agree more….. ‘What is it in the backgrounds of these people that causes their narcissism, their inability to accommodate difference or equality?’ …. Ku Klux Klan could be one place to start ??