Worry less about TikTokers and Bin Laden — fret more that Mike Johnson shares the terrorist's views
By calling America "dark," "depraved," and "irredeemable," the GOP speaker may as well be citing Al Qaeda's leader
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In a video recorded just weeks before he ascended to his role as the most powerful Republican on Capitol Hill, Johnson filmed a video for the World Prayer Network with rabidly homophobic pastor Jim Garlow. As Frederick Clarkson has chronicled for Salon, Garlow is part of an apocalyptic Christian movement that wishes to end secular democracy and replace it with "a utopian biblical kingdom where only God's laws are enforced." (Which, of course, sounds much like bin Laden's hope for an Islamic caliphate.) Garlow asked Johnson if he felt that it was finally "a time of judgment for our collective sins."
To this, Johnson replied, "The culture is so dark and depraved that it almost seems irredeemable." As evidence, he noted how many young people identify as something other than straight.
Johnson's words echo those of bin Laden's "Letter to America: "We call you to be a people of manners, principles, honour, and purity; to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling's, and trading with interest."
People like this were fine with democracy when they were the majority and could get everything they wanted. As soon as they started to lose the popular vote they suddenly discovered how flawed the system was.
Same for prisons too, suddenly they're too harsh for MAGA nuts, yet they wanted it that way cause they get off on their moral high horse when they get to punish the "right" people.
Makes you think if we had some crazy-ass lottery based system where a few people out of the population would be randomly selected for a week-long placement in prison, the fear of being on the receiving end of that would turn the prison system into a Norwegian-style reformative system almost overnight – where prisoners are given student accommodation-esque rooms with access to their digital devices, friend and family visits with privacy in the room, normal looking on-site grocery shops, mental health care workers, and so forth, all culminating in a recidivism rate as low as 15% in their best prison.
Nah. People suffer from too much just world fallacy. They'd never believe the lottery would select them, but they'd revel in seeing other people randomly get screwed. It'd be a very popular reality TV show.
Exactly this.
(Except suppression of black voters has been going on for centuries. Can't lose that majority.)
Only quibble is, they were never the majority. It's too easy to underestimate just how imbalanced our "democracy" was, and to a large extent, remains. But, we're getting better, slowly, s l o w l y . . .