Mike Johnson declared 2023’s “most disturbing” Christian nationalist

stopthatgirl7@kbin.social to politics @lemmy.world – 538 points – Mike Johnson declared 2023’s “most disturbing” Christian nationalist
lgbtqnation.com

In a scathing op-ed, LGBTQ Nation Heroes nominee Melissa Gira Grant urges us to ask ourselves how we didn't see someone like Johnson coming...

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This has always been the fear I hold... Politics has always been full of ugly loud-mouths like Trump, MTG, and Boebert. They're dangerous but manageable because they're generally kinda stupid and can't keep their mouth shut- you can hear them coming from ten miles away and most reasonable people just work around them.

No, the most dangerous ones are always going to be the quiet ones, the ones that can sit and smile without saying a word, completely uncontroversial, while their hands are at work unravelling the knots of civil liberties under the table where you can't see them until it's too late. That's one of the reasons I never did want to see Trump leave office during his 4 years- not because I liked him (far from it), but because I feared seeing Mike Pence, the quiet, uncontroversial Christian, take a seat in the oval office much more than Trump's bumbling egotism.
And Johnson, being a completely uncontroversial nobody that was unknown to the media until now, is the exact kind of "sit-and-smile" quiet that is very, very dangerous.

Pence was far from uncontroversial in Indiana before running for VP. The whole gerrymandered red state hated him as governor. If anyone saw him as uncontroversial they weren't paying attention. Which is kind of the point of the article, I guess.

I suppose he was controversial, but to the rest of us outside Indiana we never got any of that from the news supercycle. More focusing on his time as actual VP when he became more relevant to national politics, it was very easy for him to stay in the shadows of the Tornado de la Trump.

Really? Because as a queer Ohioan I knew damn well to be afraid of “aids resurgence pence”

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ we just run in different news circles. i'm out on the west coast

Fair enough. Well, pence’s major legacy as governor of Indiana is that he brought HIV back by killing a needle exchange program that had been wildly successful. In many states and times that would be a bad idea, but in Indiana in the late ‘00s and early ‘10s it was obviously going to have that exact effect. Indiana is like Michigan if Republicans singlehandedly ran the recovery from the collapse of the American auto industry. In short It’s depressing on a level hard to sufficiently express (though I’ll reluctantly admit they’re kicking our asses on renewable energy). But yeah in short he picked one of the worst times and places to kill a lifesaving program just to punish addicts and it hurt more than just addicts

Did Pence also advocate for electric-shock "conversation therapy" while Governor?

I've said this before: in the country I was born and raised (90% Catholic, I must say), evangelicals were seen as nutjobs and the majority didn't pay attention to what they said. Given that it's a Spanish speaking country, they are called "evangélicos."

It recently dawned on me that American evangelicals are evangélicos. How the fuck would anyone listen to those fucks?!

Evangélicos are not Christian in my view. Evangélicos have always been religious fanatics not to be listened to. They're below the deranged homeless person spouting bullshit in the corner - except that I feel empathy for that homeless person.

I’m in Germany and the word “evangelisch” means “Protestant,” not “evangelical,” which fucked me up for a while because I kept assuming my Christian friend would be insane at some point, but she’s just very reasonable. I finally realized that she’s just a very chill Lutheran and I was mistranslating

its our fault, we sent them on boats from Plymouth to America

Some of us did! I’ve been screaming about the dangers of the religion I grew up in and the aims of many-most of its followers for a decade or more.

Anyone ever hear about See You At The Poll? It was a movement that took place in middle and high schools in the early 00’s that was little more than about young Christian’s rising up with the goal of “reclaiming” the United States for Christ. The Poll in the name isn’t about voting, it’s about gathering around the US flag poll at the schools we attended and praying “that God would deliver this nation into his hands” which also served as a show of force to US government officials that there were scores of young people that wanted a Christian government.

That’s just scratching the surface of how politically motivated the religious right has been for the past 30-35ish years

I helped organize see you at the pole at my high school. Those were... different times for me :/

I mean I participated for all but my final year in high school, I’m certainly different now myself

Ohh yeah! See you at the pole!!! Yeah, those times terrified me...

And some of us were pretty upset that the Dems helped out dickheads like Gaetz in ousting a turd like Mccarthy thinking that they wouldn’t manage to choose someone worse than him.

First, the Dems are under no obligation to keep the GOP from looking like the fascist shitheads they are. Republicans moved to remove McCarthy, and Republicans voted to remove him. It's not the Democrats' fault if the GOP use their majority to put someone worse as Speaker.

Second, it doesn't matter whether Johnson is more or less evil than McCarthy as long as he isn't more effective. He has the same problem McCarthy had- a slim-margin majority that is split between vice-signalling performative fascists, and vice-signalling performative fascists in districts that Biden won. They're already coming off the least productive Congressional year in history, and that plus this being an election year combined with still simmering anger over the removal of Roe will just drive that wedge deeper.

Johnson can be as whiny a Christofascist as he wants. He ain't getting shit done before the next election.

I generally agree and he’ll probably just be the whiny christofascist he’s been so far, but he’s 2nd in line for the fucking presidency. And it was mostly democrats who actually voted out the speaker. Which helped Gaetz off all people.

Now that the rule is in place to only take one member to call for his ouster, I wonder how little Johnson has to do to lose 5 or whatever R’s and be out like McCarthy.

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An American on Reddit once told me that America isn't any more religious than the UK.

I thought that was ridiculous. Something like 90% of septics believe in God. But in the UK it's considered a faux pas to even mention religion with a majority being atheist at the last census. Tony Blair famously refused to admit his Christianity while in office but in the US it's considered a requirement to state you're Christian.

I was genuinely fucking disturbed hearing my English step mother bang on about Jesus one Easter. That's a common reaction in the UK to anyone talking about religion.

America isn't religious? Pull the other one.

It's about the wavelength. Ours is way out of spectrum on both sides.

Both sides? What's the "other side" in this one, people who don't want their kids forced to pray to Jesus in school? People who don't want to live under the Christian version of Iranian theocratic rule? Genuinely curious what you think the other side of the spectrum looks like.

Anyone they target. Some people chose to be there and some don't. Take Marylin Manson, the Satanic Temple, women in general, etc. If no one chooses to then it's one chosen by them.

Wavelengths function just as much in the story as it does in physics. The story is just another dimension of reality. It's like time but we have more control over it than we do over time. The control goes more the the understanding. Knowledge is a tool like many others but just one of many such.

If you'd like more, I'm capable of continuing but I suggest Loki S02E01, Doctor Who's newest episode broadcast last night, Salvia Divinorum, Dextromethorphan, Therion, Xandria, and that's not a bad start. There's certainly more.

This response feels like it was written by AI. Or maybe someone who has indulged in psychedelics too much and too frequently to be able to communicate ideas in a clear or concise manner.

Not too much. Those gave me understanding. Communication has been difficult my whole life, even before they gave me dope.

Once you can perceive dimensions most don't even know exist, and you have enough difficulty expressing shit "normal" people don't understand, you have this kind of ignorance to deal with.

Like, the bit where you're going to think I'm insulting you and your intelligence. Wise up, those are NOT the definitions of those words. Stop playing slang like you get anything at all beyond word pukage. You will if you study history. Don't take my word for it. Do your own research.

Is this an ad?

No. I don't get paid to say anything here. I am practicing the art of communicating things I want to help other people understand. I lack enough skill in exactly that and this platform serves well to develop it in order to accomplish my objective.

What is your objective?

Stop the inevitable death of all human life on earth. Inevitable, as in, within the next decade. If not the baking planet, then the bio-, tech-, software-, etc.- viruses, or the microplastics, pollutions, etc. etc. etc.

I have the only solution viable but in two decades of attempting to teach anyone willing to listen, only one has gotten far enough to understand the logic. I just managed to add a second one willing to listen but IDK if he understands it yet. I have had about a dozen express a willingness to learn but no one has actually finished the lesson yet. I even offer a free computer in exchange for taking the "class" and teaching me how to teach people.

I need to learn cuz I am, to say so mildly, unorganized in my teaching. I know this and thus offer something to anyone willing to teach me how to teach. No but a very rare few listen to origin of this logic. I want to figure out how to increase the number of those aware of the logic itself. Orders of magnitude a larger a population aware of the logic.

Logic becomes understood by the masses, we will easily reorganize the entire planet of society with disintegrate and rebuild itself into something that may not only survive but save life's existence from the inevitable EOTW incoming.

Try to limit your arguments to premises that are largely independently accepted, so it's less of a leap for people to see how you got to your conclusion.

You come across a bit like me 20 years ago, when I had ideas that may have had merit, but my ability to communicate and reason wasn't at the level necessary to get others onboard.

Each time you make a bold jump in reasoning that isn't perfectly supported by accepted premises, you lose some % of your readers (assuming they are interested in fact, rather than opinion).

Watch in 5 years we will find out he was a closeted homosexual. The man is wearing lip gloss is all I'm saying.

I guarantee that that cowardly piece of shit wears it like a badge of honor.