- Items about newly elected Speaker of the House Mike Johnson from the NYT editorial board, Paul Krugman, and the LAT editorial board;
- Specific items about Johnson’s claims that fossil fuels don’t cause climate change, that the US is not a democracy but a “Biblical” republic, and how mass shootings are due to teaching evolution;
- And Johnson’s sympathy with discredited Christian historian David Barton.
- And Philip Glass’s score to Martin Scorsese’s 1997 film Kundun.
Well I can’t let this current event pass without noting the further evidence that Republican party is becoming more and more extreme. And delusional. Really, like so much on my blog, this is all about epistemology. How do these people think they know what they know? Things that the reality-based community dismisses as false?
NY Times, Editorial Board, 26 Oct 2023: Trumpism Is Running the House
The Republicans in the House unanimously voted for a man who made it his mission to try to overturn the 2020 presidential election, who put the political whims and needs of former President Donald Trump ahead of the interests and will of the American people. A party that once cared deeply about America as the leader of the free world, and believed in the strength, dependability and bipartisan consensus that such a role required, has largely given way to a party now devoted to an extremism that is an active threat to liberal values and American stability.
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NY Times, Paul Krugman, 26 Oct 2023: The G.O.P. Goes Full-on Extremist
There are no moderate Republicans in the House of Representatives.
Oh, no doubt some members are privately appalled by the views of Mike Johnson, the new speaker. But what they think in the privacy of their own minds isn’t important. What matters is what they do — and every single one of them went along with the selection of a radical extremist.
In fact, Johnson is more extreme than most people, I think even political reporters, fully realize.
… But Johnson’s extremism, and that of the party that chose him, goes beyond rejecting democracy and trying to turn back the clock on decades of social progress. He has also espoused a startlingly reactionary economic agenda.
… [N]ow that Johnson has become the face of his party, people really should look at the budget proposal the committee released for 2020 under his chairmanship.
For if you read that proposal carefully, getting past the often mealy-mouthed language, you realize that it calls for the evisceration of the U.S. social safety net — not just programs for the poor, but also policies that form the bedrock of financial stability for the American middle class.
Ending:
I think it’s safe to say that these proposals would be hugely unpopular — if voters knew about them. But will they?
Actually, I’d like to see some focus groups asking what Americans think of Johnson’s policy positions. Here’s my guess, based on previous experience: Many voters will simply refuse to believe that prominent Republicans, let alone the speaker of the House, are really advocating such terrible things.
But they are and he is. The G.O.P. has gone full-on extremist, on economic as well as social issues. The question now is whether the American public will notice.
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LA Times, 25 Oct 2023: Editorial: House Republicans just elected an election denier as speaker. American democracy is in trouble
This is how far the GOP has fallen: House Republicans on Wednesday unanimously elected as speaker a man who actively tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election results and would like to lock up people who get an abortion or provide gender-affirming care to minors. It’s not an overstatement to say that Americans, regardless of political affiliation, should be concerned about the future of our democracy.
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It’s still unknown where Johnson will lead the party on important issues, though he is a vocal opponent of reproductive rights and gay marriage, and happy to impose his evangelical views on the rest of the country.
Christians, it seems, don’t really believe in democracy, or pluralism.
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NY Times, 26 Oct 2023: New House Speaker Champions Fossil Fuels and Dismisses Climate Concerns, subtitled “Representative Mike Johnson comes from Louisiana oil country and has said he does not believe burning fossil fuels is changing the climate.”
He doesn’t “believe” fossil fuels are changing the climate? Defense, evidence, please? Those who do “believe” fossil fuels are changing the climate have plenty of evidence.
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Joe.My.God, 26 Oct 2023: Johnson: We’re Not A Democracy, We’re A “Biblical” Republic And Separation Of Church And State Isn’t Real
Quoting Johnson:
“You know, we don’t live in a democracy because a democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what’s for dinner. OK? It’s not just majority rule. It’s a constitutional republic. The founders set that up because they followed the biblical admonition of what a civil society is supposed to look like. What’s happened, Alex, over the last 60 or 70 years, is that our generation has been convinced that there is a separation of church and state. Most people think that that’s part of the Constitution, but it’s not. Remember, I’m a constitutional lawyer.” – Newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson, in a 2016 interview.
Followed by a number of entertaining Twitter (X) responses. On what planet, in what country, does this man live? Is he just another example of arrogance and blinkered world-view of Christians?
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And this:
Joe.My.God, 26 Oct 2023: Johnson Blames Mass Shootings On Teaching Evolution
Nonsense. Evidence? You think the people who become mass shooters paid attention in biology class to the principles of evolution? There so much more going on than that.
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And finally, this item. Makes perfect sense. Christians, it seems, live in an epistemic fantasy zone.
NBC News, 26 Oct 2023: Meet the evangelical activist who’s had a ‘profound influence’ on Speaker Mike Johnson, subtitled “David Barton has spent decades working to overturn church-state separation. He celebrated Johnson’s election as a turning point for the Christian right.”
David Barton! (Here are the other times I’ve mentioned David Barton on this blog.)
Johnson told the audience at the December 2021 gathering that Barton’s teachings — which are disputed by many historians — have had “a profound influence on me, and my work, and my life and everything I do.”
Never mind that David Barton has been thoroughly discredited, many times. Here’s that Vox link:
Vox, 25 Jan 2018: Understanding the fake historian behind America’s religious right
The NBC News link comes from this item at Joe.My.God, which comments,
As Right Wing Watch has exhaustively documented for years, Barton tours the country, telling avid Christian audiences that virtually every line of the US Constitution and the Declaration of Independence were taken verbatim from the bible. Barton is such a notorious liar that even his own Christian publishing house retracted his book. Give the tweets below a minute to fully load and take a look at Barton’s incessant batshittery.
And a selection of Twitter (X) responses to Barton’s claims about Christian privilege, the right to own tanks, criminalizing homosexuality, how AIDS was sent by God to kill homosexuals, his misunderstanding of the word “verbatim”, and several other nonsensical claims. Who are people who take him seriously? Those living in an epistemic bubble?
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Having absolutely nothing to do with the above, and just because this is what I pulled off my CD shelf to listen to this evening, as I sat down to write this blog post. Here is the complete score by Philip Glass for the 1997 Martin Scorsese film Kundun. Definitely Philip Glass, but unlike anything he’d done before.
