Pious Saint Mike Johnson Wasn't 'Hypocrite' About Gaetz Report, MAGA Christians Are Just Moral Reprobates
'Hypocrisy' implies the existence of a conservative Christian moral standard they're not living up to.
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Now let’s talk shit about Mike Johnson.
It’s Friday after Christmas. It may seem like a year ago already, but this week began with the release of the House Ethics Committee report on former Rep. Matt Gaetz, which was as bad or worse than anything anyone could have imagined.
This man, who Donald Trump wanted to be the head of the American Justice Department, was found by a bipartisan committee — truly bipartisan! the Ethics Committee is split down the middle, in a Congress currently controlled by Republicans — to have paid women tens of thousands of dollars for sex, and much, much more:
The report concluded that “there was substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated House Rules, state and federal laws, and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, acceptance of impermissible gifts, the provision of special favors and privileges, and obstruction of Congress.”
Again, this is the man that Donald Trump wanted to be the leader of the Justice Department.
And Speaker Mike Johnson — O holy and pious white conservative Christian Mike Johnson, Our Father Knows Best whose teenage son must be notified if Dad gets an erection looking at Excellent Boobies Dot Com — was just fine with that. In fact, he thought Gaetz was a perfectly great choice, and that moreover, the Gaetz Ethics Committee report should be buried and hidden from the American people.
It would set a “terrible precedent” to release such a thing about a private citizen, he said. (Remember that Gaetz swiftly resigned once nominated, in an apparent attempt to keep the Ethics Committee under wraps. Not accorded the same consideration for the privacy of private citizens: Hunter Biden.) It would “open Pandora’s box,” said Johnson. He was going to “strongly request” the Committee bury that report.
(The Committee strongly told him to fuck off, apparently. Will Johnson even be re-elected speaker? Haha, that’s next week’s shitshow!)
And about the prospect of Gaetz serving as the nation’s attorney general, Johnson said:
“He’s one of the brightest minds in Washington or anywhere for that matter, and he knows everything about how the Department of Justice has been weaponized and misused.”
“And he will be a reformer. And I think that’s why the establishment in Washington is so shaken up about this pick,” Johnson said.
I’ll give you a moment to stop laughing about Johnson caling Matt Gaetz “one of the brightest minds in Washington or anywhere for that matter” — and other similarly fawning things he said — and to consider what kind of low and debased bar MAGA has set for human intelligence.
Oh, so hypocritical!
Or is it?
It’s only hypocritical if we accept the false premise that American conservative MAGA Christianity is, at its best, a moral lifestyle, and that the men it elevates to leadership, at their best, are morally upstanding men who deserve to be followed and emulated.
I’d like to suggest, alternately, that vile shitbags like Mike Johnson are literally the best they have, and that the lifestyle he and his fellow conservative Christian leaders model and embody is inherently sick and deviant.
This is who they are.
This has come up a number of times already on this newsletter — it’s come up several times specifically with Johnson — but that’s fine, because part of the project is hammering this shit again and again and again, correcting the behavior over and over and over again to try to retrain the toxicity out of our habits.
We’ve talked about how Johnson is one of the creepiest, smarmiest, most dangerous Christian nationalists in American public life.
We’ve talked about his anti-woman, anti-LGBTQ+ bigotry — he’s very appalled by gay sex, and he’s really into the “ex-gay” torture shit — and how he believes God ordained him to become speaker of the House. He doesn’t believe in the separation of church and state, and leans on his “expertise” as a constitutional lawyer to argue against it. (Liz Cheney doesn’t seem impressed by his lawyerly brain. Seems to think he’s kind of an airhead.)
We’ve talked about how when somebody like Mike Johnson says another Christian man is “principled,” you should literally hide your children.
And especially for our purposes with Gaetz today, it’s worth restating how cheap and meaningless Christian “redemption” is in the eyes of a man like Mike Johnson. Redemption isn’t how they believe their own sins are absolved. It’s the weapon they use to tell the rest of us to shut our mouths and stop asking questions.
It’s a conversation-ender. Mike Johnson says Jesus forgave this white supremacist Christian nationalist man, so who are you to question him further?
Mike Johnson knew what was in the Gaetz ethics report as he tried to bury it, as he flipped over and wagged his tail and shook his butt around to support Trump’s nomination. He was fine with that.
Oh, how hypocritical?
Only if we accept their premise, that the average conservative Christian is a morally upstanding person, that their baseline morality is something humans should aspire to, that their moral code is actually something they strive to adhere to, rather than a knife they use to control and subjugate others.
It’s not hypocrisy unless average conservative Christians like Johnson actually have the integrity and moral uprightness they say they do. But if this is just average white conservative Christian behavior — I’ll wait for the evidence to be presented that it’s not — then Mike Johnson is just being who he is, AKA a vile, amoral reprobate piece of rectal lint.
The bargain basement Christian redemption plan Johnson and his ilk espouse is cheap grace, but it’s worse than that, because again, in the hands of these people, grace and redemption are a weapon. They pay lip service to believing they need redemption, justification, sanctification and reconciliation just as much as anyone else does, not because they actually believe that, but because they want you to shut your heathen mouth, stop asking questions, and know your place, which is to be clear beneath them.
Mike Johnson, as far as I know, didn’t really put in the elbow grease to convince us Matt Gaetz was a changed man. I don’t even think he said, “Matt Gaetz says he’s forgiven now or something, IDK, whatever.”
It was “I, upright, pious orthodox Bible-believing Christian Speaker Mike Johnson, am fine with hiding the Matt Gaetz ethics report from the American people, just like I was fine with Gaetz being confirmed as attorney general — even though I knew everything he did — and you should fuck off and stop acting like you have the right to open your mouth around a white conservative Christian MAGA Nazi.”
Not a direct quote, obviously.
Oh, how hypocritical?
Again, not unless this isn’t just completely textbook behavior for white conservative Christian Nationalist men in the US of A.
The moral codes white fascist Christians espouse don’t actually apply to them, not really, and especially not to their men. Oh, technically they do, sort of kind of, but who is the enforcement mechanism? LOL, that’s right, it’s them.
And they’ll let pretty much any infringement — any — pass as long as the offender stays committed upholding the conservative Christian facade. They all agree that the man in power who did the bad thing is very sorry, he prayed about it extra hard, he has been forgiven, therefore the matter has been handled and the price of the sin has been paid, according to the only authority that matters, which is God, working through His holy emissaries on earth, AKA them.
Do those men then go forth and sin no more, like Jesus said? Sure, you betcha.
Now if you’re some kind of liberal, a person of color, a queer homosexual transgender practitioner of the woke mind virus, or a woman who doesn’t submissively respond to their holy white Christian authority?
Well, that’s different. That’s who their codes actually apply to. Again, because they’re a weapon.
So no. Mike Johnson and Matt Gaetz and Pete Hegseth and all the rest are not really hypocrites, per se. They’re pretty typical, run-of-the-mill white MAGA Christian trash, actually. They’re not deviants among their cohort.
Those the motherfuckers we’re battling for the soul of this country.
Wishing you all strength and a spirit of defiance as we enter this new year!
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-Evan
When I read the phrase, "whited sepulchre," these people are who I now think of. Clean and shining on the outside, and on the inside, full of dead men's' bones and all manner of filth.
A-fucking-men, Evan! These chuds use their stated morality as a weapon against anyone not in their group, and "redemption" as a "get out of jail card free" for themselves. And it's all designed to shut down any discussion of the matter.
BTW, I figured Maga Mike to be a butt guy, not a boob guy.