So, a lot of people are acting horrified that someone like Mike Johnson exists. I'm here to say, I'm not surprised at all by this dude's existence. Significant parts of the republican base have been like this for literally decades. The only real difference is conservatives prior to trump cared a lot more for rule of law and the constitution, recognizing that authoritarianism is not worth the possible benefits because of the abuses that could come along with it.
But yeah. At one point in time, say, around 2005, I was basically Mike Johnson politically. One day I was going through an old flash drive from high school I kept essays on and read some of my old stuff. I actually wrote an essay for english class once that sounded like a manifesto someone like Mike Johnson would've written. I talked about how we needed more Christians in government to force morality on everyone and how I planned to become a politician one day. That actually was my original inspiration for getting involved with politics. I went to college, took political science as a major, and kinda realized that teenage me's ideas were kinda horrible.
So I grew out of it. And eventually grew out of Christianity. And that's where the foundations of my modern political ideology were formed. As I shifted to secular humanism, I developed what became the blueprint of my worldview. You can read about this stuff on this blog. I wrote a pretty lengthy post this year based off of David Noebel's "Understanding the Times" outlining my own perspective these days.
But yeah. One day in the past, i came up with this crazy scheme to get more fundie christians in government so we could ban abortion and gay marriage and have a country based on christian values. And this guy is basically a product of that movement.
As you guys know, that movement didn't start with me. It goes back to Pat Robertson and the moral majority in the 1970s and 1980s. But yeah, I watched MSNBC talking about this guy at dinner tonight and how a lot of republican voters are culture warriors who care more about winning culturally than they do on economics. As far as hard line republicans I agree. For all the talk I do of economic anxiety, sure, a vast majority of die hard conservative voters aren't for that. I was most focusing on swing voters who weren't in the cult. But yeah.
I also want to let it known that I've been trying to warn liberals of these psychos for years. When you deprogram yourself from a literal cult, you kind of understand that that cult is harmful. And when that cult controls a major political party, you kinda wanna warn everyone you can about them.
And after I left Christianity, I did. I was very much a "culture warrior" on the left. Or more an anti culture warrior who supported positive atheism and separation of church and state. I was (and am) pro choice, pro gay marriage, pro trans even. I mean, I've long since deprogrammed myself from the right.
And that's why in 2016, when the dems were like "gee let's compromise with the GOP", I was like WHAT ARE YOU CRAZY? THE GOP ARE A BUNCH OF RELIGIOUS AND IDEOLOGICAL EXTREMISTS. And then they would say I'm being uncivil and that my ideas are unbecoming of democracy and whatever. And it's like, what the hell, do you guys not realize how bat#### insane the GOP actually is?
Apparently they didn't. And that's kinda why, when Clinton was our nominee in 2016, I was kinda satisfied to just leave them to the republicans so they can figure this out on their own. Compromise doesnt work. Meeting them half way doesn't work. The GOP is in their own little world. Most of them are religious nutjobs with radical Christian worldviews, and the left needs to be a counterweight to that. And that's also one of the reasons why my version of left wing politics is less about "social justice' and more about secularism.
But yeah, these guys wanna go back to the 1950s. You guys didn't know that? I could've told you about that. To the fundie christian everything was great in the 1950s until those radical libs in the supreme court started doing things like taking god out of schools and legalizing abortion. Now God is angry and we must return to Christ or God is gonna smite us by sending hurricanes our way or something (no wait, that's just global warming).
Btw, on global warming, the GOP is a death cult. Rush Limbaugh once said that climate change cant be real because God wouldnt create a world that we could destroy.
Yes. He was literally that stupid.
But as an ex conservative, holy freaking crap, do you guys NOT understand the kinds of radical crap that's been infecting the GOP for decades? These guys are religious psychos who do not have a sound understanding of reality. They are DANGEROUS. This so called "Christian nationalism" has been a thing that's been building for decades. And most civility obsessed libs have just let it fester, in part because many of them are moderate christians themselves, and in part because their civility politics blinded them to reality.
They dont understand how crazy the GOP is. And sadly, they've only become worse since I left. I left when the tea party was in full swing. And now in the era of Trump, they're even worse.
I'm going to tell you, in this country of 300someodd million, there's roughly 100 million Mike Johnsons out there. They might not all agree with each other 100%, no one does, but last I looked around 40% are fundie christians who believe the world is 6000 years old. Like, that's where the country is. And while I admit those ideas are significantly less popular among the younger generations, among the older ones these views are very common. And a lot of these people are nutcases.
I grew out of that stuff pretty early in my life relatively speaking. College brought me back to reality and then I questioned things from there. But there are tens of millions of us who still believe in this stuff and I'm talking they LITERALLY believe in this stuff. They believe the earth is 6000 years old and we all decended from two people and that there were talking snakes and dinosaurs roamed the earth with humans before the flood. They also believe there is some angry sky god out there who will smite us if we dont blindly obey him. And that his solution to sin is to sacrifice himself to himself to save us from...himself. Because the alternative is...eternal punishment.
These people are not right.
But yeah, they are a voting bloc, they've existed for decades, and they've only gotten more radical than I left. Mike Johnson is not an abberation. he's the very face of the modern conservative movement, adaptions to trumpism and all.
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