He cited, as supposed evidence, the decline of national church attendance and the rise of LGBTQ youth — the fact, Johnson lamented, that “one-in-four high school students identifies as something other than straight.”

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    I cannot believe how every day more insane shit comes out about him. Lying about his finances, homophobia/transphobia, it just keeps going

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        If I had to invent a strawman to epitomize everything wrong with Republicans, it would not be as abhorrent as Mike Johnson because he’s fucked up in ways I haven’t even thought about.

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          I have to admit “Republican without a bank account” and “shares lack of porn activity with son” were not on my GOP bingo card.

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          … he’s fucked up in ways I haven’t even thought about.

          because… you’re fairly normal. normal people don’t think like he does. Even modestly fucked up people don’t think like he does.

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            Maybe I missed something or maybe it’s just that I was raised evangelical but I haven’t been shocked by anything that’s come out about him. He’s pretty garden variety as far as beliefs they espouse, not that that makes them or him less horrible I’m just surprised others are surprised

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              It’s not that I’m surprised he has extreme views/beliefs. It’s just that most evangelicals know it’s time to tamp down the rhetoric when they get to that point.

              In any case, I’m mostly just enjoying mocking the fuck out of him.

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              It’s entirely possible the demographics here on Lemmy lack solid representation from the cluster he hails from (specific religious groups, say… deep south out in the country babtists as an example, but I do not mean this to represent the majority of Christians there, because it most certainly does not). If you’ve spent time with these populations, little of his behavior is surprising (the bank account one is, though…).

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                Nah, even that doesn’t surprise me.

                I was talking to a local preacher here the other day and I listened to him complain for a bit and I said, “Well, yeah. All we can do is obey the laws of the land bud.” as a kind of little jab.

                His reply, “I obey just laws. I ain’t gonna go out and get gay married because it’s legal. I also ain’t handing over every dime they want from me so they can give all the local junkies free dope at the clinic. The lord don’t want me doing that. The lord wants me to obey and support just and holy laws.”

                They take what they want from it and leave the rest haha.

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                  Yet he probably completely ignores Trump’s repeated infidelity, abuse of contractors working for him, lying about everything under the sun, etc, and will still cast his vote for the “law and order president.” It’s all just willful ignorance bullshit, every bit of it.

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          They should get serious then. There’s almost always a George Carlin quote ready:

          And you won’t see a lot of these pro-life people dousing themselves in kerosene and lighting themselves on fire. You know, morally committed religious people in South Vietnam knew how to stage a god damn demonstration, didn’t they? They knew how to put on a fucking protest. Light yourself on FIRE! Come on, you moral crusaders, let’s see a little smoke.

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      That’s the rub, ain’t it. I understand that these religious world views are their reality, but more and more people are snapping out of it and coming into a more secular state, a common reality. But it is truly worrisome that there are these powerful wingnuts out there that are trying to claw us back into their reality, as if to say “you don’t know any better, I am a light of God and I will show you the path, whether you like it or not.” Motherfucke,r I don’t give a rat’s ass about your “christian” views and how I am somehow divinely mandated to oblige it because you say so. I guarantee that my morality is more Christian than yours, and that most of us just want to go about our lives in peace and not waging holy war against those who aren’t in lockstep with our views.

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        Except in many countries, these guys seized power and kept it. Iran, Afghanistan… This is what’s happening in the US right now. If there’s no pushback hard, soon, I really don’t think you will still be a democracy in 10 years.

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          Trust me I know, and many of us are aware of the precarious situation we are in. The problem is that a significant chunk of the US are actively cheering them on and agree that the US are turning into a nation of “heretics,” and then there are probably a good 80% of the population that are successfully programmed to be triggered into hot-button topic debates that miss the big picture. I’m all for doing something, but no one can agree on what to do despite knowing something is wrong. Bread and circuses.

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              All good man, much obliged.

              I hope we can figure it out and achieve Star Trek future, it’s just curious how we’d pull ourselves out of the mess we’re currently consumed by.

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    beginning to believe his christo-fascist bullshit and Tuberville’s logjam on top military brass are both preambles to the 2025 project the fucking Heritage Foundation is promoting.

    Imagine for just one fucking second that an liberal group produced that fucking seditious, anti-american trash plan? There need to be hearings about this shit: your plan is to gut the government, deploy the military and set up camps day 1? WHAT THE FUCK?

    THERE NEED TO BE HEARINGS ABOUT THIS SHIT.

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        In a country where there are 410m+ guns and 330m people I can’t endorse the ‘go get a gun’ theory of democratic government. Yes, people should defend themselves, but damn, adding shit-tons more guns doesn’t seem like a solution. Massive respect for John Brown gun clubs and the like, but (prior service army) I recoil at the fetishization of firearms as a ‘culture’ of anything but more gun violence killing kids and other innocents.

        edit: sorry about your cows.

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            a firearm per person should be enough for that. A NINETY MILLION FIREARM SURPLUS isn’t necessary to become ungovernable. It’s become ungovernable in a civil society.

            come on, tell me you don’t have one shirt, one hat, some piece of FLAIR that has an AR silhouette on it?

            COME ON. Don’t lie. You act like it’s patriotism and there’s something very sick going on there.

            You wouldn’t defend it otherwise.

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              Actually it’s Marxism, not patriotism. And no I dont fetish guns; I’ve lost some people to them. I just know what happens when everyone just sits around grumbling while fascism takes over. Now tell me how we should protect free speech for fascists and how that will stop them. Cone on, don’t lie.

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                Cone on

                cone off. cone on, cone off, either way it’s a stupid fucking argument. let’s follow your choo-choo train of thought: how many is enough then? 500m? 700m?

                how many firearms should I have access to between the shitter and the shower for safety, son? tell me you own stock in colt without saying so already.

                I just know what happens when everyone just sits around grumbling while fascism takes over.

                sure bud. you can’t hear it, but I’m rolling my eyes at your experience. good luck with that.

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              Hey man, it’s nerdy, it’s like how some camgirls have a dildo collection, it’s culture for people with money to spare and little time to invest

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                bet those dildos get used by someone with proficiency and an eye toward safety.

                Unlike firearms.

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        Y’all armed up, right?

        Take a good look at Palestine right now. Or the before and after images of Syria. Or Ukraine.

        Guerilla groups with guns fighting against national armed forces pretty much means everything getting destroyed.

        And unlike in all those areas, in the US most states are sitting on several nukes.

        Additionally, you’d be a fool to think that domestic civil war wouldn’t spiral into a world war as foreign powers got involved in picking sides or trying to move in seeing a weakened superpower.

        So when we discuss the idea of the US taking up arms against one another in 2024, what we are really discussing is likely the catalyst to the next use of nuclear weapons and the fall of large swaths of civilization.

        We really need to stop fetishizing magical thinking, and that includes gun owners’ fantasy of successfully fighting a modern civil conflict in the country with more military spending than the next top spenders combined.

        That gun is going to be real useful when an unmanned drone drops a bomb on your house.

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            Are you really telling me that in modern civil wars bombs aren’t going to be ‘wasted’?

            You do know that Syria is a civil war, right?

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              So you know then what to expect when the fascists take power. And they WILL take power, because Democrats will let them. And you know who wants you disarmed?..the guys that keep saying Democrats want to disarm you.

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    Hey, Mike. Prove your god exists.

    I have no reason to fear something that isn’t demonstrably real. And neither do you.

    Sincerely, an ex-fundigelical.

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      You don’t even have to make that challenge. The god you and I used to believe in can’t even pass its own ethical scrutiny, even if there were a deity like that it would be a cruel and evil one

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        I often say that the Christian mythos makes a lot more sense if you presume their god is evil or at least a trickster.

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          Or really, if they just drop the claim that he’s somehow better than humans. He acts like I’d expect your average asshole to act.

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            Even if real, this is the primary reason I wouldn’t spend any worship time on his behalf any more than I would for Trump. Fuck them both.

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              ESPECIALLY if real. If he doesn’t exist, that’s just humans doing their religion thing. If he (Yahweh in particular) does, the universe is controlled by a petulant manchild, which really sucks.

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    I wish the rapture was real so the rest of us could just get on with our lives without these manipulative greedy fucks

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      It probably was real, but only like 6 folks made the cut, so nobody noticed, and we’re all just living through the tribulations like it’s nothing

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      The only thing that would be the icing on the cake would all of these “Christians” would still be firmly on planet earth while everyone of the LGBTQ Alphabet would ascend. I know I am being hyperbolic but people can understand what I am getting at.

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      If I told an evangelical to “go rapture yourself”, would that be a threat or incitement to self harm?

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    To think if this man hadn’t accepted a nomination for the speaker of the house we would have never known how wack-a-doodle the man is. So crazy he doesn’t even have a savings, checking or retirement account because he is so crazy and modest.

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      Not just that, but who else is avoiding scrutiny by not being speaker? People missed everything about Santos until after the election, basically.

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      I just want to know where his congressional paycheck goes. Seems like a simple question for the press to ask and for him to answer.

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        He has been asked since he became speaker and instead of answering he talked about being a man of “modest means”. Everyone now knows he’s hiding something, and quite possibly broken the law a few times, so now we just wait. Either investigative journalism will give us the answers or a government inquiry will. Hopefully in the interim nothing bad happens.

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    “And I’m the one to deliver it!”

    Why is it that everyone who thinks their god wants to punish someone takes it upon themselves to do the punishing? Is god so fucking weak that he wants to punish us, but can’t do it himself? If god wants to punish us, let him do it and Mike Johnson can stay the fuck out of it.

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      The grand irony is how literal a violation of the third commandment this is. This shit right here is what taking the Lord’s name in vain really means.

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      idiots like Johnson would just say that god put them on earth to be their mortal instrument. Or some other deranged bullshit.

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      Narcissism. The US is basically a factory for them. American exceptionalism and all.

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        It’s absurd. It like a human giving a shit about the sexual habits of ants in their backyard and trying to regulate it.

        That Gods always seem obsessed with the same things their followers are is evidence that they are creations of their imaginations.

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    Talking to pastor Jim Garlow on a broadcast of the World Prayer Network, Johnson spoke ominously of America facing a “civilizational moment.” He said, “The only question is: Is God going to allow our nation to enter a time of judgment for our collective sins? … Or is he going to give us one more chance to restore the foundations and return to Him?”
    The segment was filmed Oct. 3, just weeks before Johnson’s unexpected rise to become speaker of the House. Garlow pressed the clean-cut Louisiana congressman to say “more about this ‘time of judgment’ for America.” Johnson replied: “The culture is so dark and depraved that it almost seems irredeemable.” He cited, as supposed evidence, the decline of national church attendance and the rise of LGBTQ youth — the fact, Johnson lamented, that “one-in-four high school students identifies as something other than straight.”
    Discussing the risk of divine retribution, Johnson invoked Sodom, the Old Testament city destroyed by God for its wickedness with a rain of burning sulfur. Johnson is a polished orator, but in a closing prayer with Garlow he grew tearful. Johnson intoned, “We repent for our sins individually and collectively. And we ask that You not give us the judgment that we clearly deserve.”

    Oh no, gay people aren’t being persecuted and people don’t believe in my brand of absurdity. My imaginary friend hates that!

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      Funny enough, he doesn’t exactly get why Sodom was destroyed. They wanted to take a guest in their town and rape them. Lot offered his daughters instead of the guest, who was an angel, and they refused. (And for some reason, God said Lot was alright despite that.)

      What brought down the divine retribution itself wasn’t being gay, but hostility and violence to guests. It wasn’t even sexual assault, since God found Lot to be upstanding and he was going to offer his daughters.

      I feel like this interpretation jives pretty well with what Jesus actually said, and ironically enough for Johnson, that places him and his party squarely under God’s wrath. I mean it’s no surprise, but the dramatic irony is hilarious.

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        Yeah the story of Sodom is a pretty clean example of a hospitality myth. Basically don’t be an asshole to those showing you kindness.

        I wonder if the reason these myths seem relatively universal in the eastern Mediterranean is due to the bronze age collapse and raiders. Basically raiders pretend to be refugees to get into a city which that cant easily take from without.

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          It’s definitely interesting, because the message is to be kind to guests, which runs counter to what you’ve described. Could be this is well enough after that early society has started to see it as unnecessary caution.

          Now that I think about it, the story feels like a complete myth, you’re right. The people who refuse to be hospitable are from the worst town ever and they want to do horrible things to the guest, and so God destroyed them all – but spared the person who was kind to the guest. Everything is so exaggerated that it fits perfectly.

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        One doesn’t do this unless they have an unhealthy relationship with sexuality and porn:

        he and his teenage son monitor each other’s every keystroke in an effort to make sure they don’t expose themselves to pornography.
        This was recently revealed in a clip that was posted by the user Receipt Maven on X. Last year, Johnson spoke on a panel during a “War on Technology” conference sponsored by a Baptist church in Benton, La. In it, Johnson enthusiastically endorsed a surveillance app called Covenant Eyes. The app, which is promoted by churches and other conservative religious groups such as Promise Keepers, has users designate “accountability partners” to hold them to task in the event they stray into illicit digital outer space. Often the accountability partner is a pastor or fellow church member.
        Covenant Eyes, which costs about $15 a month, takes one screenshot per minute, Wired reported last year in a story about what it called “anti-porn shameware,” which is a multimillion-dollar industry.
        Johnson’s accountability partner, he said, was his teenage son Jack. Once a week, he said, he and Jack receive a report of what the other has been doing on his phone, laptop or tablet.
        “If anything objectionable comes up, your accountability partner gets an immediate notice,” Johnson said. “It looks for keywords, search terms and also images. It’s really sensitive.” Johnson said he once got an alarm about Jack’s questionable internet usage involving a blurry image of two women. “I had to zoom in on it and unblur it,” Johnson said, “and it’s two middle-aged teachers.”

        I suspect the only way he can stop looking at that sweet sweet man-flesh on the internet is knowing his son is looking at his screen over his shoulder at all times.

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          I sure hope he isn’t able to access any government documents on that phone. Think about how much information that app gathers by taking a screenshot every minute.

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            Holy shit.

            Even if Covenant Eyes is honest in their (batshit) intentions, all that eavesdropping and compromised devices makes them a juicy target.

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      If he referenced Sodom and Gemorah then he doesn’t really know why the Bible says those cities were overthrown. It wasn’t because they had gay sex. It was because they abused travelers.

      The modern day version of the travelers are immigrants. Remind me which party is a fan of abusing immigrants again?

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    Hey Mike Johnson, stop grunting for the sun to come up every morning and just touch the monolith. It did wonders for the rest of us apes.

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    Who gives a shit if 1 in 4 high schools identifies as something other than straight?

    How about focus on the actual commandments Jesus taught, which by the way, were: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” and “Love your neighbor as yourself”. FFS.

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      In their mind they do. “Love the sinner, not the sin” is what they always say. They think them caring about the person being less gay is them “loving them”

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      They use the first to bridge right into the things that overrule the second.

      Loving God means fearing Him, following all the commandments and heading the cautions of a reprobate nation and what happens. After all that fear and anger, there’s not as much room to hear about love in a meaningful, non-sublimate-y way.

      Some Christians make it work and genuinely care. They aren’t the noisiest and they aren’t what we see from Christian nationalists.

      I will say, caring means caring, regardless of the faith of the recipient. Jesus said nothing about faith testing the poor.

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    How does anyone look at that picture, and think those people are perfectly normal?
    How does anyone listen to Mike Johnson without concluding that man is crazy?
    I’ll tell you how, the only way is that they themselves are crazy too!

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    Why does he care so much what kids identify as? its a little C R E E P Y

    He certainly has been depraved, of fulfilling his dark fantasies since epstein got clocked out and the new ranch owners snuffed him, i bet.

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        His wife is fairly concerned about how he’s been angry at his co-workers and staff lately… “This can’t be platonic or professional, or could it?”