Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Mike Johnson is a delusional zealot

He’s an educated man but his knowledge of history is nil. Someone should tell him about the centuries of religious wars in Europe that shaped the founders beliefs about religion and the state:

Mr. Johnson, a mild-mannered conservative Republican from Louisiana whose elevation to the speakership on Wednesday followed weeks of chaos, is known for placing his evangelical Christianity at the center of his political life and policy positions. Now, as the most powerful Republican in Washington, he is in a position to inject it squarely into the national political discourse, where he has argued for years that it belongs.

Mr. Johnson, 51, the son of a firefighter and the first in his family to attend college, has deep roots in the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination. For years, Mr. Johnson and his wife, Kelly, a licensed pastoral counselor, belonged to First Bossier, whose pastor, Brad Jurkovich, is the spokesman for the Conservative Baptist Network, an organization working to move the denomination to the right.

Mr. Johnson also played a leading role in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and has expressed skepticism about some definitions of the separation of church and state, placing himself in a newer cohort of conservative Christianity that aligns more closely with former President Donald J. Trump and that some describe as Christian nationalism.

“Speaker Johnson really does provide a near-perfect example of all the different elements of Christian nationalism,” said Andrew Whitehead, a sociologist at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. He said those included insisting on traditionalist family structures, “being comfortable with authoritarian social control and doing away with democratic values.”

Mr. Johnson declined an interview request and did not respond to a request for comment about whether he considers himself a Christian nationalist. But the little-known speaker of the House has made clear that his faith is the most important thing to know about him, and in previous interviews, he has said he believes “the founders wanted to protect the church from an encroaching state, not the other way around.”

Over the arc of his career, Mr. Johnson, a lawyer and a member of the Louisiana Legislature before his election to Congress, has been driven by a belief that Christianity is under attack and that Christian faith needs to be elevated in the public discourse, according to a review of his appearances on talk shows and podcasts, as well as legislative speeches and writings over the past two decades.

He refers to the Declaration of Independence as a “creed” and describes it as a “religious statement of faith.” He believes that his generation has been wrongly convinced that a separation of church and state was outlined in the Constitution.

In his first interview as speaker, Mr. Johnson described himself to the Fox News host Sean Hannity as “a Bible-believing Christian” and said that to understand his politics, one only need “pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview.”

That includes opposition not just to abortion, which he has called “a holocaust,” and same-sex marriage, but to homosexuality itself, which he has written is “inherently unnatural” and a “dangerous lifestyle.” He is the sponsor of a bill that would prohibit the use of federal funds for providing education to children under 10 that included L.G.B.T.Q. topics — a proposal that critics called a national version of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law.

In a 2006 column for Townhall, a conservative website, Mr. Johnson railed against “the earnest advocates of atheism and sexual perversion.”

“This sprawling alliance of anti-God enthusiasts has proven frighteningly efficient at remaking America in their own brutal, dehumanizing image,” he wrote.

He added: “In the space of a few decades, they have managed to entrench abortion and homosexual behavior, objectify children into sexual objects, criminalize Christianity in the popular culture, and promote guilt and self-doubt as the foremost qualities of our national character.”

In Washington, the prime role of religion in Mr. Johnson’s political life is often the first thing colleagues learn about when they meet him.

“It doesn’t take long,” said Representative Byron Donalds, Republican of Florida, who said that Mr. Johnson often begins meetings by leading a prayer. “You’ll pretty much know that in the first five minutes. He’s truly a humble man.”

Yet he is not shy about framing his political career as a divinely driven battle to put religion at the center of American policy and lawmaking. From gun violence to abortion to immigration, Mr. Johnson’s policy views are shaped by his belief that too many Americans are “denying existence of God himself.”

In remarks to a Louisiana congregation in 2016, Mr. Johnson linked school shootings to no-fault divorce laws (he is in a covenant marriage with his wife, which makes divorce more difficult), “radical feminism” and legal abortion. “We’ve taught a whole generation — couple of generations, now — of Americans that there is no right and wrong,” he said then.

In an episode of his podcast, “Truth Be Told,” Mr. Johnson explained how his religion drives his hard-line immigration stance, arguing that while the Bible teaches Christians to practice “personal charity,” that commandment was “never directed to the government.”

“The left is taking it and using it out of context,” Mr. Johnson said. Welcoming the stranger, he added, is an exhortation to “individual believers,” while the government’s duty is to enforce laws — in this case, strong border control policies to stop the influx of migrants into the United States.

In lectures to student groups he addresses across the country, Mr. Johnson has lamented: “There’s no transcendent principles anymore. There’s no eternal judge. There’s no absolute standards of right and wrong. All this is exactly the opposite of the way we were founded as a country.”

It is a viewpoint fervently embraced by much of the hard-right Republican base, which reveres Mr. Trump and identifies with his frequent claims of being persecuted, aggrieved and looked down upon by liberal elites.

On his podcast, which he co-hosts with his wife, Mr. Johnson often bemoans what he considers to be the repression of religious views in America.

“What we found was often the Christian viewpoint is not given equal treatment and equal platform and equal chance,” he said in one episode, according to transcripts of the shows compiled by the Brookings Institution. “Very often religious viewpoints, specifically Christian viewpoints, are censored and silenced.”

In the same episode, Mr. Johnson said the removal of religion from public schools had a “tragic effect,” adding: “People are separating what is religious, quote unquote, with quote unquote real life, right? And that dichotomy was never intended by the founding fathers.”

He said that sometimes “hostile” interviewers would ask him why he represented only Christians in his work as a lawyer doing religious liberty litigation, and not, say, Muslims or Jews.

“I would say because the fact is very simple: There is not an open effort to silence and censor the viewpoints of other religions,” he said. “It is only and always the Christian viewpoint that is getting censored.” He added, “The fact is the left is always trying to shut down the voices of the Christians.”

His colleagues on Capitol Hill describe Mr. Johnson as not particularly verbose or flamboyant, someone who lacks a flashy social media presence and may get lost in a sea of attention seekers. But his more mellow style can mask the fact that he proselytizes extremely hard-line views and has been hitting the right-wing talk show circuit doing that for decades.

In the 2000s, Mr. Johnson, then a lawyer and spokesman for the anti-abortion and anti-gay rights group Alliance Defense Fund, was also a prolific writer, posting columns to Townhall and writing opinion pieces for his local newspaper in Shreveport.

In his writings, he harshly criticized opponents on the left and those who did not share his beliefs. Almost always, the views he espoused were intertwined with his Christian beliefs.

In 2007, Mr. Johnson wrote a column claiming ulterior motives by proponents of the “Day of Silence,” an annual event where supporters pledge silence to bring attention to bullying and harassment of L.G.B.T.Q. students.

“The event is being sold to sympathetic schoolteachers and administrators as a gentle plea for sexual tolerance and understanding,” he wrote. “But the real agenda is to gild and glamorize homosexual behavior while gagging anyone who opposes it.”

“Experts project that homosexual marriage is the dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic,” he wrote in an article in 2004.

On Thursday, Mr. Hannity asked him to explain some of his previously stated views about same-sex marriage, which is broadly supported across the country, including among many Republicans.

“I don’t even remember some of them,” Mr. Johnson said of his previous comments. “I genuinely love all people, regardless of their lifestyle choices. This is not about the people themselves.”

Mr. Johnson’s political career has been a rare glide path that has put him in the most powerful position in Congress without ever having run a competitive race. When he took office in the Louisiana House of Representatives in 2015, he ran unopposed for a seat that had been vacated. In his first run for Congress in 2016, he handily defeated his Democratic opponent, Marshall Jones, and last year he ran unopposed for his seat.

He has also recorded over a thousand interviews on talk radio and television — much of it from his time at the Alliance Defense Fund, now called the Alliance Defending Freedom — leaving a long trail of words that help paint a picture of an arch-conservative who promotes a literal reading of the Bible.

In 2015, Mr. Johnson provided legal services to Answers in Genesis, a fundamentalist Christian group founded by Ken Ham that rejects scientific findings about evolution and the early history of the cosmos. The organization cites “the Word of God” in saying that the universe is 6,000 years old and suggests that “we simply have been indoctrinated to believe it looks old.” The universe is in fact about 13.8 billion years old, astronomers generally agree.

It retained Mr. Johnson after tourism officials in Kentucky refused to grant tax incentives for the building of a Noah’s Ark theme park, citing the organization’s plan to require employees to submit a statement of faith. Mr. Johnson successfully sued in 2015, arguing that the denial of tax breaks was discriminatory.

Mr. Johnson praised Ark Encounter, the theme park, which includes dinosaurs in its life-size replica of the ark, in a 2021 interview with Mr. Ham as he guest-hosted the radio show of Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, whom he has called his “original mentor.”

“The Ark Encounter is one way to bring people to this recognition of the truth that, you know, what we read in the Bible are actual historical events, and that there are implications to what you do with all these stories in the Bible there,” Mr. Johnson said.

This guy scares the living daylights out of me.

Update: Also this:

I wonder why they would think the economy is so terrible? Whatever would make them think that?

Another admission of conservative impotence

Put us in charge, say Republicans. We pledge to do nothing.

“The end of the day, it’s, the problem is the human heart. It’s not guns. It’s not the weapons. At the end of the day, we have to protect the right of the citizens to protect themselves, and that’s the Second Amendment.”

— House Speaker Mike Johnson, asked by Fox News’s Sean Hannity about demands for more gun laws or more legislation in the wake of mass shootings

Alexandra Petri translates:

The problem is the human heart. Gun violence is an unchangeable, immutable fact of the human condition. That is why it is localized so strongly to this country and this time period. This is not a problem with a solution. It is the price you pay for being human. This is not unique to the United States, although you see it only here. Maybe it’s something to do with the water. Not laws, though; as we know from our efforts to impose vicious lawsuits and increasingly draconian restrictions against anyone who seeks an abortion, it is pointless to legislate about a problem. Some things, you are just born with and must accept; guns are one of them.

The heart is a uniquely American problem. Johnson, I hear, had his removed long ago, which allows him to look on the suffering of his fellow man with equanimity and detachment, because of his serene awareness of the Divine Plan.

Is it fatalism or is it nihilism?

God, grant conservatives the serenity to accept the mass murders they cannot change … until they lose their spouses, sons and daughters to them.

Mike Johnson’s “commitment is not to democracy”

“If Republicans vote for a medieval insurrectionist, and nobody knows, does it count?” Brian Beutler recommended on Friday at Off Message, meaning the new Republican speaker from Louisiana. Make Mike Johnson famous:

Instilling an idea about a person in the social consciousness and making it stick is an unending and tedious process. Republicans didn’t define Al Gore as a wooden teller of Big Fish tales in one day, it required relentless scoffing; same with John Kerry as the out-of-touch cheese-eating surrender monkey, Hillary Clinton as Mrs. Emails. Nancy Pelosi as Mrs. San Francisco values, and so on. 

Nancy Mace wants to wear a Scarlet Letter? How about two? MJ. Republicans hung “Nancy Pelosi liberal” around Democratic candidates’ necks for decades. Two parties can play that game.

The press is obliging. Politico’s Katelyn Fossett spoke with Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a historian of evangelical Christianity and politics.

Du Mez describes Johnson as “incredibly standard in terms of being a right-wing, white evangelical Christian nationalist” in the tradition of David Barton of Wallbuilders. Barton (for those unfamiliar) is a self-trained historian — pseudo-historian in her professional opnion —who has spent decades claiming the separation of church and state is a myth:

It’s really hard to overstate the influence that Barton has had in conservative evangelical spaces. For them, he has really defined America as a Christian nation. What that means is that he kind of takes conservative, white evangelical ideals from our current moment, and says that those were all baked into the Constitution, and that God has elected America to be a special nation, and that the nation will be blessed if we respond in obedience and maintain that, and not if we go astray. It really fuels evangelical politics and the idea that evangelicalism has a special role to play to get the country back on track.

Johnson’s viewpoint is not so much white supremacy as Christian supremacy. Every knee shall bow, meaning yours. As Du Mez sees the movement today, “conservative evangelicals are much more comfortable in just making that plain and no longer feeling a need to pay lip service to democracy or voting rights or those sorts of things.”

His commitment is not to democracy. He’s not committed to majority rule; he seems to be saying he’s committed to minority rule, if that’s what it takes to ensure that we stay on the Christian foundation that the founders have set up.

It’s Christian nationalists’ country. Behave yourselves and they may let you live in it under their minority rule.

I’ll interject here that in the same way Republicans use racist dogwhistles — coded language — to send sub rosa messages intended for a select audience and not the press and general public, Christianists do the same. If a particular phrase strikes your ear as odd or off-key, it’s likely sending a message not meant for you. If you’re not reading the line through Christianist glasses, you’re not getting the real meaning.

“So really, Christian supremacy and a particular type of conservative Christianity is at the heart of Johnson’s understanding of the Constitution and an understanding of our government,” says Du Mez. (Below, emphasis mine.)

You’ll see this in some of his speeches. In his speech on Wednesday, he incorporated a G.K. Chesterton quote about the U.S. being based on a creed. And he said the American creed is “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.”

But he goes much deeper than that, and really roots that in what he would call a biblical worldview: The core principles of our nation reflect these biblical truths and biblical principles. He has gone on record saying things like, for him, this biblical worldview means that all authority comes from God and that there are distinct realms of God-ordained authority, and that is the family, the church and the government.

Now, all this authority, of course, is under this broader understanding of God-given authority. So it’s not the right of any parents to decide what’s best for their kids; it’s the right of parents to decide what’s best for their kids in alignment with his understanding of biblical law. Same thing with the church’s role: It is to spread Christianity but also to care for the poor. That’s not the government’s job.

And then the government’s job is to support this understanding of authority and to align the country with God’s laws.

So, a kind of civic trinity: family, church, and government. Separation of church and state being a myth (Barton), church and state are at once separate and one. God has not charged His government with caring for the poor, but His church. That the church sucks at meeting the need is unimportant.

Du Mez adds:

Christian nationalism essentially posits the idea that America is founded on God’s laws, and that the Constitution is a reflection of God’s laws. Therefore, any interpretation of the Constitution must align with Christian nationalists’ understanding of God’s laws. Freedom for them means freedom to obey God’s law, not freedom to do what you want.

It’s an evangelical trope that the country was founded as a Christian nation of, by and for Christians. Never mind the thin historical evidence for that notion. It is an idée fixe that evidence will not penetrate any more than science can uproot the creationist notion that the Earth is a mere 6,000 years old.

At a county Board of Elections meeting here on Tuesday, a Republican member recommended referencing state law sections in documents outlining staff procedures as the N.C. State Board does religiously. Seemed like a good idea.

I went looking for evangelical efforts to do the same with the Declaration and Constitution. As you might expect, attempts I found to shoehorn Bible verses into both stretch credulity and the language in all three documents. I won’t trouble you with them here.

The Tanuki!

The tanuki is a wild canid species native to Japan that is related to wolves, foxes, and domestic dogs. It’s also known as the Japanese raccoon dog (Nyctereutes procyonoides viverrinus) and is a subspecies of the raccoon dog (Nyctereutes procyonoides) that’s found in mainland Asia.

With its thick fur, masked face, and curious nature, the tanuki has served as a cultural icon in Japanese folklore for centuries. The bushy-tailed animal is known as a mischievous trickster that’s shown up in legends and myths as a shapeshifter with supernatural abilities. In popular culture, tanuki can be spotted in Nintendo video games and Studio Ghibli films.

Here are eight little-known facts about this fascinating canid species.

1. Tanuki Are Not Related to Raccoons

Despite their masked appearance, tanuki are not close relatives of the common raccoon, the famous species native to the United States. Tanuki belong to the Canidae family, alongside wolves and foxes. In contrast, the common raccoon shares more in common with mustelids, a family that includes weasels, badgers, and otters. Their similar appearance could be a case of convergent evolution, where different species evolve to occupy the same ecological niche.

2. They Can Climb Trees

Tree-climbing isn’t a skill often associated with dogs, and in fact, tanuki and the North American gray fox are the only canid species that exhibit this trait. They are accomplished climbers thanks to their curved claws and can be found foraging for berries and fruit among the branches. In addition, their natural habitat is woodlands and marshes, and tanuki are skilled swimmers that will dive underwater to hunt and forage.

3. They Are Bred and Killed in the Fur Trade

Both the tanuki and its mainland raccoon dog cousin are bred in captivity for the global fur trade. In some instances, their fur has been found in garments that were advertised as containing faux fur. According to the Humane Society of the United States, 70% of the faux fur garments they analyzed contained raccoon dog fur.

Most of the animals killed and sold for their fur are bred in captivity and spend their entire lives in cages. Even when clothing is advertised as animal-free faux fur, it could be a false statement, and it’s worth knowing how to check for yourself.

4. They’re Considered an Invasive Species in Europe

Originally introduced into Russia to bolster the trapping trade in the early 20th century, the tanuki has spread into all of Europe, where it’s considered an invasive species that is threatening biodiversity. With few natural predators and an affinity for scavenging in close proximity to humans, the tanuki population has exploded. Many European nations have started programs to hunt and trap the animal and banned its trade as an exotic pet.

5. They Are Highly Social Creatures

Companionship and family are important for these critters, which usually live in monogamous pairs or in small, close-knit groups. In winter, a mating pair will share a den and raise a litter of pups together. Male tanuki have been observed taking part in family life in ways that other species seem like poor parents. They bring food to their pregnant mates and help to raise their pups, which live alongside them for four to five months after birth.

6. They Are the Only Canines That Hibernate

While wolves, foxes, and other canines have no trouble braving the snowy, barren winter months, tanuki prefer to wait them out and hunker down. In early winter, they will gain weight, decrease their metabolism by 25 to 50%, and settle inside their burrows until warmer weather arrives. They don’t go it alone either. These sociable animals are communal hibernators that prefer to spend the long winter in close proximity to their mating partner, though by definition they actually enter a state of torpor rather than hibernation because they remain semi-conscious and will emerge to forage on especially warm days.

7. They Hold an Important Position in Japanese Folklore

The version of tanuki often referred to in Japanese folklore is a mystical creature known as bake-danuki, which can be literally translated as “monster raccoon dog.” The creature was first referenced in a text published in 720 AD called “Nihon Shoki,” which is one of the oldest Japanese history books, weaving important historical events with mythology and creation stories. Tanuki have since been a recurring figure in folk tales throughout Japanese history, usually appearing as a trickster, shapeshifter, or a sign of good luck.

The mythical version of the animal is often depicted with an oversize scrotum, which has been the source of both comedy and confusion. One theory is that this depiction dates to the 19th century when metal workers wrapped gold in tanuki skin before hammering it into gold leaf. The strength of the tanuki’s skin was so great that, according to legend, a tiny piece of gold could be hammered thin enough to stretch across an entire room.

8. They Are One of the Most Ancient Canine Species

The tanuki is considered a basal species, or one of the species most similar to its ancestors. Thousands of years ago, most dogs probably looked more like the tanuki than your modern domestic pet. Since tanuki do not bark—instead whining, growling, and mewling—and are more omnivorous than most other wild dogs, it’s ancient lineage provides insight into the diverse origins of canine species. Fossil found in the Tochigi Prefecture of Japan suggests the first tanuki appeared between 2,588,000 to 11,700 years ago during the Pleistocene era.

The new Speaker Mike Johnson appeared on Hannity last night and made it clear that the impeachment inquiry onto Joe Biden is all systems go. Or is it? Philip Bump writes:

The Hannity interview was useful in one sense. Johnson’s predecessor as speaker, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), had approved the impeachment inquiry driven largely by Comer and Jordan. When McCarthy was ousted, it wasn’t clear what would happen. Johnson confirmed that it will move forward.

Or perhaps it won’t. In late September, the impeachment inquiry held a hearing involving a handful of witnesses, none of whom could provide any evidence impugning Joe Biden or his son, by their own admissions. The 2019 impeachment of Donald Trump — probably the target of Johnson’s sniffy disparagement of “the other team” — had released its final report about three weeks after its first hearing (which was followed by four more days of hearings). The Biden “impeachment inquiry” has held no more hearings in the month since the first one. And, by his own admission, Comer doesn’t want to.

“I don’t know that I want to hold any more hearings, to be honest with you,” Comer said while speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill last week. He complained that it was hard to keep members present for hours on end, given that so many had other commitments. Instead, he said, he preferred depositions, which “you can do more with.”

There’s a truth buried in that, of course. You can do more with cherry-picked transcripts when your goal is to coat Joe Biden with insinuations and unproved allegations.

[…]

One would think that at some point, Comer would need to present evidence that withstands objective scrutiny — including by non-right-wing media outlets. The value of adjudicating these things in public hearings is that they are tested and challenged, making the surviving evidence stronger. We can be more confident that Biden’s role in the firing of the Ukrainian prosecutor was not corrupt because the assertion was evaluated during the 2019 impeachment.

But we know this isn’t really necessary. Johnson and Comer can remain surrounded by their allies, including Hannity, and pluck stuff out of depositions that hops over the low evidentiary bar they’ve all agreed to. After all, it’s what they’ve done so far.

This will not be surprising in the least. They will move forward with an impeachment vote based upon cherry picked, incomprehensible gobbldygook with a lot of shrill speeches that prove nothing and they will impeach Joe Biden. They know it will fail in the Senate and indeed, it may not even be taken up, depending on how long this whole process takes. But they will have it on the record that Joe Biden was impeached and that’s what Dear Leader wants. If Johnson can also get Trump’s impeachments “expunged” he will be the MAGA hero of all heroes.

The circus is still in town.

They are in short supply in discussions of the war in Israel but they do exist

I’m trying to feature commentary that I think adds to the conversation about this horrible situation. This piece is by two British politicians with skin in the game:

Much has been said in the past three weeks about the tragedy of Israelis and Palestinians, not least in the Houses of Parliament. For us, it is deeply personal. We are the only two British MPs with parents who grew up in Israel and Palestine. Though we represent different political parties, this is not the first time we’ve worked together on this conflict. However, we feel this is the most urgent, and most important, intervention we have had to make. Israelis and Palestinians need support from their friends abroad, and our own communities here in the UK that are affected by the conflict need reassurance as the Middle East conflict spreads to the streets of the UK.

We are concerned by how little space there is for nuance in parliament and in wider society on this issue. We feel compelled to lead by example, and to build consensus around clear calls to action in the short term, as well as longer-term plans – which we think can be supported across the spectrum.

We know, from images and personal accounts, the horrors that Israelis and Palestinians have faced this month. Israelis are traumatised from the unimaginable crimes that Hamas terrorists committed when they entered Israeli towns, torturing and massacring men, women and children, murdering more than 1,400 people, and taking more than 220 people hostage. Israel’s military response has resulted in the displacement of more than a million Palestinians from northern Gaza and the death of more than 6,000 people in aerial bombardments. The situation on the ground is dire, and adequate aid isn’t being allowed into Gaza.

We put these narratives side by side not to compare, or excuse, but so people understand the raw pain that both Israelis and Palestinians are experiencing, rather than choosing one side and ignoring the other. One dead child killed in war is one too many. Showing sympathy for what Israelis have experienced does not equal supporting Israel’s government, and standing in solidarity with Palestinians does not signal support of Hamas. It must be possible to show empathy with both peoples, so that we can find a way through this darkness.

Right now, we must work to minimise further civilian casualties – the numbers of which are already too high. International pressure is needed to ensure that other regional actors are not drawn into the war. Calls for a humanitarian pause in fighting must be enacted – on both sides – to allow proper aid into Gaza to alleviate the humanitarian catastrophe that is unfolding, as well as facilitate the release of the hostages. While eyes are all turned to Gaza, we cannot ignore the West Bank where settler violence, demolitions and evictions, which were already at an all-time high, now risk spiralling out of control.

It is both the responsibility of Israel and the international community to prevent a humanitarian disaster. Palestinians in Gaza – more than half of whom are children – must have access to clean water, fuel, medical supplies, electricity and food. It is not reasonable or moral to prevent children from accessing basic survival needs. All Israeli hostages in Gaza must be released immediately, unharmed. We have been touched by the pleas of families we have met, who are living a nightmare as they beg for their loved ones to be returned home. This is an urgent priority.

In order to maintain the international community’s commitment to a future Palestinian state, there must be a cast-iron guarantee from the Israeli government that Palestinians who were forced to evacuate northern Gaza will be allowed to return when the war is over. Permanent displacement isn’t an option. Furthermore, the international community will need to work, yet again, to reconstruct Gaza, much of which has been turned to dust.

Israel has the right to defend its citizens from the very real threat of Hamas. We are not naive to the challenges of fighting a terror organisation embedded in a densely populated civilian area that pays no regard to the rules of war. However, international law has to guide us and ensure restraint so that damage to infrastructure in Gaza is minimised to prevent further loss of life.

The calls we make aren’t “choosing a side”. Israelis and Palestinians have been failed by the international community. How many rounds of violence must they live through? How many times has the human rights community and peace camp warned us things will get worse? How many condemnations and statements have been issued by governments worldwide?

This has been a terrible lesson – but it must be a lesson. When this war is over, and casualties are counted, the only choice for the international community is to not only call for, but urgently work for a long-term solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The terrible status quo that has left millions of Palestinians stateless, living without their basic rights under Israeli occupation, and Israel without secure borders, must end. That will require us to harness the energies of the US, the EU, UK and the Arab world. We cannot raise our hands in despair and give up when things get hard. We have to put every ounce of energy into making it happen.

We must promise that, out of this nightmare, we will build a future for Israelis and Palestinians so everyone can live in peace, dignity and security. There must be two states for two peoples. It may look impossible right now, but there is no other choice.

Layla Moran is the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for foreign affairs and international development. Alex Sobel is the Labour MP for Leeds North West

Easier said than done. But still it must be said.

For a dimmer, realistic view of whether these things will happen, this piece by Eric Alterman in TNR fits the bill. In that one, everybody loses. including the Democratic president. Have a drink before you read it.

How many of these richie-rich narcissists are there anyway?

This unknown egomaniac who’s decided to make a name for himself as a Democratic Biden critic at a time of great peril for the country and the world is also a straight up kook:

About two years before he launched a campaign to unseat President Joe Biden, Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) was anxious to win something else from his future opponent: his attention.

In November 2021, Biden traveled to the town of Rosemount, Minnesota—just south of St. Paul—for one of his first events touting the $1 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law he had just signed.

Traveling with Biden were Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN), who represents Rosemount, Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN), who represents St. Paul, as well as the state’s two U.S. senators, Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona was also on board.

Phillips, who represents the western Minneapolis suburbs, did not travel to Minnesota with Biden, but was insistent on flying back to Washington with the president.

Given how precious and tightly allocated seats are on Air Force One, Phillips’ demand was brazen enough, considering he had no formal role in the Minnesota event. But it was nothing compared to what transpired on board, according to three sources who were present and were granted anonymity to describe the scene to The Daily Beast.

“We got on the plane and it was some of the worst behavior I have ever seen,” said one person. “It was horrendous.”

For one, the Minnesota congressman spent much of the flight in the guest cabin snapping selfies—a major faux pas on the presidential plane. Due to security concerns, passengers’ ability to take photos is strictly regulated to certain parts of the cabin at certain times.

It was not long before Phillips discovered how to use the in-flight phones on the plane. According to these sources, he began dialing relatives so he could put them on the phone with the commander-in-chief—not just once, but multiple times—even interrupting Biden during his conversations with other passengers to ask if he would speak with so-and-so.

“Everyone was mortified,” said a passenger. “You know, people are giving each other looks—‘What the hell was that?’”

Ultimately, that passenger texted someone else to see if they could get the president out of the guest cabin and back to his own cabin, worried that Phillips was going to keep Biden stuck taking calls.

A spokesperson for Phillips did not respond to a request for comment.

To those who witnessed or heard about Phillips’ antics, it was clear he was excited to be with the president—perhaps too excited. During his time in Congress, the Minnesotan had been a staunch supporter of the president and his agenda, which mirrored Phillips’ center-left politics and those of Minnesota’s 3rd Congressional District.

But the episode is stark in retrospect, as Phillips prepares to officially kick off his primary challenge to Biden on Friday in New Hampshire, where he will formally sign the paperwork to compete in the state’s primary election.

For months, Phillips has been teasing the possibility of a primary challenge, arguing that the 80-year-old incumbent is too old, too unpopular, to win a rematch with former President Donald Trump in 2024. He has said “American democracy is made stronger by competition” and expressed his belief that the country and party need new leaders. (No Democratic president has faced a serious primary challenge since Jimmy Carter in 1980.)

The scion of a Minnesota liquor-distilling fortune who launched the successful Talenti gelato brand, Phillips blew out a Republican incumbent in 2018 after running a savvy and sophisticated campaign. Worth many millions of dollars, Phillips could easily self-fund his campaign for at least some amount of time.

Still, Phillips isn’t expected to be a serious obstacle for Biden to win the party nomination. In New Hampshire, he is competing in an unsanctioned primary, which offers no delegate prize and is taking place as a protest to the national party’s decision to shuffle the traditional order of early primary states. He also missed the deadline to qualify for the ballot in Nevada, a key early state with actual delegates at stake.

Even if Phillips’ path to actually beating Biden is slim or non-existent, his ability to damage the incumbent ahead of the general election is very real. It’s just one of the reasons why the resounding reaction to Phillips’ bid, from allies in Minnesota to colleagues on Capitol Hill, has been disbelief, disappointment, and a touch of derision.

“He’s decided to spend all his political capital on this fool’s errand, wild goose chase—it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me,” said Ken Martin, the chairman of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, who is a friend of Phillips and recruited him to run in 2018.

“As far as I can tell, there’s no one in Minnesota, including in his own district, that’s excited about the prospect of him running for president,” said Martin. “If it’s someone having a midlife crisis—most people having a midlife crisis would go buy a new sports car.”

Some believe Phillips is genuine in his belief that Biden would lose to Trump and that the party needs new leaders. While there is very little appetite among Democratic officials, activists, and many voters for a bruising primary, public polling has shown clear concerns among the party’s voters over Biden’s age. Indeed, as a candidate in 2020, Biden framed himself as a “bridge” to a new generation of leaders.

At this point, however, very few Democrats see Phillips’ primary challenge as the answer to those concerns. In some corners, even among former allies, his bid is seen as a vanity project or a bid for media attention and national recognition.

Even for a politician, Phillips is considered by some to be unusually hungry for the spotlight, sometimes at the expense of his party’s broader priorities.

Ahead of the 2022 midterm elections—in which Democrats were tasked with defending a five-seat majority under daunting conditions—Phillips often spoke to the press to criticize the party’s tone and tactics.

Tim Persico, who was the DCCC’s executive director in 2022, told The Daily Beast that Phillips never shared his criticism privately with the organization.

“We had everything you could imagine—retirements, all this crazy shit—going against us, and this guy was not only never helpful, but always one of the first people, if not the first, to shit on us publicly, not privately,” said Persico.

Adding to the frustration for the DCCC, Phillips delayed paying the customary member dues to the organization—$200,000 per election cycle—until it was in his personal interest to do so.

According to Persico, Phillips only wrote the check a month before election day, after several of his colleagues—depending on DCCC cash to win difficult races—said they would not support Phillips’ bid for a junior Democratic leadership post unless he paid his dues. Ultimately, Phillips won that leadership office, though Democrats narrowly lost the House. Last month, he resigned the position amid internal backlash to his Biden criticism.

In another recent instance of no-chill, Phillips’ thirst for the spotlight rubbed Minnesota colleagues the wrong way.

In May, the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party held its annual Humphrey-Mondale Dinner in Minneapolis, its most important event and fundraiser of the year. The keynote speaker was Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), and several members of the Minnesota congressional delegation expressed interest in giving the speech introducing Jeffries at the dinner.

According to a source familiar with the event, Phillips had worked ahead of time to secure that prime speaking slot—before others were aware Jeffries was coming—and it was understood that Phillips’ hosting of a Democratic fundraiser with Jeffries the next day was a big reason why. “It’s indicative of Dean being, like, Dean first,” said the source. (Like every other major Democrat, Jeffries has endorsed Biden.)

If Phillips wasn’t always a team player with fellow Democrats, he at least was understood to be one for Biden in Congress. Although he has been a member of the bipartisan, centrist Problem Solvers Caucus, Phillips has never been among the lawmakers in his party who have threatened to take down key bills during their run in the majority.

According to FiveThirtyEight’s vote tracker, Phillips has voted with Biden’s agenda 100 percent of the time.

Even if the congressman had not elbowed for space on Air Force One and spent his flight trying to snap photos with Biden and get relatives on the phone with him, Democrats like Martin, the DFL chairman, believe that Phillips’ challenge to the president is built on a suspect foundation.

“I never heard him critique the president, which I think makes it a harder job,” Martin said. “If you’re running against someone—what’s the rap on Joe Biden? His age? He can’t change his age. And he has a record, President Biden and Vice President Harris have a remarkable record.”

“It’s still surprising to a number of folks, myself included,” Martin said, “that he’s decided to embark on this.”

I’m sorry to say that Steve Schmidt, the former McCain strategist and eloquent Trump critic is running his campaign. It’s hard for me to believe he needs money that badly but apparently he does. The whole thing smacks of ego and grift and it’s pathetic.

Good lord:

No matter your view on whether a primary to Biden is useful, the particular strategy laid about by Schmidt to @TimAlberta of relentlessly attacking Biden is insane.

This can only be described as a pro-Trump effort disguised as a primary campaign. https://t.co/DPtpmn3Nfs pic.twitter.com/0lyObncR7h

— Tim Miller (@Timodc) October 27, 2023

WTF?????

He’s an anti-immigrant zealot too

Greg Sargent writes about the new Speaker’s extreme views on immigration:

Rep. Mike Johnson, the newly elected House speaker, has repeatedly flirted with what’s known as the “great replacement theory,” the idea that Democrats are scheming to supplant American voters with immigrants. The Louisiana Republican’s views show how fringe conspiracy theories have gone mainstream in the Republican Party at the highest levels of power.

“This is the plan of our friends on this side — to turn all the illegals into voters,” Johnson said at a congressional hearing in May 2022, gesturing at Democrats. “That’s why the border’s open.”

The “open borders” trope is a lie, and while a few municipalities allow voting for noncitizens in local elections, in no sense do national Democrats have any such “plan” for “all the illegals.” As far as I can determine, no House speaker in recent memory has been quite as reckless and incendiary with this kind of language.

Johnson employs it regularly. He reiterated the claim in an interview this year with the right-wing outlet Newsmax, accusing President Biden of “intentionally” encouraging undocumented migration to “turn all these illegals into voters for their side.” On numerous other occasions, he has made similar charges, even declaring that Democrats’ express goal is the “destruction of our country at the expense of our own people.”

On immigration, as well as on abortion and gay rights, Johnson’s elevation is a triumph for the far right. It has been widely noted that Johnson doesn’t come across as a MAGA bomb-thrower, despite his extreme views. That’s true on immigration, too: He voices high-minded platitudes about how providing asylum to the persecuted is a noble ideal, but he’s a big booster of the wildly radical House GOP border bill that would functionally gut asylum entirely.

The pro-immigrant group America’s Voice, which tracks lawmakers’ positions on the issue, has not documented any comparable rhetoric in Johnson’s predecessor, Rep. Kevin McCarthy. “Johnson has gone farther than most of his Republican colleagues in elevating alarmist and dangerous rhetoric,” says Vanessa Cardenas, the group’s executive director.

Other predecessors, such as John A. Boehner and Paul D. Ryan, were supporters — nominally, at least — of reforms that would legalize large numbers of undocumented immigrants, though they ultimately failed to deliver. Not even Newt Gingrich, the most extreme House speaker of the modern era, went as far as Johnson, says Nicole Hemmer, author of a history of conservatism in the 1990s.

“Even at his most anti-immigrant, he spoke largely in fiscal and law-and-order terms,” Hemmer told me, while eschewing the “eliminationist rhetoric” at the core of great replacement theory.

Yet little by little, those more extreme ideas have penetrated GOP leadership circles. In 2021, Rep. Elise Stefanik (N.Y.), a top House Republican, charged Democrats with scheming to replace conservative voters with Democratic-leaning immigrants.

Stefanik, like Johnson and other Republicans who make such claims, did not explicitly allege a plot to replace Whites with non-Whites. But those playing this game know exactly what they’re implying. Indeed, former president Donald Trump recently made the racist implications behind the great replacement theory explicit by claiming that migrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”

All this echoes the 1920s, when prominent lawmakers depicted immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe as a threat to “our genius” and to “the foundations of society,” says historian Joshua Zeitz. “White nationalists have been reintroducing these ideas gradually over the past several decades, and they are now thoroughly ingrained in the Republican establishment,” he told me.

That someone with these views now controls the House’s agenda bodes badly. Johnson has already declared that a top priority is fixing our “broken” border. Julián Castro, a former member of President Barack Obama’s Cabinet, anticipates Republican efforts to shut down the government to force Democrats to “remake the asylum system in the MAGA cult’s image.”

Congressional Republicans have long been split between establishment figures who favor compromise reforms (legalization of many undocumented immigrants in exchange for border security) and those who see migration as a wholly destructive force, an invasion to be rebuffed via mass deportations, an effective end to asylum and maximal border militarization. As Johnson’s new — and very powerful — leadership position reveals, the latter forces have decisively won.

You don’t have to be a loud mouth to be a demagogue. You can do it even more successfully in a quit soothing voice while mouthing Christian platitudes.

Or they pretend not to anyway

It may seem obvious that everyone in the country knows that Donald Trump tried to overturn the election results in 2020 because we all watched him do it live as it was happening. His campaign filed more than 60 lawsuits in various states, as was his right, none of which were found to be meritorious. His minions and accomplices in the Republicans party both in Washington and around the country actively tried to help him do that by pressuring election officials, persuading local officials to sign on as “alternate electors” etc. And I think you’d have to have been in a coma not to know that he aggressively tried to bully Vice President Mike Pence into refusing to count the electoral votes on January 6th.

Trump’s famous January 2nd phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger was all over the news the very next day in which he very pointedly said:

 “What I want to do is this. I just want to find, uh, 11,780 votes, which is one more than [the 11,779-vote margin of defeat] we have, because we won the state.”

The state had already certified its results showing the Joe Biden won after several recounts, both by machine and by hand. There is simply no doubt that Donald Trump was attempting to overturn the election. They didn’t try to hide it.

Moreover, 139 Republican House members explicitly voted to overturn the results of the electoral college on January 6th at the behest and direction of Donald Trump, even after the violent mob stormed the capitol in an attempt to stop the counting of the certified electoral votes. The new Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has been called “the most important architect of the Electoral College objections” that day aimed at keeping Trump in office even after he lost. In fact, his status as an influential election denier for filing a widely derided amicus brief seeking to invalidate the 2020 election results in four swing states Biden won was key to gaining the unanimous vote for Speaker just this week.

And long after Trump was comfortably ensconced at his Mar-a-Lago beach club he was pushing his supporters to pursue “audits” of the vote even telling people that he would be reinstated in a matter of months. As recently as the fall of 2022 he was demanding that he be returned to the White House or hold a new election!

We’re about 10 weeks before the 2022 midterms and Donald Trump is still — openly — talking about undoing/rejecting the 2020 presidential election results.

Which still can’t happen, legally or logistically.

Which still (for now) doesn’t seem to affect his chances in 2024. pic.twitter.com/C1lqzjn5cR

— stephen fowler (@stphnfwlr) August 29, 2022

Whether you believe he was justified in doing it, or even think it was his patriotic duty to try, there is simply no doubt that Trump tried to overturn the election results. Denying that fact is simply delusional. And yet, as Aaron Blake at the Washington Post reports, it appears that tens of millions of Americans are in deep denial:

The Economist and YouGov this week became the latest to publish a head-scratching poll showing Republicans rejecting basic facts about Trump and his legal jeopardy.

The poll asked people whether Trump was “involved in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia.” He, of course, was…But to most Republicans, this apparently never happened. Just 18 percent in the YouGov poll said Trump was involved in trying to overturn Georgia’s results, compared to 59percent who say he wasn’t.

It’s now the second poll to show the vast majority of Republicans saying Trump wasn’t even involved in trying to overturn the election. YouGov asked similar, non-Georgia-specific questions in August. Republicans said just 38-30 percent that there was an attempt to overturn the election. That’s shocking in and of itself. But then it showed only half of that 38 percent said Trump was personally involved.

So in both polls, only about 1 in 5 Republicans said Trump tried to overturn the election — the very basic threshold fact that undergirds two of his four indictments.

Now maybe they see this as a matter of semantics and judge that he wasn’t really attempting to “overturn” the election because it wasn’t really legitimate in the first place? But that would be an awfully convoluted explanation. More likely this is related to the fact that he’s been indicted in federal court in Washington DC and Fulton County Georgia for doing just that and they are simply unwilling to believe he’s guilty of it.

What this means is that The Big Lie, which was originally simply Donald Trump’s insistence that the election was stolen from him now includes an equally absurd lie that Trump never tried to overturn it.

It’s easy to blame the voters for this and ultimately it is their responsibility as citizens to be smart enough to resist such a ridiculous falsehood. Perhaps they just don’t know the truth because their media diet is so reliant on right wing propaganda that the facts aren’t easily available to them. But according to a new Pew Research Poll, while Americans generally are turning out the news more than they used to, Republican attention to current events has dropped precipitously:

In 2016, 57% of Republicans and independents who lean Rep­­ublican said they followed the news all or most of the time. In the 2022 survey, 37% said the same, a decrease of 20 points. By comparison, the share saying this among Democrats and Democratic leaners dropped by only 7 points, from 49% to 42%.

It’s likely that many of them are sticking their heads in the sand because on some level they either know the truth and don’t want to admit it or they believe that any news they don’t like is fake. They have been conditioned by Trump and the right wing press to only hear what they want to hear. He told them outright, “what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening” and they believed him.

It will be interesting to see what happens as Trump’s legal saga unfolds over the next few months. At this point it looks as though Trump’s hand-picked judge in Florida will drag the classified documents case out until after the election. And who knows when any trials in the Georgia case will take place? As things stand now, the federal case in Washington is the one most likely to go first and that’s where the evidence of Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the election will be laid out in great detail.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that it will affect most Republican voters even if he’s found guilty and sentenced to jail because they are impervious to the truth when it comes to their Dear Leader. The Big Lie gets bigger and bigger as time goes on and they seem to be powerless to resist it.

Salon