The Election’s All Over; Trump Has Already Won

With “MAGA Mike” Johnson as Speaker of the House, there is a path forward for a Trump win that Democrats cannot stop.

With the ascendancy of “MAGA Mike” Johnson to the Speakership of the House last year, it doesn’t matter who wins the November election, nor by how many votes. Johnson is in a position to thwart a Biden victory, paving the way for a Trump dictatorship “from day one.”

This is not a theory and this is not a drill. There is a perfectly legal way for it to be done. Our greatly-weakened and unfixable Constitution, due to the obstruction and perfidy of a Republican Party now thoroughly corrupted by Donald Trump will make this possible. This political intransigence is complemented and energized by, the emergence of the Christo-fascist apostate Christianity of the last days, also warned about in the Bible (Mt 13:36-40[1]; 24:10-12; Luke 21:16; II Thess 2:3,11,12; II Pet 2:1-3,20,21; Jude 1:12, etc).

Here is the plan in all its simplicity. Even if the Democrats succeed beyond their wildest dreams and utterly rout the Republicans, taking both houses of Congress and the Presidency, there is a near-certainty Trump will still be installed in the White House.

How? The usual ho-hum pattern after a Presidential election is that the new Congress shows up in Washington between New Year’s and January 6 to be sworn in. On the 6^th, the new Congress then goes through the formality of receiving the results sent in by state electors according to the November election. However, this time:

“even though Democrats might have won enough seats to take back the House in the 2024 election, Speaker Johnson will refuse to swear into Congress on January 3rd a handful of those Democrats, claiming there are “irregularities” in their elections that must be first investigated.”[2]

In a normal time, if there’s been a shift in the House then the new majority party also gets to elect a new Speaker before January 6. But under the scenario painted above, this means that Republicans led by Mike Johnson can still stay in control, at which point they can declare the election inconclusive and “throw it back to the states,” meaning the state legislatures. And since a majority of state legislatures are controlled by Republicans (though the Democrats have more population), the “states” will determine the next President.

The Absurd State of Our “Democracy”

If you understand this scenario and are (hopefully) aghast by it, you might be inclined to not want to “give them any ideas.” The quote above is from Thom Hartmann’s featured splainer article here, “The New “Over the Top” Secret Plan on How Fascists Could Win in 2024.” Thom mentioned that he isn’t the first to talk about it:

“But this has already been written about extensively by Newsweek’s editor-at-large Tom Rogers, Mark Medish & Joel McCleary for the Washington Spectator, and covered last Friday night an an opening monologue by Joy Reid. It’s public knowledge, although the media seems unwilling to discuss it.”

Thom goes on to say,

“The best way to prevent this from happening is to widely publicize their scheme so public opinion will become so intense that they fear the consequences.

It’s a thin thread holding our republic together, but at least it’s something.”

A thin thread? To say the least. “Fearing the consequences?” Should we expect this stunningly-hypocritical and thoroughly-corrupt party and their retrogressive Supreme Court to suddenly grow a conscience?

This is how close we are to the entire post-1776 Western freedom paradigm collapsing, Putin overrunning Europe, and Donald Trump disappearing the 91 felony counts against him, that we’re down to hoping that Republicans grow a brain and a conscience. Fat chance of that. After a lifetime of crime catching up to him by virtue of his utterly stupid and vain decision to run for President, subjecting himself to the fish bowl of public scrutiny, this is what we get.

And maybe deserve. All the more so from the religious angle, since judgment always begins at the house of God (I Pet 4:17). In a country as “Christian” as this one, the blame for all of our problems comes back to a failure of the Church to set the right example. If saving America politically had been so important way back when, we could have joined both political parties and been a moderating force on both. By joining only one, we’ve instead become the biggest source of division, threatening another Civil War.

This is the outcome of “Confederate Christianity,” as I call it. It thinks it is “doing God service” (Jn 16:2), to the point of hating and betraying true brothers and sisters in the faith (Mt 24:10), even to the point of death (Luke 21:16; Mt 10:21, etc), all in the name of stopping “wokism” and fighting “elitism.” Yet is there anything more elitist than denying every US citizen one measly vote every two, four, six years? Or all the gerrymandering, voter suppression tactics and dirty procedural tricks to undermine much-needed legislation?

Most Americans take a very simplistic, “faith-based” approach if you will, to American elections, in that they assume whoever gets the most votes should win. Afterall, that “only seems right, it only seems fair.”

But not to Donald Trump, the whiney little Richie Rich who’s perpetually entitled to never have to play by the rules the rest of us do. And now he has infected an entire major political party with his ethos of cheating at everything he does, something I only made a joking reference to six years ago.

For Republicans and Christian Dominionists, if thwarting the “will of the people,” ignoring the “consent of the governed,” subverting the “rule of law” for the benefit of a new (and far worse) King George[3] is necessary, then so be it. If Pharisaical hair-splitting, legal technicalities and torturous legal logic is necessary to get their way in a corrupt, partisan Supreme Court that they engineered, they’re fine with that too.

Just how corrupt, you might ask? This utter takedown by John Oliver will explain it all to you.

What once was their glory, an America “where at least I know I’m free,” is now their shame. All in blind subservience to a bald-faced liar under the control of an ex-KGB spymaster, and decades of false religious doctrines built one upon the another into “another Jesus, another Spirit and another gospel” (II Cor 11:4).

Both these elements, the political and religious, are staying as quiet as possible, playing dumb about their intentions, pretending they would “never, ever do something so outrageous” as to throw the people’s choice “back to the states.” Yet their record betrays them. As Chris Hayes explains so well in this video, they’ve been doing this at least since the 2000 election, and kept doing it because no one has stopped them.

The Evolution of MAGA Man

Ever since the incarnation of Donald Trump into the unstable soul of American Confederate Christianity (II Pet 2:14), there’s been a heightened discussion about masculinity, about the need for someone who’s “tough.” Indeed, it seems to be the consistent bottom line for all who are taken in by this epic con man. I find it ironic then, that one of the most powerful men in this “intersectionality” of insurgent religion and “show them who’s boss” politics has turned out to be the boyish-looking and nebbish personality of Mike Johnson.

That is no slam on Johnson as being “less than a man.” I take no pleasure in this modern-day pretentious parade of thuggery that passes for “what it means to be a man,” by faulting someone for not looking the part. God has after all, created a vast array of personalities within the male and female roles, all of which are more or less according to gender. Not every man is a Dwayne Johnson, a Mike Tyson, or whatever your ideal of “a man’s man” is. Nor is every woman a Dolly Parton, or whatever your conception of a feminine woman might be.

I take one look at Mike Johnson though, and can practically read his life. He was probably bullied or belittled growing up, which always causes me to wonder, what if, in any way, might such a person try to get back at the world? Indeed, “conservative,” “punishment-oriented,” sadistic circles especially seem to attract these kinds of personalities,[4] the nerdy Addison Mitchell McConnell III coming to mind a lot lately.  

For Mike Johnson, I’m sure he may have felt quite conflicted as a boy between the Christian ideals he was taught and possibly being bullied. Getting back through a career in law may have been his solution. It was Johnson after all, the MAGA Christian Dominionist from Louisiana, who spearheaded a Congressional effort to support Trump’s transparent Big Lie. He is as the Brennan Center so succinctly put it, “a sharp-witted, bespectacled, smiling extremist.”

They left out one adjective I would add—maybe actually more than one—smug, transparently insincere, compromised. I could think of a whole lot more. Johnson, for all of his pretentious piety, is just another form of what afflicts all history—such people are all power-mongerers. Servant-rulers they are anything but.

But now I’m devolving into mere ranting. At any rate, to hold our collective breath hoping this guy will “do the right thing” after the next election may get you dead from asphyxiation. But we can always hope. Or pray. You never know if he might rise to the occasion.

The Long Shadow of Putin—By Default

But all psychological speculation aside, the fact is that Mike Johnson, a believer in both the Big Lie and Donald Trump, is now the Speaker of the House, next in line of succession after the Vice-President, and able to prevent or allow any legislation to come up for a vote. Yet at a time when Ukraine was literally running out of ammunition, Johnson sent Congress home for a two-week vacation. Must be nice to get paid so much for literally refusing to do your job.

This in spite of Johnson’s claim that he’s for funding Ukraine. He’s the one person who could make it happen and yet he is doing nothing. The question is, Why?

Some say he knows the MAGA fanatics to his right have threatened to “vacate” his office (call for a vote of no confidence) if he tries to do anything to cross Trump’s plan to “make Joe Biden look bad in an election year.” Others say that he fears for his life if Trump unleashes his violent followers upon him. I would say it’s basically because Donald Trump simply controls the House Republicans, and his will be done.

This is the kind of proxy power this man exercises over our fates now. Myself, I would like to know if it’s because Trump has dossiers on all of them? All those files he took with him may not have only included top national security secrets Vladimir Putin would pay billions for, but the kind of kompromat I’m sure Putin holds over Trump’s head. As Putin has done unto him, maybe he is doing unto his own party. Bottomline, could there be anyone in the world more pleased than the guy in the Kremlin to see us in such a state of chaos?

Mike Johnson’s ascension to such a powerful (yet powerless) position I’m sure is seen by Dominionist Christians as the favor of God. It is of course nothing of the sort, but just more Divinely-sent delusion (II Thess 2:11), as they lay under Trump’s spell.

A Lot More Needs To Be Said

Between the last two articles, I’ve become aware that I need to write a series on this last-days “damnable heresy” called Dominionism (II Pet 2:1). It may take a number of installments and may seem like too much religious doctrine or theory. That’s why I like to keep my eye on politics, because as mysterious as it can be at times, it is still easier to figure out what’s going on, compared to the vagaries of religious theory.

Please pray I’ll find the time (and motivation) to slog my way through it. Maybe it will help some people see the difference between a true and false Kingdom of God.

Notes:

[1] A tare is a plant that looks just like wheat until just before the harvest, then they suddenly turn black, a type of apostasy.

[2] Thom Hartmann, “The New “Over the Top” Secret Plan on How Fascists Could Win in 2024.” https://hartmannreport.com/p/the-new-over-the-top-secret-plan-518

[3] That’s of course utterly unfair to King George. His “tyranny” was as a jaywalking ticket compared to the pathological narcissism of Donald Trump, the full depths of his psychological potential only getting started.

[4] A long list of sociopaths come to mind here, all of whom were short (Putin, Stalin, Goebbels, Robespierre, Lenin, Franco, Kim Jong Un, Pol Pot, Napoleon, Charles Manson, etc), or nerdy, or bullied, etc.