“MAGA MIKE JOHNSON”
- Post by former President Donald Trump on his social media website, Truth Social.
Credible polling data indicates that over 40% of our citizens – not a fringe minority that can be comfortably ignored — have expressed a willingness to vote for Mr. Trump if he is the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nominee. Republicans in the United States House of Representatives have elected U.S. LA Rep. Mike Johnson, whom I have seen described as, “[MAGA U.S. OH Rep.] Jim Jordan wearing a coat” and “a primary architect of the attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election,” as the Speaker of the House of Representatives. Mr. Johnson’s selection makes him, by law, second in succession to the presidency of the United States.
Long time readers of these pages may recall that way back, when Mr. Trump nominated William Barr to be his Attorney General, I indicated that we needed to give Mr. Barr a chance to see how he performed in office before declaring him Mr. Trump’s lackey.
We saw how that turned out. I don’t care if Mr. Johnson is milder in manner than Messrs. Trump and Jordan or many in their cohort. We no longer have the luxury of giving MAGAs the benefit of the doubt. Say whatever else you will about them: they make their intentions plain. They intend to institute an American Apartheid.
What is set forth below is the renowned part of one of Abraham Lincoln’s most renowned addresses, delivered on June 16, 1858, in Springfield, Illinois, over two years before he assumed the presidency. Several preliminary notes:
The italics in the passage are as they appear in the text of Mr. Lincoln’s address in the volume from which it is drawn; presumably, he had underscored them to be sure that he emphasized them as he spoke.
In his speech, Mr. Lincoln provided no attribution for the quote, “A house divided,” presumably expecting that his listeners would understand his allusion to the Gospel of Matthew, 12:25.
I have substituted for only three words Mr. Lincoln declared 165 years ago. As you read the speech, I expect that you’ll readily discern what three words I inserted – one of which is italicized, since it replaces a word Mr. Lincoln underscored in his remarks — and what three words my substitutions replaced.
“Mr. PRESIDENT and Gentlemen of the Convention.
If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.
We are now far into the fifth year, since a policy was initiated, with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to fascism agitation.
Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only, not ceased, but has constantly augmented.
In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached, and passed.
‘A house divided against itself cannot stand.’
I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half fascist and half free.
I do not expect the Union to be dissolved – I do not expect the house to fall – but I do expect that it will cease to be divided.
It will become all one thing, or all the other.
Either the opponents of fascism, will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new – North as well as South.
Have we no tendency to the latter condition?”
You get it. One could argue that Mr. Lincoln’s words (as modified herein) have chillingly broader implications for our entire democracy today than they did even in the toxic circumstances in which they were uttered. (Despite the South’s outrage at Mr. Lincoln’s election to the presidency in 1860 and its consequent attempt to secede from the Union, nobody claimed that the election outcome was “rigged,” or stormed the Capitol.)
Since we are able, in Mr. Lincoln’s words, to determine “where we are, and whither we are tending,” I would submit that we must, as he suggested, “judge what to do, and how to do it.”
All that read these pages are well aware of the deep misgivings I have about Vice President Kamala Harris’ substantive readiness to assume the presidency. That said, I am tired of democrats’ (small “d”) lack of imagination about the forces they face. As long as Mr. Johnson holds the House Speakership, President Joe Biden and Ms. Harris should never – never – allow themselves be in the same place at the same time.
As to our future: Are enough of our people sufficiently motivated to exert all legal (this qualification is vital; otherwise, neither side is better than the other) measures to protect our democracy?
McCoy's Noise 