As if lost in heavenly clouds, House Speaker Mike Johnson’s financial disclosure lacks bank accounts. Retirement funds. Bitcoin. Piggy banks. (To recall a W.C. Fields brushoff, one wonders if all of his “assets are tied up in currency.”)
And it gets worse. Trying to forestall graft, the law commands US Reps to report “gifted travel.” For instance, if a well-heeled nexus for power brokers (viz. the Council for National Policy, or CNP) has comped a 2019 journey on Mike’s part from DC to New Orleans, he needs to come clean about it.
Hmm. Looks like he’s failed-or-refused to do so. According to End Citizens United’s Tiffany Muller, that means the rising star who’s now two heartbeats from our White House has wafted above the law (not to say heavenward).
Meanwhile, he steers those who inquire about his biz or his politics to the Bible. So, let’s take him at his Word. Opening to Matthew 25, one can see how verses 31-46 bode “punishment” (by way of “eternal fire,” no less) for those who fail to help the needy.
Let alone those who wage war on them. To wit, Mike’s single-minded mission as a legislator. Namely, his self-righteous, arguably Satanic crusade to slash Social Security. Medicare. Medicaid. And even SNAP.
Here, the Old Testament fundamentally concurs. For instance, Deuteronomy 15:11 enjoins “open your hand wide to your brother, to the poor and the needy in your land.” (Needless to say, do NOT close your fist to punch the impoverished. The old. And the sick.)
In the end, it’s all about the power. A century or so after our Supreme Law was ratified, Britain’s John Dahlberg-Acton (aka Lord Acton) alluded to theocracy when he observed “absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Here and now, the road to perdition is blazed by aspiring right wing autocrats who foist, in effect, ‘my way or the highway to hell.’ Better late than never, let’s face it. As shown by the brazen idolatry of its gilded colossus of The Donald, CPAC bows to and serves two Masters: God and Trump (not necessarily in that order). The hard right New Apostolic Reformation (with which Speaker Mike aligns himself) seeks “Dominion” over you, me, our nation, and this world. And the Mike-funding CNP raises the titular specter in the award-winning journalist/professor/playwright/author Anne Nelson’s jaw-dropping 2020 study Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right.
But you need not bother about such stuff. After all, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. (Right?)