Fearful Symmetry and Trembling
Mike Johnson, Fearful Speaker
“Jen Psaki, on ‘Inside with Jen Psaki’ on MSNBC, tore apart new House Speaker Mike Johnson as a radical, religiously fanatical nut job bent on bowing Americans to a brutal Bible-thumping reign. All the guy did, mind you, was pray and express his Christian faith” (Cheryl K. Chumley - The Washington Times - Thursday, November 2, 2023).
No matter where you turn, you always find a poet has been there first, found the metaphor sprouted in ancient gardens of words. If you think Walt Whitman was the first to see the the pure mystery of existence in leaves of grass, guess what, Homer saw the same leaves in the deaths of hundreds of Greek and Trojan soldiers at the hands of an immortal lawnmower. Neither poet foresaw rolls of sod.
Rolls of sod, however, bespeak future vibrant lawns. Let’s have less pure mysticism and more logical realism in the brain of our Speaker, Mike Johnson. Recently, Johnson displayed a rather serious symptom of dyscomprehensia in that he mistook a metaphor for a literal cause of material change in physical reality. In layman’s term he gave evidence of inability to distinguish a fact from an opinion and, perhaps more seriously, a fact from a fiction.
Graduates of American high schools are expected to have demonstrated proficiency in this area. In fact, the Common Core State Standards explicitly require students to provide credible proof in performance. A recent remodel of the Core website makes clear the distinction between “myth” and “fact”:
Shades of Whole Language? Mike Johnson by this standard is a few pennies short of a dollar. Recall his claim that gun violence in this country is a “problem of the heart,” and ask yourself, “Huh?” Even without bringing to bear his fear of thwarting God’s plan by handicapping Lucifer through gun laws, how can a problem in the physical world be solved through reading the Bible?
Again today, Mike Johnson revealed another symptom of discomprehensia. As you know, his first act as Speaker was an effort to thwart President Biden from success in Biden’s effort to thwart God’s plan to use Lucifer as a test of faith for a passport to heaven, a bill to fund military aid to Israel in exchange for funds already allocated to the IRS. In Mike’s brain, there would be a symmetry—pay for defense of Israel with funds for closing loopholes benefiting the super rich.
“I understand their priority is to bulk up the IRS, but I think if you put this to the American people and they weigh the two needs, I think they’re going to say standing with Israel and protecting the innocent over there is in our national interest and is a more immediate need than IRS agents,” Johnson told Fox News.
There you go.
Just in:
“But the CBO found that the IRS cuts coupled with the Israel aid would lead to a $26.8 billion decline in revenue, contradicting the stated goal of offsetting the aid. The CBO and the Treasury Department have said the funds, if left intact, would lead to tougher IRS enforcement and the collection of more tax revenues.”
