Speaker Johnson Background is “Bible on One Hand Shackle on Other"

  

I don’t know Mike Johnson, the brand-new speaker of the House of Representatives, but I feel as if I do because we’re from the same neck of the woods. He’s from Shreveport, in Caddo Parish, La., where I was born and where one of my brothers died.

"And for that reason, I believe that he’ll most likely be able to avoid being tagged as an extremist — at least in the short run — as America gets to know him.

In a statement after Johnson was elected speaker, the Democratic National Committee castigated him as an “election-denying, anti-abortion MAGA extremist” who was “a mastermind behind House Republicans’ efforts to overturn the 2020 election” and “is a loyal foot soldier to the real leader of the Republican Party — Donald Trump.”

All that is true, but unlike Trump’s, Johnson’s efforts to undermine American democracy are served like a comforting bowl of grits and a glass of sweet tea. He is not abrasive. He is likable.

He is from a part of the country where your nemesis will smile at you and promise to pray for you, where people will quickly submit that they “love the sinner but hate the sin,” where one hand can hold a Bible while the other holds a shackle. He is from a place where people use religion to brand their hatred as love so that they act on it cheerfully and without guilt.

He is what many have feared: an example of second-wave Trumpism — politicians rising in Trump’s wake who come with the same policy priorities and ideological proclivities, but in a far more congenial and urbane package, propelled by something more than personal grievance. Trumpism is a religion developed to serve a man. What happens when it evolves into a pillar of an established creed and is viewed as a way to serve God?"

This is part of CHARLES M. BLOW

CHARLES M. BLOW

I Grew Up in Mike Johnson’s District, 

Where Kindness Can Mask Cruelty

opinion on The New York Times.