the April 28th, 2025 edition

NF, One L
Issue #5

1. Complicity in all things is merely an accumulation of rationalizations.

2. Complicity in politics has the added (dis)advantage of requiring those rationalizations be fed on a daily basis, and the only fuel they will accept is raw chunks of soul. Is there anything left inside of Mike Johnson? Is there anything more than an imperious evangelistic smirk behind those eyes? Can he continue to smile while passing legislation that is the opposite of everything it proposes to be, while standing next to The Grifter, a man who is all the things any conservative Southern Christian would rightly flee from? Mike Johnson, worth noting, was a constitutional lawyer for two decades, working as senior legal counsel for “The Alliance To Defend Freedom”. On the ATDF website, it says their mission statement is “The protection of constitutionalism”, which is as meaningless and nebulous a bunch of bullshit as the notion of Mike Johnson retaining a scrap of soul once this is all over, if only because this will never be all over.

3. Staunch constitutionalist Mike Johnson’s law career mostly revolved around taking on Free Speech cases involving the defense of religious freedoms. Not all religious freedoms, just a form of Baptist Evangelism. Other religions requiring freedom? They can find their own Mike Johnson as wingman.

4. Mike Johnson’s Free Speech comes a-la-carte. For instance, he proclaimed during his political rise that homosexuality was “inherently unnatural” and called same-sex marriage “the dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy” that could “doom even the strongest Republic”. Sure, maybe Mike Johnson and his God of Choice are correct about both. I mean, it’s more than clear (Diddy, 700 dildos) that sexual anarchy is a huge problem in America. That’s why we had the Virgin Birth, friends, no Dark Harbinger to emerge between the legs of for us! So, Mike Johnson stands for Free Speech for everyone, as long as everyone concurs with what Deep South Louisiana Baptists find to be Acceptable Speech. Otherwise, that shit costs. And what it costs is the enforced silence of anyone not wise enough to invest in (tithes, parish bake sales) Correct Speech.

5. In terms of homosexuality and various republics doomed by it, was it Charles Nelson Reilly who jammed his ascot into the gears of Ancient Grecian political philosophy? Did the Goths sacking Rome end the thirteen-century reign of that Imperial Republic, or was it Tiberius who failed to man the gate while sniffing young men’s togas?

6. Maybe both empires were eventually destroyed by the gilded ideals they claimed to stand for politically and religiously eventually rendered fraudulent by wealth disparity and the behavior of the debauched upper classes. Or wait, is that 2025 America?

7. Maybe worth nothing that Louisiana, represented by Representative Mike Johnson, noted defender of small government and state’s rights, ranks 3rd in terms of money taken from the Federal Government. In fact, HALF of Louisiana’s budget comes via federal funding. You know, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, FEMA, education, nutritional assistance programs, infrastructure, Mardi Gras floats, etc. Plus, free abortion! Actually no, but they do mysteriously have one of the lowest rates of available contraception and school sex education while are also proudly THIRD in teen pregnancy and SECOND in sexually transmitted disease!

8. As the brilliant Supreme Court decision Citizens United made clear, gonorrhea is free speech. Also, antibiotics will not cure that "Big Beautiful Bill".

9. Before moving into the glories of public office, Mike Johnson was Dean of The Judge Paul Pressler School of Law. The vaunted JPPSOL (killer division one hoops team) was supposed to be a capstone educational achievement for the state of Louisiana, which administrators boasted would “unashamedly embrace” a “biblical worldview.” Or at least Mike Johnson's worldview. Instead, it collapsed without ever enrolling a single student or opening its doors, ultimately failing to be accredited, although remains as a proud entry on the lengthy and accomplished resume of Mike Johnson. So, kind of like Trump University, which Donald Trump, on the 2016 campaign trail said he would “NEVER settle the lawsuit over” and then three weeks after being elected settled the lawsuit for twenty-five million dollars + admitting fraud.

10. There is no ten.
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11. To be honest, it's possible there is no Mike Johnson.