[Please note: The word “Featured” on the left side above was NOT inserted by this blogger, but apparently was inserted by WordPress, and it cannot be removed. NO post in this blog is sponsored.]
The Book of the Week is “Mad House” by Annie Karni and Luke Broadwater, published in 2025.
This volume focused on the shenanigans involving Mike Johnson’s eventually becoming the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives during Donald Trump’s first and Joseph Biden’s terms. Children masquerading as lawmakers, due to a razor-thin GOP majority in the House, acquired a disproportionate amount of power.
“The ‘little bitch’ remark became an emblematic moment of the Congress: two MAGA mean girls [Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene] fighting loudly on the floor of the House, over who had the right to call a baseless, attention-seeking impeachment of [Joseph] Biden her own.”
The GOP has mastered saying all the right things– infuriating and depressing their base in a way that spurs them to vote. The GOP’s emotional messaging is most powerful because they cause their base to lose sleep. They resort to ad hominem attacks– more memorable than logical, reasonable, sensible, factual, rational arguments. Columnist Dorothy Thompson wrote in late 1944 (in reference to the decimating of Germany’s ability to make war again): “Hate is an emotion that should be confined in the heart. When it rises to the brain, the result is insanity.”
The GOP targets people in the middle of this political-emotional spectrum; the unhappy voters. Some members of this middle group protest in the streets. They revel in their anger together. Misery loves company. The media focuses on street protesters, regardless of their party, because they garner high ratings. But it’s impossible to prove how much this kind of activist accomplishes, if anything.
As an aside, activists accomplish nothing if they’re not attention whores, as the squeaky wheel gets the grease. However, there are very few concrete examples of activists who are able to prove they got legislation passed. None directly led protests in the streets without lots of additional campaign activity. Three from the past include Estes Kefauver, Saul Alinsky and Ralph Nader. To begin with, they were all white males, so they were necessarily more influential than other kinds of people. They had very specific goals, and the nation was ready to buy into their ideas.
Returning to the political-emotional spectrum: on one extreme end, are the joyful simpletons. They are happy because they are blissfully unaware of what’s going on in the world. They stay away from news on governmental goings-on, and don’t vote. Or if they do vote, they don’t think too much about for whom they’re voting, which has recently been for Republicans. For, they’ve been influenced by talking with people they know and trust, who are targeted by the GOP. Case in point: The late comedian George Carlin (a non-voter) joked, “I didn’t even leave the house on election day!”
The people on the opposite end of the spectrum, voraciously read books in order to think critically about how voters get brainwashed by candidates, a multi-disciplinary body of knowledge: psychology, sociology, history, economics, etc. They do not worry because they take the long view of history and have faith that the worm will turn. Their philosophy is, there’s nothing new under the sun and this, too, shall pass. They’re the kind who vote, but they’re loyal to neither party. They’re very cynical, but they don’t get too upset about misbehaving leaders, either. For, John Maynard Keynes said, “In the end, we’re all dead.”
In recent decades, when covering the U.S. government, the media has given disproportionate attention to the said children. There appears to be more of a focus on females, as they are still just getting their sea legs in politics. BUT, in covering their cat-fights, the media’s ulterior motives are to draw high ratings, and set the women’s movement back decades! The owners and top executives of the American media oligarchy are still mostly men. Sure, there are lots of overpaid female noisemakers– talking heads– appearing on the idiot box now, but ordinary American women are still way behind in terms of equality in so many areas of everyday American life.
The authors named names of flip-floppers– politicos who sold out and joined Trump’s crowd in order to continue their political careers (in alphabetical order):
Lauren Boebert, Tom Emmer, Nancy Mace, Kevin McCarthy, Mitch McConnell, Chip Roy, Steve Scalise, Michelle Steel, Elise Stefanik, and Marjorie Taylor Greene
Karni and Broadwater also listed the principled few who resigned rather than sell out to a dictator. The petty, vengeful and mean-of-spirit Matt Gaetz and his followers sought to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy (described as “a sensitive grudge holder”), but had no plans for the aftermath when they met with success.
All through the autumn of 2023, Republicans were trying to get their act together. Steve Scalise (a “secretive backstabber”) threw his hat into the ring. Also running for the position of House Speaker– Jim Jordan, who had supporters who made death threats against his political enemies and their families. Jordan never apologized for the trauma he caused.
Democrats didn’t want to see Jordan become Speaker, because he would put the kibosh on aid to Ukraine, and they would have to fight over the budget bill again. He wasn’t a good candidate for Speaker anyway, because he wasn’t holding anyone hostage for political favors, and he hadn’t “paid his dues” in terms of experience.
Read the book to learn much more about yet another tabloidy episode in American politics.