SUMMARY: Let’s take a closer look at Speaker Johnson’s belief that democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding on what’s for dinner. Sure it sounds bad for the lamb, but he means much much more than that. He’s telling us that he doesn’t believe in any of the safeguards of minority points-of-view built into our Constitution or system. Applying his view to gun legislation, it becomes clear why we have 48,000 gun deaths per year and more mass shootings than days in a year and no attempt at curtailing the slaughter: gerrymandering and anti-democratic views. He also gives us our solution: don’t vote wolves into office.
KEY WORDS: Democracy, Wolves, Lambs, Analogy, Gerrymandering, Compromise, Mike Johnson, Gun Legislation, Get Out The Vote, Majority Rule,, Minority Protections
COMMENT: Please share your thoughts and opinions on how our democracy protects the rights of the minority from abuse from the majority and Republican plans to subvert them. I’d love to hear from you!
The Two Wolves and a Lamb Analogy is the New MAGA Kobayashi Maru
Mike Johnson famously once described democracy as two wolves and a lamb trying to decide on what to have for dinner. Do you see what he did there? He don’t mean no lamb like it were some common garden-variety Jesus symbol. He means it as the lily white hairy asses of rural white Christians.
As most over simplistic analogies go, it is very convincing, especially to those who are fearing becoming the minority. He wants you to fear the Other. He wants you to fear democracy because the Other is fixing to become the majority, the hungry wolf who is going to eat you for dinner, in case you missed that part.
Of course, he don’t tell you that for the past 275 years it has been his lily-white hairy-assed Christians who have been in the majority and have been eating all the Other lambs they can sink their mangy teeth into.
It is an interesting and useful analogy for old Mangy Mike to make because it may be the exception to the analogy rule that they all eventually breakdown. And, there is a bonus here: it explains why we can’t have nice things like common sense gun law reforms.
COMMENTS, PLEASE! Let me know what you think of Mike Johnson so far as Speaker and his take on democracy!
The Two GREAT Big Flaws in the Two Wolves and a Lamb Analogy
This analogy is as fundamentally flawed and dishonest as the modern Republican party is. There are two great big problems with this explanation of democracy.
The Danger of the Rule of 50% and a Hair or the Brexit Example
First, Mangy Mike ain’t telling you his plan for democracy: two lambs and a wolf deciding on dinner. See what I did there? It don’t matter who’s deciding what’s for dinner if one of the group is a wolf, right? Guess who the wolf is in Mike’s mind?
When democracy is conceived of as simply being majority rule, you can get majorities to go along with just about anything: Brexit, slavery, witch burning, Jim Crow laws. See, how dangerous democracy can be when it is conceived of as simply being 50% and a hair?
Lucky for us that isn’t how our democracy is conceived of, and no, we’re not talking representative democracy and our republic and all of that pedantic hair-splitting the right seems to think pwns the libs.
COMMENT PLEASE: Democracy isn’t the best form of government, it is better than all of the other forms. What do you think of democracy versus other forms and how can we make it work better?
It’s The Bill of Rights, Stupid
Second, Mangy Mike is replacing the Bill of Rights with a big old fat bill o’ goods. The idea, as imperfectly as it has been implemented, is that the Bill of Rights protects all of us US American rights regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude — yes, I know that is the Fifteenth Amendment (I linked to it, right?) but more perfect union and all of that.
Our Founding Fathers realized that a simple majority could run roughshod over a large majority if it were only a simple majority required for anything to happen, so they built safeguards into the Constitution to help protect minority rights — people with an opinion that did not achieve the 50% majority threshold; it’s not a race thing. Later when the whole slavery thing — which was a race thing — was resolved so that we would be more closely aligned with that vaunted Christian value, what you do the least of my people, you do unto me and do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Funny, how neither of them forms the foundation of any Christian Nationalist law.
Compromise with the Minority is the Only Way for Democracy to Work
The Founders realized that if the minority is treated badly enough, they will eventually revolt. The way to keep a functional democracy is to balance the desires of the majority with the needs of the minority, and that is the great Republican sin of compromise.
What do you do when you are the two ravening wolves stuffing yourselves full of lambs just as fast as you can, and you realize that no matter how many or how fast you gobble up those lambs, they are going to out number you and soon? You gerrymander yourself a majority so that it don’t matter how many lambs there are, you still get to vote to eat them all up and it is “legal.” Remember, slavery was legal agreed to by a majority of those who enacted the laws to keep it and enforce it.
COMMENT: I’ve been harping on about the role of compromise and protections for minority viewpoints for years. Let me know what you think of both points. I’d love to hear from you!
Gerrymandering Threatens Democracy: the Gun Laws Example
Gerrymandering is fundamentally anti-democratic, despite the SCOTUS opinion that there is no role for the courts in deciding political gerrymanders, because it promotes minority rule and circumvents the opinion of the majority. No where is this clearer than in the lack of gun laws in our country and the yearly quota of 48,000 real live dead Americans shot real live dead every year. All the trumpeting pundits on the boobtube tell us that 80% of Americans want gun laws to be enacted, but we don’t. It must be the NRA!
The Daily Double: Mass Shootings and Inaction on Gun Legislation
Yes, the NRA plays a role, but the back of the NRA has been broken — thanks Moms Demand Action. So, if it ain’t the NRA that is keeping the legislators enthralled and bending them to their will, what is? It is the freaking gerrymander that keeps MAGA majorities in districts so that Republicans everywhere can be threatened with being primaried from the right. Because we all know the first rule of democracy is that the most important thing is that you, elected official, remain in office.
White Christian Nationalism is Fundamentally Anti-Democratic and Fascist
What it gets down to is that White Christian Nationals are fundamentally anti-democratic. They have the righteous knowledge that theirs is the one true belief and way. They don’t need no stinking majority of votes, they have the billion votes that gawd gets on their side. They KNOW they are right and good. They KNOW everything they do is good. They KNOW that if any of their beliefs or actions or laws causes harm to someone it is because that someone is a weak sinner that gawd has struck down with the fateful lightning of their terrible swift sword.
The short version is, hate the sin, punish the sinner, as long as I’m deciding what is sin and who the sinners are, which brings us back to wolves.
COMMENT: Tell me what you think causes the huge disparity in polling opinions on issues like gun regulation, LGBTQ+ rights, and pro-choice laws and the laws our legislatures enact?
Making Democracy Work: Rejecting the Wolves
You cannot make a democracy with wolves, meaning anyone who is refusing to compromise on the important issues of the day. Anyone who insists that they have all the right solutions and we’ve all got to go along with them or they are going to kick over our sandcastle, take their toys, and tell their mom on us, is not democratic.
Mangy Mike and his Mangy MAGA Republicans are telling us exactly who they are. They will either be the wolves voting themselves a lamb dinner with an outright majority, the wolf voting itself a lamb dinner with a gerrymandered majority, or the wolf that just eats the damn lamb with or without a majority because Second Fucking Amendment come get me coppers, fuck you.
The solution, as always, is to make democracy work. Rule number one is vote! Rule number two is don’t vote for the wolves. And, rule number three is volunteer for GotV efforts and get as many of the irregular voters to the polls as possible.
Whether you agree or disagree with what I’m saying here, you’ve somehow arrived at this point in the post — bloody miracle, know what I mean? — so it means something. Maybe it means you’d be willing to do me a solid and do one of these things:
- SHARE this blog post on your favoritest social media, or re-blog it far and wide on your favoritest blogs, or just read it aloud on public transportation — but don’t get arrested, okay?
- LIKE or RATE this blog post using the handy-dandy buttons at the top and bottom of the post. And, you don’t even need to be signed into a WordPress account to leave a rating.
- COMMENT: Respond to one of my commenting suggestions in the blog or tell me some random thought you’re having right now! I’d love to hear from you.
- FOLLOW the blog or join the nearly four dozen email subscribers that we have!
Image Attribution
This image was generated using Poe’s StableDiffusionXL bot using the prompt, A film noir movie poster for a movie called “Who’s for Dinner?” with two werewolves stalking a lamb
The Psy of Life 
Democracy, when properly functioning, is messy, complicated, requires a lot of critical thinking by a lot of people, demands that citizens accept responsibility for decisions, and nobody ever gets everything they want. Given all that, I’m reminded often of a quote:
“Democracy is a poor system of government at best; the only thing that can honestly be said in its favor is that it is eight times as good as any other method the human race has ever tried.” — Robert A. Heinlein
And then, there is this one:
“If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates and no measures you want to vote for … but there are certain to be ones you want to vote against. In case of doubt, vote against. By this rule you will rarely go wrong.” — Robert A. Heinlein
Gerrymandering really is deadly poison for real democracy, and the system of closed party primary elections makes it even worse. Unfortunately, actually drawing fairly representative districts that a vast majority with competing interests will agree are fair is no easy thing, or even technically obvious. Even so, leaving that function in the hands of elected officials is just plain stupid. The temptation to self-servingly manipulate the process is too powerful.
I come back around to that second quote. This next election in particular is a time for voting against. Otherwise, it could be the last chance for a very long time to cast a genuinely meaningful vote, not just performing an empty ritual of pseudo-democracy.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Howdy Bob!
Your list of things that democracy requires is antithetical to being human. We don’t respond well to having great cognitive demands placed upon us.
In some ways the geography of culture holds some keys to our struggles. Some of the most successful democracies are in Scandinavian countries. Their institutions enculturate new individuals with their democratic ideals and norms much like our institutions enculturate new comers to our systemic racism and questionable democratic ideals and norms.
The tragedy of our current round of authoritarianism is that it has set us so far back in our process of changing our culture into being more egalitarian. We had solid data coming out of several sociological studies of racial beliefs and perceptions that strongly suggested the younger generation were much less racist. I wonder if that could possibly still be true or if the fascists among us succeed, it if matters.
The more I study upon it, the more it seems to me that institutional change is key to perpetuating culture. If you want to truly change culture, you change the way institutions work.
Huzzah!
Jack
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, the institutions are the key. The development of our system of public education was driven by two needs, the industrial need for workers with basic literacy, and the acculturation of immigrant populations. The authoritarians have always strongly favored a sharply hierarchical and class stratified educational system, working against upward mobility. The current attacks on public education, including an eventual goal of dismantling it in favor of private (you get only as much education as you can afford) and ecclesiastical education (either in church schools or home schooling) at public expense, aim at both limiting upward mobility and fracturing social consensus on democratic and egalitarian values.
The younger generation will be telling us in upcoming elections, including the ones tomorrow, how much success the fascists are having with them. It has been observed that polling results tend to leave them out because standard methods, like calling land line phones, don’t reach them well.
So, institutional change is needed. Perhaps, in some ways “restoration” might be a better word. The list of the institutions needing attention isn’t very long.
Public Education –
– No more vouchers
– Teaching truthful history
– Civics curriculum
– Practicing critical thinking
Politics and elections
– ending Gerrymandering
– Open primaries (rank choice?)
– getting the dark money out
– the Democratic party rebuilding it’s alliance with a reinvigorated organized labor
Serious progress in reducing income and wealth inequality.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Howdy Bob!
That’s the conservative approach to life, isn’t it? You get only as much as you can afford, whether it is education, healthcare, food, housing, and other necessities of life. And, Nestles wants to own the world’s potable water supply. So, there you have it.
Because the list of institutions where the kind of culture that the conservatives want is so short, it is why we’re seeing such a fierce fight over libraries, books, and school boards.
The recent elections bode well for 2024 and democracy, if not Biden and the Democrats. People are voting for rights, like abortion and LGBTQ+ rights. School board elections — the few I’ve seen reported on — have gone in the right direction. In fact, everywhere people can vote against the Republican agenda, they have, excepting Mississippi, of course.
Huzzah!
Jack
LikeLiked by 1 person
In that conservative approach, don’t forget rights. You get to have rights if you can pay enough politicians, judges, and lawyers.
The elections did turn out well. Now,it is up to the Democrat party to drive home the connection between their candidates (Joe Biden in particular) and those rights versus the clear Republican agenda.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Howdy Bob!
Wasn’t that Beshear’s route to victory in deep red Kentucky? He ran on being prochoice and his economic accomplishments in the state. In his victory speech, he said you had to be for something and had to have a platform to run on and not just be against Republicans and MAGA. I think as the year progresses, and Biden’s campaign gets rolling that will be the strategy.
Everyone has underestimated Biden since that first Democratic debate, but he has been remarkably effective. He has a solid team around him. Trump will only become more shrill and demanding as his trials advance even if they don’t get convictions before election day.
Right now Trump is in the news A LOT. His grievance messaging and his plaintive cries of being treated unfairly are falling on receptive ears, but I think non-MAGA America (70 – 75%) of us still trust the justice system enough that if he is found guilty or liable, we will accept those outcomes.
Huzzah!
Jack
PS You’re right about rights being on the for sale list along with foreign policy.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That is one way to interpret the results on Tuesday, that being for things can beat being against things.
And, it just struck me that conservatives don’t deal in rights. They deal in privileges.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Howdy Bob!
That was Nelson Mandela’s interpretation: Rights that are not shared by everyone are just privileges.
I hope that Beshear’s victory can break through the usual hysteria of the political press hoping to hype a horse race.
Huzzah!
Jack
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m not sure most of the political press knows any frame for an electoral competition other than as a “race”. There are a few exception in the language like “landslide” from geology, and “wipe-out” from surfing.
Listening to the morning news, the only things of note in the GOP debate are that Trump wasn’t there and Haley and Ramaswami really don’t like each other.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Howdy Bob!
I’ve heard a few pundits talking about Beshear’s approach to winning Kentucky and how his deliverables won him Trump counties that he lost the first time around. I’m cautiously hopeful that as IRA funding ramps up and the economy improves even more Biden’s approval rating will rise. There is a lag between increasing government spending and starting these programs and people feeling it in their economic lives.
It is pretty clear at this point that the Republican “primary” isn’t really a primary. i wonder what the viewership for the “debate” was. Will the next TV host think it is worth the expense and trouble of going through with it?
Huzzah!
Jack
LikeLiked by 1 person
Being able to tell people that you got them things they can see in their world and wallet is a huge advantage for any candidate. On the other hand, with the abortion issue, the GOP are trying to make people happy about having taken away something they had come to take for granted. That’s a much harder sell.
I’m sure that if you asked most MAGAs how much the Trump tax cut saved them, they would say, “A lot!”. The next question, “Well, how much, how many dollars?” would stump them.
I hear pundits clinging to the idea that the Candidates in the debates are actually shooting for the VP slot. Sorry, Donald is not going to have somebody running for his VP who ran against him. He will want a totally loyal sock puppet with zero charisma.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Howdy Bob!
They’ve all “criticized” Trump too much for him to do anything more than what he did to Romney when he “offered” him secretary of state. He won’t make the mistake of getting a Pence as his VP, either. It is odd that Steve Bannon really pushed Pence on him. I’ve always wondered what the story was there. There had to be a quid pro quo of some kind.
For MAGA it isn’t how much Trump has done for them, it is what he’s done to the people they hate and if it means a few of them are worse off because of it, it’s worth it. The widespread misinformation and misunderstanding of how our government works and demographics is amazing. I still remember their twisted thoughts on how… according to Arlie Hochschild they believe the jobs and economic surplus that the industries and corporations “provide” is worth the sacrifice of living in Cancer Alley. It all seemed so very weird and sad.
Huzzah!
Jack
LikeLiked by 1 person
Well, this is the same people who say slavery was a benefit to the slaves because they “learned skills”. If you can condition people to be grateful to their masters for the crumbs from their tables, that is the kind of thinking you get. It’s the same system that gives us “Right to Work” laws. There is the myth of the Job Creators that goes with trickle down. The deep frame is dependency on the oligarchs.
There may well have been some quid pro quo involved in Bannon pushing Pence, but I think it was maybe more about getting Trump solidly welded to the evangelicals. Alas for Trump, Pence turned out to actually have a conscience when it counted.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Howdy Bob!
It is the same out of touch with reality approach, which is characteristic of abused people. It’s one of the reasons that I’ve started looking towards behavioral economics to explain political decision making. Economists generally believe that individuals are highly rational actors and will make rational decisions using all factors, but they aren’t. They are emotional actors who make emotional decisions using information that is immediately available.
The trick that the Republicans have pulled off and that their constituents have done to themselves is that they’ve warped the immediately available information used to make emotional decisions. When your constituents want to believe the worst about people, and you give them the worst things to believe, it makes the process that much easier to achieve. The approach is the perfect storm with racism.
Huzzah!
Jack
LikeLike
All the research on the cognitive and emotional consequences of child abuse points in that direction. The lead item in my SCRAPINGS tonight speaks to exactly that too.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Howdy Bob!
One of the reasons the severely abused seem so out of touch with reality is that they keep trying to predict the things that will set off their abuser. They keep thinking — and often being told — that if they would just behave correctly, the abuser wouldn’t abuse them. Gaslighting, of course, works in this way, too.
We need that cause and effect feedback loop to cope with the world. When we help people get jobs, they make and spend money, which helps the economy. We need to trust the data because the feedback loops are a lot more complex than any one person can comprehend.
Huzzah!
Jack
LikeLike
Exactly!
LikeLiked by 1 person