What Johnson offered wasn’t candor, it was cognitive evasion. From a behavioral lens, his hot mic moment reveals the architecture of complicity: acknowledge dysfunction, then deflect responsibility through false equivalence. “Both sides” isn’t analysis. It’s a rhetorical escape hatch.
Trump’s erraticism isn’t just a personality quirk; it’s a strategic distortion of norms, accountability, and institutional guardrails. As I’ve written in Cruelty as Strategic Export, the spectacle of chaos becomes the mechanism of control. When the commander-in-chief treats governance like improv night, the real emergency isn’t the shutdown, it’s the erosion of shared reality.
Thanks for keeping the lens sharp.
— Johan
Professor of Behavioral Economics and Applied Cognitive Theory
It also seems to be fear of reprisal in much the same way as Trump has wrongfully expressed his hate. But we are thick skinned and know that eventually he’ll go the way of every human being. What kind of world we want to leave behind?
Look, the mad wannabe dictator IS the joke except that the millions of federal public servants who are suffering from the shutdown are not laughing (including the military). Oh, they'll be fine and will be paid for their time off when the government finally reopens I'm told. Well, according to the rantings of the orange-faced clown, he's going to somehow figure out how to deny federal employees who are Democrats their backpay. Who shall deliver us from this turbulent lunatic?
Someone needs to test Trump's sense of humor and flood the zone with a Trump 2028 image of him, pantsless, in a diaper, hunched over a walker with his trademark suit jacket and extendo red tie on top, line of drool descending from his mouth and a Trump 2028 hat perched on his head. Bet that legendary sense of humor will kick right in.
This shit is not funny. It’s mean. It’s hateful. It’s bigoted. It’s insulting. Anyone who condones it or passes it off as a joke is no better than the person who disseminated it. And, further, if it resonates with you, please look in the mirror and see someone who needs a better education in the differences between right and wrong. If you’re not sure, you’re welcome to join us on October 18 and see how people who truly love this country express themselves as we assemble to send a big message to Trump and his lackeys: NIMBY
Rosaline, in Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost, tells the careless jokester Berowne, "A jest's prosperity lies in the ear / Of him that hears it, never in the tongue / Of him that makes it."
What Johnson offered wasn’t candor, it was cognitive evasion. From a behavioral lens, his hot mic moment reveals the architecture of complicity: acknowledge dysfunction, then deflect responsibility through false equivalence. “Both sides” isn’t analysis. It’s a rhetorical escape hatch.
Trump’s erraticism isn’t just a personality quirk; it’s a strategic distortion of norms, accountability, and institutional guardrails. As I’ve written in Cruelty as Strategic Export, the spectacle of chaos becomes the mechanism of control. When the commander-in-chief treats governance like improv night, the real emergency isn’t the shutdown, it’s the erosion of shared reality.
Thanks for keeping the lens sharp.
— Johan
Professor of Behavioral Economics and Applied Cognitive Theory
Former Foreign Service Office
It also seems to be fear of reprisal in much the same way as Trump has wrongfully expressed his hate. But we are thick skinned and know that eventually he’ll go the way of every human being. What kind of world we want to leave behind?
Look, the mad wannabe dictator IS the joke except that the millions of federal public servants who are suffering from the shutdown are not laughing (including the military). Oh, they'll be fine and will be paid for their time off when the government finally reopens I'm told. Well, according to the rantings of the orange-faced clown, he's going to somehow figure out how to deny federal employees who are Democrats their backpay. Who shall deliver us from this turbulent lunatic?
Excellent article. Thank you. Trump has no sense of humor. This is driving his vengeance against everyone who ever “wronged him” in his eyes.
Mike Johnson is the biggest hypocrite. He needs to read his Bible more closely.
I see no evidence that Mike Johnson has ever read the Bible.
Someone needs to test Trump's sense of humor and flood the zone with a Trump 2028 image of him, pantsless, in a diaper, hunched over a walker with his trademark suit jacket and extendo red tie on top, line of drool descending from his mouth and a Trump 2028 hat perched on his head. Bet that legendary sense of humor will kick right in.
Trump has a great sense of humor, they say. But if that were truly the case he would be able to laugh at himself.
This shit is not funny. It’s mean. It’s hateful. It’s bigoted. It’s insulting. Anyone who condones it or passes it off as a joke is no better than the person who disseminated it. And, further, if it resonates with you, please look in the mirror and see someone who needs a better education in the differences between right and wrong. If you’re not sure, you’re welcome to join us on October 18 and see how people who truly love this country express themselves as we assemble to send a big message to Trump and his lackeys: NIMBY
Rosaline, in Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost, tells the careless jokester Berowne, "A jest's prosperity lies in the ear / Of him that hears it, never in the tongue / Of him that makes it."