It’s bad enough that Monae Johnson booted veteran chief elections officer Kea Warne from the Secretary of State’s office. It’s even worse that Johnson hires Logan Manhart, an extremist twenty-something election denier with no experience working in government and who just last year violated the very election laws that his boss is supposed to oversee:
Brown County Republican Logan Manhart announced via social media Tuesday that he’s taken a position within the office of Secretary of State Monae Johnson, who rode election integrity stump speeches to an upset of fellow GOP member Steve Barnett at last year’s state convention.
“A year ago, I decided I wanted to serve in Pierre,” read a post on a social media account registered to Manhart on Tuesday morning. “Though perhaps not in the capacity I originally intended, I am excited to start my new job in the South Dakota Secretary of State’s Office” [Joe Sneve, “Republican Who Violated Residency Rule Tapped to Work in Secretary of State’s Office,” Dakota Scout, 2023.01.04].
Sneve notes that Secretary Johnson has for weeks ignored his requests for information about whom she’s hiring, which suggests Johnson is either trying to keep her bad choices secret or just doesn’t care about open government.
Manhart participated in the January 6, 2021, protests at the United States Capitol that erupted into the violent insurrection against the government. A year later, Manhart celebrated that insurrection as a protest conducted “peacefully and patriotically… for a cause we believed in.” That “cause” was the overturning of a free and fair election. Manhart will now help fellow election-denier Johnson run South Dakota’s elections.
I’ll present some wisdom from years of dealing with people like Manhart. Work gives people a sense of self-worth and belonging. Work is rehabilitative and good for mental health. Work is probably the best therapy there is for young males like Manhart. Just looking at some of his social media postings makes me realize that he has no real direction. He has a lot of unrealistic dreams and his many of his thoughts are not based on reality. He’s reaching out for anything that can give him a sense of worth and belonging. Some young males like Manhart find that in gangs or with other criminal elements. Some find Alice and descend down the rabbit hole of drugs. Others end up in the deep end of religious or political cults. Manhart has been dipping his toes into the shallow end of righty conspiracy theories. While a job might provide him with a better way to find self-worth, he seems to have gravitated to a person and position that may lead him farther down the line toward self-ruin. For his sake, he might be better off with a real job.
It is fascinating, yet not surprising to watch how the election deniers and fascists are ripping apart the republican party that foolishly catered to them.
“McCarthy is in full agreement with the anti-democratic views of this group. He was among the 147 House Republicans who voted to overturn the 2020 election in the immediate aftermath of the Capitol attack. . . . There’s no real daylight between the foaming-at-the-mouth fascists and McCarthy, much less other GOP leaders like Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, a shameless coup booster and reborn Trump loyalist, and Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, who once described himself as “David Duke without the baggage.” Recognizing this, some political observers have started describing the fight as “personal,” as if the anti-Kevins just don’t like the guy. But that’s not plausible either, since the common factor uniting the 20 or 21 holdouts is not personality type but the fact that they come from safe seats in deep-red districts. These folks are far more worried about losing a primary to someone who runs on a more-fascist-than-thou platform than about losing to a Democrat.” . . .
“Fascists are a bunch of trolls who are never satisfied. They must always prove their power by ganging up on someone who’s been cast as an “outsider.” As the Atlantic’s Adam Serwer famously observed, “The cruelty is the point.””
https://www.salon.com/2023/01/05/mccarthy-debacle-comes-with-a-lesson-theres-a-downside-to-being-a-party-of-fascist/
It remains to be seen whether the South Dakota government is able to keep its fascists in a cage.
As mentioned yesterday, John Boehner, in addition to that statement that: “ “What they’re really interested in is chaos,” wrote Boehner. “They want to throw sand in the gears of the hated federal government until it fails and they’ve finally proved that it’s beyond saving.”
He also highlighted the role that Fox News and other right-wing media played in this role by essentially rewarding Republicans who work to sabotage any effort at governance.
“What they’re really interested in is chaos … They want to throw sand in the gears of the hated federal government until it fails and they’ve finally proved that it is beyond saving. Every time they vote down a bill, they get another invitation to go on Fox News or talk radio. It’s a narcissistic – and dangerous – feedback loop.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/passage-from-john-boehners-memoir-comes-back-to-haunt-kevin-mccarthy/ar-AA15WLSG
I actually don’t believe chaos is what they want. What I do believe is that attention makes them feel special and that being the darling of an increasingly unhinged base is substituted for governance.
Dangerous ground.
Kevin McCarthy, “he’s irrelevant now, a vestige of the Crazypants era of lawlessness and nihilism. We’ve moved on to the next era, the post-Crazypants era, in which various unqualified gun nuts and racists vie for the empty throne, without either the purse or the limited vision of the reality show star who came before them. None of the disruptors care about much of anything at this juncture. Whether the prospect of Trumpism without Trump chills you or relieves you, the fact is that that MAGA faction that has stymied the transition to a GOP-led House is essentially leaderless—but it is also powerful.”
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/01/mccarthy-speaker-vote-jan-sixth-again.html?via=rss_socialflow_twitter
Chaos is the medium it uses to alter reality. Memetic tactics use this subtly with laughter. Laughter is a low-dose of deranged chaos. Through laughing at hateful memes, we are insidiously engineering our society. Chaos is a very useful tool for evil-doers.
January 6th was a chaotic victory that opened the gates of hell. Just one perspective to consider if you look into the ancient Egyptian god Kek, who happens to be a frog which Pepe, 4chans hitler hater frog meme mascot, used to go viral through memetic magik so trump could be elected. Don’t judge, its just a possibility.
Give him a chance, too. Maybe the Peter Principle will be wrong twice in the same office?
Mccarthy has whiffed form then8th time in congress. Face it, magats can’t govern.
ND Senator Kevin Cramer has a V-8 moment:
“What have we become as a political party when 20 people can rule 200 others against their will. Certainly not conservative.”
So whines a senator from the US minority party as contrast to the popular votes and US citizen priorities and desires.
John, South Dakota Republicans don’t put fascists in cages. They put fascists in government jobs.
Gotta clean up those roles.
My money rolls and rolls and flows and flows everybody knows through the holes in the pockets in my clothes.
Clean up the roles? Clean government requires hiring clean government workers. Secretary Johnson has failed that test by hiring Manhart.