By Peter D’Abrosca
File this in the “cannot be made up” category.
A Democratic Congressman from Georgia who worried in 2010 that the island of Guam would tip over and capsize due to overpopulation called Trump supporters “less educated,” among a litany of other condescension on Tuesday.
“The Jewish people understand tyranny. Charismatic and a good public speaker, deceptive and cunning, Adolf Hitler rose to power to lead Germany in 1932 after Democratic elections. He rode a wave of nationalism and anti-Semitism to power. Replace anti-Semitism with Latinos crossing our borders – rapists drug dealers and murderers. Does that sound familiar?” said Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) at the Atlanta NAACP 2019 Jubilee celebration.
“The same trend towards authoritarian rule, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, is playing out right here at home. Americans elected an authoritarian, anti-immigrant, racist strong-man to the nation’s highest office,” he continued.
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The beginning part of Johnson’s speech is confusing. For the past three years, Americans have been told by the mainstream press and their friends in the Democratic Party that Trump is uncharismatic, a horrible public speaker and too stupid to hold the office of President. But Johnson completely flipped that narrative to make a Trump/Hitler comparison befitting of the simpletons who have been electing him for years.
“Donald Trump and his Make America Great Again followers who want to return America back to a time when white men and white privilege were unchallenged, and where minorities and women were in their place. These folks now control the highest office of the land,” he said.
And then, the whopper.
“Donald Trump supporters are older, less educated, less prosperous, and they are dying early. Their life spans are decreasing, and many are dying from alcoholism, drug overdoses, liver disease, or simply a broken heart caused by economic despair,” he claimed without providing evidence.
Gratuitous, factually unprovable insults aside, what did Johnson mean by “less educated?” Less educated than whom, exactly? Than Hank Johnson? The congressman who, in 2010, worried that the island of Guam would physically tip over and capsize from overpopulation, apparently failing to understand the concept of… land?
That actually happened during a House Armed Services Committee hearing.
“In a discussion regarding a planned military buildup on the Pacific island, Johnson expressed some concerns about the plans to Adm. Robert Willard, head of the U.S. Pacific fleet,” CBS said at the time.
He expressed his concerns thusly:
Johnson: This is a [sic], uh, island, that at its widest level is what, 12 miles from shore to shore, and at its smallest level, or smallest, uh, uh, uh, location, it’s uh, seven miles, uh between one shore and the other, is that correct?
Willard: I don’t have the exact, uh, dimensions, but to your point, I think, sir, Guam is a small island.
Johnson: Very small island – and about 24 miles, if I recall, long – so 24 miles long, about seven miles wide at the least widest, uh place on the island and about 20, about 12 miles wide, uh, uh, on the widest part of the island. And um, I don’t know how many square miles that that is, do you happen to know?
Willard: I don’t have that figure with me sir. I can certainly supply it to you if you’d like.
Johnson: “Yeah. My fear is, uh, that, uh, the whole island will become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize.”
Willard: “We don’t anticipate that.”
Kudos to the Admiral for not bursting out in laughter at Johnson’s stupidity. But Johnson as the audacity to call Trump supporters stupid? To intimate that somehow he is more enlightened than them? And not just some of them – but all of them?
His ignorance is a symptom of a larger problem of D.C. politics. Our institutions that put people like Johnson in power are meritocracies that do not require any merit at all. Simply the correct scripted talking points and enough donor cash to the do the bidding of the real people running the show behind the scenes will get the job done.
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