This month’s entry for Speaker of the House is named Mike Johnson. He wasn’t easy to find. They had to take the candidates not currently foaming at the mouth and file them past a mirror in the daytime and see if any of them had a reflection.

Even his name is generic. Mike Johnson! It’s like Voldemort Legree got off the boat at Ellis Island and changed his name to Skippy Smith. Grind all the pointy edges off an authoritarian who get his orders directly from God, and you can slide him right into the speaker’s seat.

Mr. Johnson had a test of leadership right away when the daily mass-murder event, this time in Maine, turned out to be larger than usual, and he responded by helpfully declaring the problem was the human heart. This assessment represented a welcome departure, at least, from his usual wide stance, that the problem is more in the genital region.

I’m not on board with much of anything the Republican Party stands for, to say the least, but at this point I have some sympathy for the cowed majority of them who are regretting what they gave up to sell Trump their souls. They’re wringing their hands, they kind of want to get back to the small-government and fiscal-prudence goals they believe in, but their balls are on a leash and they’re being yanked around by the Satan’s Spawn contingent that is currently running the show.

My goodness, this is a party that includes people who want to build a border wall between the US and Canada, 5525 miles of razor wire sufficient to keep out grizzly bears and kilometers and socialized health care. I guess that would have to include a 1300-mile string of floaties across the Great Lakes with, what? Little prickly bits on them, or something. Still, if it stems democratic socialism, it’s worth a shot.

So what the Republicans were looking for in a Speaker was someone who did not appear, at first glance, to be a honey badger. They wanted a honey badger with big eyelashes and a calico frock. So they found someone in the party who looked like a sitcom dad but was still certifiably a fascist authoritarian, and now we have a speaker. He’s not going to enjoy himself.

Speaking of enjoying himself, Mr. Johnson (heh) and his son routinely check each other’s devices for porn. It’s something they do together, as a family. It’s a good idea. You might discover your son has found better porn than you have. I don’t really care what other people do in the privacy of their own little minds. But in a world with serious, even existential problems, I don’t trust someone who feels compelled to invent new ones. Also? I think anyone who thinks about other people’s bodies a lot should not be anywhere near the legislative body. It’s a bad sign.

And Mr. Johnson (heh) thinks about other people’s bodies a lot. He spent much of his early career worrying about homosexuals (really, I think all of America needs to have a look at his porn preferences). Still, in some ways he’s old-school. He wants to slash Social Security and Medicare and let red-blooded Americans try their luck in the rigged capitalism game and throw the dice on their health care on their own, and a lot of his colleagues agree with him. However, he brings it up in the context of abortion which, he says, has taken able-bodied blastocysts away from participating in the economy. Admitting right out loud that you want to force women to bear young to bolster the workforce, while at the same time hoping to keep out immigrants at all costs, is kind of honey-badgerish. Isn’t it? Honey badger don’t give a shit. Honey badger wants what it wants.

Yes, instead of a honey badger they needed to find a plainer weasel. Here’s where Mike Johnson comes in. But all weasels have well-developed anal glands and they like to leave a scent-mark on everything they touch. We’ll be smelling this for decades.