[Editor’s Note: In recent weeks, Speaker Mike Johnson has managed what few in modern politics could imagine: leading the House of Representatives by refusing to let it lead. “The Speaker Who Gave Up His Voice” examines this inversion of authority — how Johnson’s public piety and strategic silence have turned abdication into a governing style. It continues the Vol. 3 theme of Republican enablement, tracing how moral vacancy has become a virtue in the age of Trump.]

The Speaker Who Gave Up His Voice

It is a strange kind of patriot who silences the chamber he was elected to lead. Stranger still when he calls it virtue. Speaker Mike Johnson has found the one way to preserve unity in a divided Congress—by locking the doors, dimming the lights, and declaring the silence holy.

When the House recessed into indefinite hiatus amid the latest government shutdown, Johnson stood before the cameras with the tranquil authority of a man convinced that paralysis was providence. The New York Times called it what it was: an abdication. A self-marginalization so devout it verged on art. In the long gallery of legislative ghosts, none has looked more content to haunt himself.

The Gospel of Not Knowing

In the beginning was the Word—and the Word was “I don’t know.”

Asked about Trump’s legal threats, about the Justice Department’s demands, about the interviews, the rallies, the marching orders—Johnson repeated the new catechism of congressional submission: I don’t know. He doesn’t know what the former president says. He doesn’t know what he wants. He doesn’t know what the Speaker’s job even entails when the real decisions are being phoned in from Mar-a-Lago.

Reporters have begun compiling the supercuts. The Daily Beast laughed. MSNBC called him a “low-information Speaker.” HuffPost stitched the litany together like a Gregorian chant of ignorance. And there he stands—our modern monk of unknowing—confusing blankness with humility, turning the nation’s most powerful gavel into a tuning fork for someone else’s key.

This abdication is not mere incompetence. It is the sanctification of servility. Johnson has elevated unawareness into a governing principle. He mistakes moral vacancy for moral virtue, as if ignorance were not only bliss but blessedness.

Government by Absence

Johnson’s House is the purest expression yet of what passes for conservative discipline in the age of Trump: obedience disguised as order, suspension of duty dressed up as constitutional fidelity. The legislative branch is on sabbatical, its leader conducting news conferences instead of sessions, like a tour guide narrating the ruins of representative government.

Each day of the hiatus, he performs a little pantomime of leadership—quoting Scripture, denouncing debt, invoking the Founders like a séance—and then quietly turning the keys over to the Oval Office. It is the first time in living memory that Congress has been closed for spiritual maintenance.

Madison once warned that “ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” Johnson has rewritten it as “submission must be made to sanctify power.” He seems to believe the separation of powers is a test of faith rather than a design for survival.

The Clerk Who Would Be Saint

Every government eventually finds its saint of self-erasure—the official who believes the best way to serve the state is to disappear into it. Johnson fits the part perfectly. His voice trembles with piety; his eyes radiate the conviction of a man confident that divine approval outweighs constitutional obligation.

He prays aloud for national unity while ensuring there is no Congress left to practice it. In his theology, shutting down the people’s House is not a crisis—it’s a cleansing. The fewer laws passed, the fewer sins committed.

Yet this meekness masks a darker bargain. The quieter Johnson becomes, the louder Trump grows. The more the Speaker prays, the more the president decrees. Silence, in this new order, is the currency of favor.

The Polite Authoritarian

Johnson’s genius lies in making tyranny sound like table manners. He never raises his voice, never storms, never insults. He declines to act. Where his predecessor (Kevin McCarthy) might have courted chaos, Johnson exemplifies a subtler art—the coup by courtesy.

He empties the calendar, delays votes, and calls the vacuum bipartisanship. The republic, he assures us, is in capable hands—Trump’s first, God’s second, and somewhere far down the line, perhaps his own.

What makes him dangerous is not his ignorance but his sincerity. A cynical man might at least know when he’s lying. Johnson believes every platitude he recites. His conscience is clean because he has outsourced it.

The House That Prayed Itself Silent

When Johnson suspended the House during the shutdown, he claimed it was to “allow reflection.” Reflection, of course, requires a mirror—and he has carefully removed them all. What remains is the illusion of deliberation: podiums without debate, committees without quorums, leadership without motion.

The Founders envisioned Congress as the beating heart of self-government. Under Johnson, it has become a hospice—quiet, well-kept, and diminishing in dignity. The Speaker presides not over a legislature but a vigil.

The Sanctity of Ignorance

Johnson’s defenders insist he is simply a man of faith, reluctant to engage in Trump’s coarser excesses. But faith is not an alibi for abdication. A moral compass that always points toward the throne is not morality—it’s magnetism.

The Speaker’s piety is selective. He knows the Bible by heart but not the Constitution by habit. He can quote Corinthians on humility but not Article I on legislative power. He wears virtue like a badge and ignorance like a halo.

In the Daily Beast compilation, his tone is calm, almost pastoral: “I don’t know,” he says, smiling faintly, as though confession were absolution. What he’s really saying is, “I don’t care to know.” And that indifference is the soul of the modern Right—governance by disavowal, responsibility by proxy.

The Ritual of Unknowing

In the Trump era, every enabler learns the liturgy: deny knowledge, delay accountability, defer judgment. The brilliance of this ritual is that it leaves no fingerprints. The Speaker cannot be accused of wrongdoing if he did not know what was done.

Ignorance becomes policy. Cowardice becomes decorum. The nation’s check on executive power is replaced by a man checking his watch.

This ignorance is the new conservative theology: moral certainty without moral courage. A faith so absolute it requires no evidence, no curiosity, no conscience—only allegiance.

The Quiet Coup

While the cameras record his modesty, the machinery of autocracy hums along unimpeded, the shutdown stretches on; agencies wither; oversight fades. The president governs by sabotage, the Speaker nods in silent assent.

This willful blindness is not dysfunction—it is design. The authoritarian state does not always arrive with bootjacks and banners. Sometimes it enters in soft shoes, quoting Scripture, bowing politely, claiming not to know.

Johnson’s House is the perfect servant of that project: a Parliament without Parliamentarians, a deliberative body that no longer deliberates. The lights stay on, but no one’s home.

 The Republic of Amnesia

In this aspirational autocratic republic, memory itself is subversive. The fewer who recall what Congress once was, the easier it is to claim it was never necessary. Johnson’s ignorance is contagious; it spreads like a polite plague, lowering expectations until silence sounds like peace.

The Speaker who knows nothing is a comfort to those who wish to rule unchecked. His not knowing is their license. His prayers are their press releases.

One can almost imagine future historians describing this period as the Great Forgetting—a time when government learned to govern by not existing, when ignorance became the state’s most efficient lubricant.

Epilogue: Recess of the Realm

The Founders built a system in which knowledge was a duty. Johnson has built one where ignorance is armor. His speakership may endure, but the institution he tends is vanishing, one unanswered question at a time.

When he finally leaves office, it won’t be to the sound of gavels or protests, but to the soft applause of those who prefer the republic asleep.

And when history asks how the balance of power fell, the answer will not come from the mob’s roar but from the Speaker’s whisper: “I don’t know.”

~ Dunneagin

PS If you enjoyed this chapter of our national chaos chronicles, you’ll love the eBooks — a curated archive of America’s ongoing attempt to govern itself while on fire.

Collected volumes are available on Kindle (Trump’s Big Top: How Politics Became a 3-Ring Circus) and Gumroad (The Liar’s Guide to Autocracy & Mr. Dunneagin Speaks, Vol. 2).

[Editor’s Note: In recent weeks, Speaker Mike Johnson has managed what few in modern politics could imagine: leading the House of Representatives by refusing to let it lead. “The Speaker Who Gave Up His Voice” examines this inversion of authority — how Johnson’s public piety and strategic silence have turned abdication into a governing style. It continues the Vol. 3 theme of Republican enablement, tracing how moral vacancy has become a virtue in the age of Trump.]

The Speaker Who Gave Up His Voice

It is a strange kind of patriot who silences the chamber he was elected to lead. Stranger still when he calls it virtue. Speaker Mike Johnson has found the one way to preserve unity in a divided Congress—by locking the doors, dimming the lights, and declaring the silence holy.

When the House recessed into indefinite hiatus amid the latest government shutdown, Johnson stood before the cameras with the tranquil authority of a man convinced that paralysis was providence. The New York Times called it what it was: an abdication. A self-marginalization so devout it verged on art. In the long gallery of legislative ghosts, none has looked more content to haunt himself.

The Gospel of Not Knowing

In the beginning was the Word—and the Word was “I don’t know.”

Asked about Trump’s legal threats, about the Justice Department’s demands, about the interviews, the rallies, the marching orders—Johnson repeated the new catechism of congressional submission: I don’t know. He doesn’t know what the former president says. He doesn’t know what he wants. He doesn’t know what the Speaker’s job even entails when the real decisions are being phoned in from Mar-a-Lago.

Reporters have begun compiling the supercuts. The Daily Beast laughed. MSNBC called him a “low-information Speaker.” HuffPost stitched the litany together like a Gregorian chant of ignorance. And there he stands—our modern monk of unknowing—confusing blankness with humility, turning the nation’s most powerful gavel into a tuning fork for someone else’s key.

This abdication is not mere incompetence. It is the sanctification of servility. Johnson has elevated unawareness into a governing principle. He mistakes moral vacancy for moral virtue, as if ignorance were not only bliss but blessedness.

Government by Absence

Johnson’s House is the purest expression yet of what passes for conservative discipline in the age of Trump: obedience disguised as order, suspension of duty dressed up as constitutional fidelity. The legislative branch is on sabbatical, its leader conducting news conferences instead of sessions, like a tour guide narrating the ruins of representative government.

Each day of the hiatus, he performs a little pantomime of leadership—quoting Scripture, denouncing debt, invoking the Founders like a séance—and then quietly turning the keys over to the Oval Office. It is the first time in living memory that Congress has been closed for spiritual maintenance.

Madison once warned that “ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” Johnson has rewritten it as “submission must be made to sanctify power.” He seems to believe the separation of powers is a test of faith rather than a design for survival.

The Clerk Who Would Be Saint

Every government eventually finds its saint of self-erasure—the official who believes the best way to serve the state is to disappear into it. Johnson fits the part perfectly. His voice trembles with piety; his eyes radiate the conviction of a man confident that divine approval outweighs constitutional obligation.

He prays aloud for national unity while ensuring there is no Congress left to practice it. In his theology, shutting down the people’s House is not a crisis—it’s a cleansing. The fewer laws passed, the fewer sins committed.

Yet this meekness masks a darker bargain. The quieter Johnson becomes, the louder Trump grows. The more the Speaker prays, the more the president decrees. Silence, in this new order, is the currency of favor.

The Polite Authoritarian

Johnson’s genius lies in making tyranny sound like table manners. He never raises his voice, never storms, never insults. He declines to act. Where his predecessor (Kevin McCarthy) might have courted chaos, Johnson exemplifies a subtler art—the coup by courtesy.

He empties the calendar, delays votes, and calls the vacuum bipartisanship. The republic, he assures us, is in capable hands—Trump’s first, God’s second, and somewhere far down the line, perhaps his own.

What makes him dangerous is not his ignorance but his sincerity. A cynical man might at least know when he’s lying. Johnson believes every platitude he recites. His conscience is clean because he has outsourced it.

The House That Prayed Itself Silent

When Johnson suspended the House during the shutdown, he claimed it was to “allow reflection.” Reflection, of course, requires a mirror—and he has carefully removed them all. What remains is the illusion of deliberation: podiums without debate, committees without quorums, leadership without motion.

The Founders envisioned Congress as the beating heart of self-government. Under Johnson, it has become a hospice—quiet, well-kept, and diminishing in dignity. The Speaker presides not over a legislature but a vigil.

The Sanctity of Ignorance

Johnson’s defenders insist he is simply a man of faith, reluctant to engage in Trump’s coarser excesses. But faith is not an alibi for abdication. A moral compass that always points toward the throne is not morality—it’s magnetism.

The Speaker’s piety is selective. He knows the Bible by heart but not the Constitution by habit. He can quote Corinthians on humility but not Article I on legislative power. He wears virtue like a badge and ignorance like a halo.

In the Daily Beast compilation, his tone is calm, almost pastoral: “I don’t know,” he says, smiling faintly, as though confession were absolution. What he’s really saying is, “I don’t care to know.” And that indifference is the soul of the modern Right—governance by disavowal, responsibility by proxy.

The Ritual of Unknowing

In the Trump era, every enabler learns the liturgy: deny knowledge, delay accountability, defer judgment. The brilliance of this ritual is that it leaves no fingerprints. The Speaker cannot be accused of wrongdoing if he did not know what was done.

Ignorance becomes policy. Cowardice becomes decorum. The nation’s check on executive power is replaced by a man checking his watch.

This ignorance is the new conservative theology: moral certainty without moral courage. A faith so absolute it requires no evidence, no curiosity, no conscience—only allegiance.

The Quiet Coup

While the cameras record his modesty, the machinery of autocracy hums along unimpeded, the shutdown stretches on; agencies wither; oversight fades. The president governs by sabotage, the Speaker nods in silent assent.

This willful blindness is not dysfunction—it is design. The authoritarian state does not always arrive with bootjacks and banners. Sometimes it enters in soft shoes, quoting Scripture, bowing politely, claiming not to know.

Johnson’s House is the perfect servant of that project: a Parliament without Parliamentarians, a deliberative body that no longer deliberates. The lights stay on, but no one’s home.

 The Republic of Amnesia

In this aspirational autocratic republic, memory itself is subversive. The fewer who recall what Congress once was, the easier it is to claim it was never necessary. Johnson’s ignorance is contagious; it spreads like a polite plague, lowering expectations until silence sounds like peace.

The Speaker who knows nothing is a comfort to those who wish to rule unchecked. His not knowing is their license. His prayers are their press releases.

One can almost imagine future historians describing this period as the Great Forgetting—a time when government learned to govern by not existing, when ignorance became the state’s most efficient lubricant.

Epilogue: Recess of the Realm

The Founders built a system in which knowledge was a duty. Johnson has built one where ignorance is armor. His speakership may endure, but the institution he tends is vanishing, one unanswered question at a time.

When he finally leaves office, it won’t be to the sound of gavels or protests, but to the soft applause of those who prefer the republic asleep.

And when history asks how the balance of power fell, the answer will not come from the mob’s roar but from the Speaker’s whisper: “I don’t know.”

~ Dunneagin

PS If you enjoyed this chapter of our national chaos chronicles, you’ll love the eBooks — a curated archive of America’s ongoing attempt to govern itself while on fire.

Collected volumes are available on Kindle (Trump’s Big Top: How Politics Became a 3-Ring Circus) and Gumroad (The Liar’s Guide to Autocracy & Mr. Dunneagin Speaks, Vol. 2).