Warren Ellis has a new column appearing weekly on VICE magazine’s website. In his most recent piece, “The Death of Fun in Politics,” Ellis has interesting things to say regarding the lack of “authentic monsters” in the world of politics today.

And his thoughts on Lyndon Johnson are particularly entertaining:

It’s kind of awful to contrast [Obama], with, say, Lyndon Johnson, a man so frightening that to this day some people still believe the legend about him skull-fucking John Kennedy’s dead head during the flight back from Dallas. Washingtonians spoke of “The Johnson Treatment”, where they would discover that Johnson knew everything about them and beat their minds into submission with a welter of promises, debts and threats. Johnson blithely destroyed South American democracies, almost started World War III a couple of times, drove civil rights through, became the first President to cause the arrest of Klan members in a century, and threw the ’68 election to Richard Nixon. He was clearly unbalanced and lived to intimidate people. He was interesting. Democrats today just can’t compare.