Flailing About

Johnson has been flailing about desperately.

— New York Magazine

The cognitive dissonance Republican Senator Ron Johnson suffers would pain an intelligent man, according to New York Magazine. Nonetheless, Johnson must wonder how he can call the louts who assaulted the Capitol on January 6 "tourists."

"Johnson has been flailing about desperately in search of a resolution to this contradiction," the magazine says.

The verb flail, meaning to "whip," is an 11th-century word that originally meant to "thresh" or "winnow." 

Knight wielding a "flail"

A flail was a Mediaeval farm tool made of wood and leather. Its name was borrowed from the Latin name for the same tool, flagellum, from which we also get the verb flagellate, meaning to "flog."

When we see a flail today, we think of knights doing battle, but the flail was never a weapon. 

Mediaeval artists merely convinced us it was.

By depicting flail-wielding knights in illuminated manuscripts, medieval artists led later viewers to imagine that these wily cavalrymen must have used flails to terrorize foes. 

But, the "flails" wielded by knights were actually goads—wood-and-rope cattle prods that somewhat resemble flails. Knights used goads to prod their horses.

Medieval flail

The spiked iron "flails" in museum collections today are in fact simulacra: 19-century copies of a 10-century weapon that never existed.

So when you read that Johnson is "flailing about," don't think of knights of old. 

To flail about means to "whip around," to "engage in erratic movements."