ALMOST SACRED

 

Yesterday, the Republicans in the Senate shot down both versions of the voting rights bills that the Democrats were trying to pass to counter the literally hundreds of voter suppression laws that Republican state governments have passed recently.  Although the death of the bills were always inevitable (no one expected Republicans not to filibuster bills that would stop them from having an electoral advantage), it's still heartbreaking to see how one political party has no problem in trying to prevent people, especially people of color, from exercising their right to vote.  

The late John Lewis, a congressmen and early civil rights protester, one described the right to vote in America as "almost sacred".  He was right.  Sadly, extending that right to African Americans has been a serious problem since the end of slavery.  It's hard to believe, but in the post war civil reconstruction era, thousands of former slaves were elected to public offices.  Sadly, this ended when federal troops enforcing civil rights laws were withdraw from the South and the Jim Crow era of segregation and lack of voting rights began in the South.  It wouldn't  end until Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Voting Act into law in nineteen sixty five.   After signing the bill, according to Johnson aide Bill Moyers, Johnson sadly admitted that "I think we just delivered the South to the Republican party for a long time to come."

It is amazing to think that, decades later, Johnson's words still ring true.  Oh sure, courting libertarians and fundamentalist Christians has been a big part of the Republican party's appeal in the decades since that bill was signed, at the end of the day, their  plan of using racially coded words ("war on crime", "war on drugs") in political speeches,  a plan developed during the ninety sixty eight Nixon presidential campaign (and named "The Southern Strategy"), has been a part of every Republican presidential campaign since.  (Although to be fair, Mitt Romney's and John McCain's campaigns mostly avoided it).  

Donald Trump, of course, just threw out the coding and openly made racist remarks in his twenty sixteen campaign.  Even worse, since his public refusal to accept his loss in twenty twenty has lead a majority of Republican voters to believe that that election was stolen, Republican state legislators have passed laws making it harder to vote by claiming that their constituents were concerned about "voter fraud".  Of course they don't mention the fact that the only reasons  they have those concerns is because of Trump's lies.  And these laws are targeted at making it harder for African American voters to vote, by shutting down polling places and limiting early voting.  A twenty twenty article in The Washington Post pointed out that African American voters already are seventy four percent more likely to have to wait half and hour or more to vote than white voters.  Somehow this obvious  impediment to voting isn't enough for the Republicans.

And if that weren't bad enough, conservatives on the Supreme Court have also helped out the Republican cause: in the contested two thousand election they stepped in and handed the White House to George W Bush.  In two thousand and nine, after Barack Obama set records for small donations from supporters, they decided that money equaled speech in the Citizen's United decision, opening the floodgates for the rich to donate to campaigns, a clear advantage for Republicans.  And  then, after Barack Obama won reecletion in twenty twelve, one year later the court gutted the Civil Rights Voting Act which had forced Southern states to get federal approval for any changes in voting laws.  This, of course, lead to the flood of voter suppression laws being passed right now. 

It really is a sign of just how gutless the Republican Party is that they killed the voting rights bills without even allowing them to be debated; they knew full well that one Democratic Senator after another would give examples of how the voting suppression laws were openly targeted at African American voters, and that their counter arguments were weak.  When it comes to the modern Southern Strategy, most Republicans like to just pretend that it doesn't exist even as they pass laws proving that it does.

GOOD NEWS IS NO NEWS

    

 There is a truism that says that much of the way that the media covers politics is not unlike how it covers sports; there are winners and losers, and polls showing who's up and who's down, with analysts often asking which political side scored a victory with each new development.  It's understandable that the media would use this quickly digestible style of coverage, but it leaves out all sense of nuance.  Obviously, there has never been a sports team where certain members of one team decide to play for the other side "for the good of the country."

    But bipartisanship is dead, right?  If you listen to the media, it sure is; the country is deeply divided, both sides are dug in, Biden will get no Republican help for his agenda, etc.  And yet, a recent bill to make it easier to investigate and prosecute hate crimes against Asians sailed through congress, passing with ninety four votes in the Senate and three hundred and sixty four votes in the House.  Ok, you might say that voting for a bill against the terrible spate of crimes being carried out against Asian Americans is a no brainer.  No sane person could possibly be opposed to such a thing.  But another recent bill was also passed with overwhelming (sixty eight votes) support in the Senate, and it's the kind of big spending bill that you would think the Republican party would never go for, but they were willing to cross the aisle for this one.  Designed as a counterbalance to China's growing influence in scientific research, it would spend nearly a quarter-trillion dollars over the next five years on research into things like superconductors.  While the bill has yet to pass the house, given its popularity (heck, even Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell voted for it!) and Joe Biden's willingness to sign it, its passage is assured.

    So a bipartisan bill designed to help the country in the future will soon be passed.  This would seem to be a good news story, which may explain why there has so little media coverage of it.  Our competition driven media, so obsessed with winners and losers, barely seemed to have time for something that drew the two parties together.  No they'd rather talk about how gridlocked congress is, and how much Senator Joe Manchin's refusal to end the filibuster is killing Biden's agenda.

    Look, I complain about the filibuster and our divided nation as much as anybody, but as these two bill show, bipartisanship for the good of the country is not always an impossible dream.  Hopefully, there will be more of it in the future. 

WHY QANON?

“I understand they like me very much, which I appreciate.”-Donald Trump on QAnon

It's official.  QAnon is popular enough to almost become mainstream.  That's according to a recent poll released by the Public Religion Research Institute and the Interfaith Youth Core which found that fifteen percent of Americans (and twenty five percent of Republicans) now claim to believe in QAnon.  Which means that there are tens of millions of Americans who believe in  the baseless claims of an unknown online poster who says that there is a global ring of Satanic, cannibalistic pedophiles  (that includes pretty much every Democratic leader) that will be exposed any day now by Donald Trump.  There was a hope that this crazy theory would end with Trump leaving the White House, but, as with most cults, the true believers have just doubled down.  Sadly, once people join a cult, shaking their faith is very difficult; just look at the Jehovah's Witnesses, who have been steadily pushing back the date of the end of the world for decades now.

The story of QAnon beliefs gets even more scary when you look at the number of Republicans who don't call themselves believers but who refuse to dismiss it (the QAnon curious?).  Adding them pushes the number of QAnon friendly Republicans to over fifty percent of the party.  And it gets worse, QAnon friendly candidates are already lining up to run for office all around the country, while infamous QAnon believer Marjorie Taylor Greene already is in the House of Representatives and is a major fund raiser for the Republican party.  Yes, it appears that QAnon, just like the idea that Trump won the twenty twenty election, is now a common, accepted belief in the Republican party. And the QAnon faithful appear to be willing to even break the law for their beliefs, as the high number of QAnon signs and shirts at the January sixth riot showed.

The inevitable question is why would so many people believe something so insane?  Even the most out there cults usually have a charismatic leader at the top, but  with QAnon nobody even knows who the person who first started this craziness is. But it has benefited from timing.  While there have always been people willing to believe in outlandish things, from bigfoot to psychics, the rise of QAnon seems to me to be linked to the global pandemic.  Oh sure, it existed before covid, but it really seems to have taken off in the past year as the pandemic has raged.  This seems to make sense; putting it simply, people staying at home  have more time to fall into the QAnon rabbit hole, to spend hours absorbing one Youtube video or social media posting after another, which has sadly helped it to flourish.  It seems like common sense that people getting out and doing things would have less time to start following a cult that is almost entirely online.  Add to that the fact that the whole world has felt on edge since the pandemic started, plus the usual conservative conspiratorial mindset combined with our deeply polarized country and you have all the makings of  a successful modern cult.

So what can the Americans who choose to live in the real world do?  On a personal level, people can try to talk to friends and family members wrapped up in the movement in an understanding, non judgemental way that will hopefully pull them back to reality. But on a national level?  Not a heck of a lot; elected Republican officials seem to accepting QAnon believers in their party while not openly saying that they agree with them (which is the same weak kneed trick they pulled with the birthers).   And of course Trump himself has issued statements like the one above that continues his pathetic streak of failing to condemn anyone who praises him, be it David Duke, The Proud Boys or QAnon.  The best case scenario for the future is that I'm right about the pandemic having an effect, and that as more Americans go back to their normal lives, many of QAnon's believers will stop following it.  Otherwise, we may continue to have a major political party made up of people who think the worst possible thing about the other side (Satanic cannibals!), which is no way to run a democracy.