As we celebrate MLK day and ponder what he dreamt for America, we remain mired in Jim Crow Murica. This is the portion of the United States inhabited by dimwits rabidly devoted to Donald Trump.
This dark age of Trumpian authoritarian white-nationalist politics persists despite the failure of the January 6 attack on the capitol. As we learned upon Obama’s election in 2008 amidst the subprime meltdown engendered by George W Bush, angry white conservatives flew into a rage and used dark money from three national conservative groups, FreedomWorks, Americans for Prosperity, and DontGo which led the tea party movement in April 2009. Having a new black president incited conservative billionaires to pool their resources to preserve the wealthy white ruling cabal’s power. As Obama and democrats in Congress were cleaning up Bush’s economic fiasco, conservative pundits whined about Obama’s policies. Trump rode the wave of white outrage over Obama, spewed Birther BS, doubts about Obama’s birth certificate on Fox Noise in 2011, laying the groundwork for running for president 5 years later. Trump had his finger on the pulse of Jim Crow Murica, knew that it gave him a chance to win, given that Jim Crow Murican politicians in key swing states could suppress Hillary voters, flipping these states to red. Electoral Jim Crow Murican voter suppression gave a victory to Trump who lost by 2.9 million votes to win.
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “So long as I do not firmly and irrevocably possess the right to vote I do not possess myself… I cannot make up my mind—it is made up for me. I cannot live as a democratic citizen, observing the laws I have helped to enact—I can only submit to the edict of others.”
In 1965, thanks in large measure to Dr. King’s moral leadership, the Voting Rights Act was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson, finally giving millions of African Americans the most fundamental right in a self-governing society—the right to choose our elected representatives, instead of submitting “to the edict of others.”
Last year alone, 19 states passed 34 laws restricting access to the ballot box to silence the voices of communities of color, voters with disabilities, young people and other historically underrepresented groups. The frightened white republicans passing these laws know that they can’t win on the merits of their policies, so they are rigging the system instead.
Two years after Obama’s first win, some Southern states adopted redistricting plans that created supermajority Republican legislatures and diluted the strength of Black voters, said the Rev. William Barber II, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign and a national voting rights advocate.
Barber said those legislatures also proposed more restrictive election laws in response to Obama’s victory, which showed he could garner support from a diverse electorate in the South. Those measures could also disproportionately hurt other people of color and low-income white voters. “This is actually Jim and Jane Crow, Esquire,” he said. “It’s not just race. It’s also class and economics.”
The Brennan Center tracked more than 425 bills in 49 states in the 2021 legislative session that include restrictive provisions, such as reducing early voting hours, imposing stricter ID requirements and limiting the number of mail ballot drop boxes. Republicans said the bills protect against voter fraud.
“The ways in which the laws have changed often play into the pattern that we observe in the racial disparity in registration and turnout,’’ said Peyton McCrary, a former historian in the voting section of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Many states proposed more restrictive laws soon after the U.S. Supreme Court Shelby v. Holder ruling in 2013 eliminated a key provision of the Voting Rights Act that required jurisdictions with a history of discrimination to get federal approval before making election changes.
Jim Crow Muricans, mired in fear of “being replaced”, rely on voter suppression laws. These frightened whites have been despairing for many years, to the extent of dying faster than the rest of the population. Death rates for white Americans ages 45 to 54 climbed 0.5% each year between 1999 and 2013, based on mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In the previous 20 years, the death rate for this group had dropped by 2% each year. Middle-aged blacks and Hispanics continued to see a 2% annual decline between 1999 and 2013. Deaths related to drugs, alcohol, suicide and liver disease are the cause of the increase, researchers said. In other words, middle aged whites have been so stressed having lost their previously “great America” they inadvertently reduce their lifespans. Maybe these middle-aged whites would not commit slow suicide if they were aware of the corporate authoritarianism that has offshored American jobs for decades and turned the successful prosperity-producing welfare state into a welfare-for-the-wealthy state. It’s a lot easier to blame dark-skin-toned Mexican immigrants, people from “shithole” countries, or China. It’s easier for them to believe an ill-informed pathological liar who says what they want to hear. This willful ignorance and emotional immaturity promotes the persistence of Jim Crow Murica. This immaturity promotes drug addiction, boozing, ways of dealing with stress that make them die younger.
At an Arizona rally on 1/15/2022, Donald Trump said: “The left is now rationing lifesaving therapeutics based on race, discriminating against and denigrating, just denigrating, white people to determine who lives and who dies. If you’re white, you don’t get the vaccine, or if you’re white, you don’t get therapeutics.”
False. There is no evidence that white Americans are being denied access to vaccines or treatments.
Trump Rally Fact-Check: Covid-19 and Election Falsehoods – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan is one of the lawmakers who texted with Mark Meadows, chief of staff to former President Donald Trump. Jordan forwarded this text message to Meadows
“On January 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence, as President of the Senate, should call out all the electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all — in accordance with guidance from founding father Alexander Hamilton and judicial precedence. ‘No legislative act,’ wrote Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 78, ‘contrary to the Constitution, can be valid.’ The court in Hubbard v. Lowe reinforced this truth: ‘That an unconstitutional statute is not a law at all is a proposition no longer open to discussion.’ 226 F. 135, 137 (SDNY 1915), appeal dismissed, 242 U.S. 654 (1916).”
Georgia Republicans purge Black Democrats from county election boards | Reuters
To save America’s democracy, Democrats need to start acting like Republicans | TheHill
House votes to hold Mark Meadows in contempt of Congress (cbsnews.com)