When someone floats a modest proposal, it’s never going to be modest. The modern tsunami of selfies gives evidence of the general lack of modesty in the world, and Tik-Toks surely serve as prosecutorial-level evidence. But nothing says conviction quite like running for the House and the Senate at the state or federal level..
Some there claim deep convictions motivate them to run and even deeper moral convictions determine how they’ll vote. It’s rare in life to find anything deeper than that nor more worthy of conviction.
The current slew of modest propositions to create fresh restrictions on people voting in multiple states is so breathtaking in its deepness that even professional scuba divers can scarcely find enough air. The whole point of these modest proposals is to drown the popular majority and certainly bears no resemblance of a defense of the integrity of anything or anyone.
Everybody knows this. Everyone can see it. And yet most major media outlets continue to discuss The Great Pretense in serious tones.
Reporters tell us there’s an aggrieved white majority that feels under attack and discriminated against because they feel like they’re losing power. Yet as January 6th showed us, tens of thousands had the power to take time off from work, fly round trip across the country, some in coordination with others, to commit felonious acts. And had enough spare change left to pay for bail and lawyers.
They weren’t anywhere close to powerless minimum wage workers who can’t afford a single hour off and often struggle to pay bus fare.
And the politicians leading them on to commit felonies aren’t even representing the fresh grievances of the vacationing felons they unleashed. They’re representing themselves in their quest to hang onto jobs that pay well, even when they’re failing to fulfill the main job description of representing anyone else.
You can fool some of the people all the time, but only if fooling people is your central aim. And every so called ‘election process reform’ proponent has no other aim.
Just look at Georgia, whose legislature just passed a bill that ridicules the concepts of majority rule, Constitutional rights and human physiology needs. Very impressive knuckle dragging, Georgia! But it’s not at all original.
Resurgences in white supremacy in Georgia occurred after:
- the end of the Civil War when it underwent military rule twice. After freedmen were awarded property deeds and some were elected to the state government, the whites, led by the KKK, took the land back, expelled the Black officeholders and many faced physical attacks including whippings and murder.
Georgia was the last Confederate state readmitted to the union in 1870. By 1872, the former confederates and their white allies regained complete control of is government and Blacks were largely blocked from voting.
- the end of WWII when Black soldiers insisted on the attainment of full voting rights and registered in droves. The post-WWII appointment of Herman Talmadge to Governor (1948) and the purging of Black voters in elections his white supremacist father ‘won’ via sketchy election rules 4 times before him is also noteworthy. Herman would go on to serve 4 terms in the US Senate, as well. How dare those Black servicemen expect that their exemplary wartime service earned them the right to anything!
- in the wake of the 1954 Brown vs Board of Education decision, when the 1956 assassination of Dr. Thomas Brewer occurred. Brewer spent a decade as a voting rights activist., but drew intense haters with his support for school integration.
- in the wake of the two landmark decisions of the Civil Rights era that passed in the mid-1960s. Black poverty was so entrenched along with Jim Crow laws that Black Georgians were still pushing to obtain rights they gained elsewhere in the sixties till almost 1990. So Black and white Georgians know the drill well.
When Black citizens are organized and recruited to stand up for themselves, Georgia is the national exemplar of the immediate blowback of white supremacists. While many Americans marvel at the efforts and wins of Stacey Abrams, Reverend Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in 2020, any student of Georgia’s history would warn that trio to double their immediate security efforts. Physical attacks remain likely because many in Georgia are exactly like Unrepentant Trixie-Dixie-Margie Green: unable to grasp the concept of civil behavior.
If the new voting constriction law stands, Black Georgians can expect to see their mailed in ballots excluded, their in-person polls reduced to two statewide and at the inevitable long lines that follow, mass arrests will occur if anyone brings food or water to those still determined to vote.
At the live-streamed signing ceremony yesterday, Governor Kemp was flanked by white men alone. In the background was a painting of one of the most brutal slave plantations that existed in the state. And in the foreground was a Black woman legislator arrested and nursing bruises from her jailing because she had the temerity to knock on the governor’s door, trying to gain access to his signing ceremony.
At the beginning of the Civil War, only Virginia had more slaves than Georgia did and Georgia was one of the six Confederate states where 44% or more of the state’s residents were Black. So this time, let’s not all act shocked nor even surprised if violence against Black Georgians sees a sharp uptick in 2021.
Its kkkore kkkonstituency is pretty damn evident. It’s pissed and will stop at nothing. Black Georgians understand this. They’re likely the most well-armed Black group in the country because they know too damn well what angry white supremacists in Georgia are all about.
Meanwhile, back at the Pandemic, the long anticipated rebound in new cases at the national level occurred this week. Several states are seeing rises and a smaller bunch are seeing those rises sustained for more than one week. In part it’s because of a new variant that spreads faster and gets people sicker than the original two virus strains. In part it’s because of governors and citizens making stupid decisions that threaten public safety.
Then there’s the anti-vaxxers spreading alarm because 1 in 45,000 vaccinated people have died, even though the deaths haven’t been directly caused by the vaccines. You’re far more likely to die in a shark attack during a lightning storm on February 29th than to die from a Covid vaccine, but basic math is still way too hard. And the anti-vaxxers likely hold shares in mortuaries and crematoriums.
The sheer numbers getting vaccinated have no precedent in history and most of the credit should go to the vaccine scientists who developed it, the government officials coordinating the rollout and the exhausted healthcare workers - some retired - who are now administering more than 3 million shots per day.
I applaud them all. Except the anti-vax trumpeters. They need to collectively and individually just go fuck off.
Please pardon my newsletter delays this week. With multiple excessive demands on my time, I’ve fallen behind but the shortage will be made up in the week ahead. Unless I die first.
Yesterday, I’m pretty sure I sprained my entire exoskeletal musculature with major yardwork that involved 2” x 12” x 12 foot timbers being fashioned into containers for raised bed gardens. Today, I get to wield the Wheelbarrows of Soil that’ll fill them.
There’s more physical labor excess ahead for Wednesday but if I get through today, I should be able to juggle all the balls ahead.