What is going on at the state level with Republicans asserting control over the mechanics of voting is nothing short of a slow motion coup d’état!
They are setting things up so that no matter which candidate wins in 2022 and more importantly 2024, they will have all the levers of power to just throw out the results and appoint whoever they want.
Everyone, in particular the major news media in our country, is not sounding the alarm nearly loud enough.
The fiasco in Arizona is being followed by something even worse in Wisconsin – can Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan be far behind?
We need to wake up before it's too late. There will be no second chances.
Thank you Warren for your excellent research and reflections of the current effort to deter voting among largely Black populations. As someone who in my younger days wore a pin that stated, “Don’t Vote. It only encourages them,” my view of electoral politics and rule of law is quite cynical. No real change comes from voting which is the least important of all political activism. Trump certainly did some real damage—tens of thousands of unnecessary Covid deaths alone are his legacy. However, from their neo-liberal perspective (Biden the current torch bearer), elites want a stable electorate who believes voting is the only political act; for the most part, electoral politics, the two-party system etc have served capital very well in the past 40 years. The Bushes, Clinton and Obama all played their part in the ghastly masquerade. National elections are an opiate for the masses.
Now it’s true that Trump threatened neo-liberal complacency and stimulated an outcry from the streets. BLM and its allies agitated in record numbers in 2020. A recent book by Frenchman, Frederic Gros, entitled DISOBEY! strikes the right note. Gros wonders that given the long list of abuses waged by elites against the rest of us, why haven’t there been more street disobedience and more militant activism. This is once again Antonio Gramsci’s great question. Why do workers, the precariat, the unemployed, the homeless etc. not rise up? His answer—hegemony, the control of consciousness of the oppressed. Trump woke up so many young urban activists who largely don’t vote. They know the great con.
Now having said that, the continued humiliations like anti-abortion efforts, the curtailing of voting, the ongoing police violence, racist thugs and fascist contingencies, the growing gap between the ostentatious rich and the rest of us, all serve to provoke angry activists. Will there be a trigger like the George Floyd case? Only time will tell.
What can be said about all this? The Democrats wants all people to vote regardless of legal status, and I oppose that. Voter ID laws are there to protect from having people that are not allowed to vote to try to vote, it has nothing to do with racism! If you can't prove how you are, you shouldn't be allowed to vote, period .
What is going on at the state level with Republicans asserting control over the mechanics of voting is nothing short of a slow motion coup d’état!
They are setting things up so that no matter which candidate wins in 2022 and more importantly 2024, they will have all the levers of power to just throw out the results and appoint whoever they want.
Everyone, in particular the major news media in our country, is not sounding the alarm nearly loud enough.
The fiasco in Arizona is being followed by something even worse in Wisconsin – can Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan be far behind?
We need to wake up before it's too late. There will be no second chances.
Thank you Warren for your excellent research and reflections of the current effort to deter voting among largely Black populations. As someone who in my younger days wore a pin that stated, “Don’t Vote. It only encourages them,” my view of electoral politics and rule of law is quite cynical. No real change comes from voting which is the least important of all political activism. Trump certainly did some real damage—tens of thousands of unnecessary Covid deaths alone are his legacy. However, from their neo-liberal perspective (Biden the current torch bearer), elites want a stable electorate who believes voting is the only political act; for the most part, electoral politics, the two-party system etc have served capital very well in the past 40 years. The Bushes, Clinton and Obama all played their part in the ghastly masquerade. National elections are an opiate for the masses.
Now it’s true that Trump threatened neo-liberal complacency and stimulated an outcry from the streets. BLM and its allies agitated in record numbers in 2020. A recent book by Frenchman, Frederic Gros, entitled DISOBEY! strikes the right note. Gros wonders that given the long list of abuses waged by elites against the rest of us, why haven’t there been more street disobedience and more militant activism. This is once again Antonio Gramsci’s great question. Why do workers, the precariat, the unemployed, the homeless etc. not rise up? His answer—hegemony, the control of consciousness of the oppressed. Trump woke up so many young urban activists who largely don’t vote. They know the great con.
Now having said that, the continued humiliations like anti-abortion efforts, the curtailing of voting, the ongoing police violence, racist thugs and fascist contingencies, the growing gap between the ostentatious rich and the rest of us, all serve to provoke angry activists. Will there be a trigger like the George Floyd case? Only time will tell.
What can be said about all this? The Democrats wants all people to vote regardless of legal status, and I oppose that. Voter ID laws are there to protect from having people that are not allowed to vote to try to vote, it has nothing to do with racism! If you can't prove how you are, you shouldn't be allowed to vote, period .