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By Ed Rogers
We have all placed our trust and hope on one candidate or the other at some time in our life—if you haven’t, why vote at all? The right to vote has forever been in the hands of the rich. White Americans never questioned the right to vote until the voting act of 1965. Outside of the South, people seemed to believe that everybody was voting who wanted to vote. But in the South, citizens with money pretty much controlled who got elected, and they controlled who was allowed to vote. A number of blocks were placed in the road to guarantee white control. From Wikipedia’s article on “Voting rights in the United States”:
From 1890 to 1908, ten of the eleven former Confederate states completed political suppression and exclusion of these groups by ratifying new constitutions or amendments which incorporated provisions to make voter registration more difficult. These included such requirements as payment of poll taxes; complicated record keeping; complicated timing of registration and length of residency in relation to elections, with related record-keeping requirements; felony disenfranchisement focusing on crimes thought to be committed by African Americans; and a literacy test or comprehension test.Is there any doubt in your mind that the same thing is happening today? But nowadays it is not only in the South. A war has been being waged against those who speak up for the least among us. By disavowing the rights of minorities and the poor, the political right maintains control and the voices of dissent no longer matter.
The tests back in the 1800’s weren’t required of every voter – only of blacks and poor white trash. As is the case today, the polling places in white neighborhoods were fast and effortless. The people voting believed then and believe now that it is their right to vote because they are smarter and wiser than the uneducated, and therefore entitled to do so. They dare not question the process of weeding out the people who are “too stupid” to vote, lest they be so categorized themselves.
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| Long lines at polling places in Detroit |
I have known a number of people in my life who, when spoken with person-to-person, agree that the poor are getting blamed for the problems brought upon our middle class by the rich. However, when asked to help change the balance of power, they will tell you they can’t do anything about it.
I never have thought much of the Republican Party. But I have known some very good Republicans. I find that we agree on things about 90% or more of the time. (I do not consider Tea-Baggers Republicans.) The Party itself, however, has always fought for upper-income voters.
The middle-income people went Republican after the 1965 voting act was signed into law. Some of the reasons were racial, but for the most part they were economic. The white middle class felt betrayed by the Democratic Party. They, their fathers, and their fathers had all worked hard. They played by the rules and obeyed the law. Then they saw their Democratic Party push through laws to help people who were burning down their own homes and businesses. And Democrats passed welfare laws that they regarded as being for people to lie around and make babies so they could get more money. Very many white Democrats saw their party this way, and they wanted nothing to do with it.
These former Democrats vote Republican now because with betrayal comes hatred, and although many laws for the poor help them also, they are prepared to lose the advantage of those laws.
That is why they are against the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and raising the minimum wage, and vote for laws favorable to corporations. This is why, when big money suppresses the vote in poor neighborhoods, they say nothing. When people hate something and they hear daily from talking heads that their hatred is justified, their hate goes deeper until it becomes a part of them and stops having any foundation in reality. Few can tell you why they hate laws passed by Democrats—they can only quote Rush or Fox News.
The result, if this continues, will be the virtual destruction of the middle class. Such deep hatred must die before a person can start anew. Without their hate’s total destruction they will continue to deny that they are wrong. The end will not be pretty and it may change our entire system of government. Riches and the pursuit of power have been the downfall of many nations.
| Copyright © 2015 by Ed Rogers |
Ed, thanks for providing a rationale for former Democrats' now voting Republican. Do you see that motivation as passing now, though, as younger voters, who have never been Democratic, can presumably be free of the sense of betrayal that you suggest fuels the older former Democrats?
ReplyDeleteI was surprised to learn that you agree with Republicans on about 90% of things. Would you be willing to tell me, as example, five things that you agree with most Republicans on that you think I (from what you know about me) might find the most surprising?
Finally, I certainly do agree with you that Republicans are still trying to block voting by groups that they consider a threat to their majority. Here in North Carolina, where our state government is controlled by the hugest Republican majority in many decades, several things are happening that support that: attempts to require voter IDs, fewer early-voting days provided, no same-day-as-voting registration, and dissemination in run-ups to election of misinformation as to where to go to vote.
As a result of my including "attempts to require voter IDs" in that comment to Ed, a correspondent emailed me with the question, "What is your objection to voter ID?" I of course have no personal objection – I do, after all, already have an ID of the sort usually required, and so does my correspondent. However:
ReplyDeleteVoter suppression in the United States
Because elections are locally administered in the United States, voter suppression varies among jurisdictions. At the founding of the country, most states limited the right to vote to property-owning white males. Over time, the right to vote was formally granted to racial minorities, women, and youth. However, throughout the latter 19th and early 20th centuries, Southern states passed Jim Crow laws to suppress poor and racial minority voters; among other things, such laws included poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses. Most of these voter suppression tactics were made illegal after the enactment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Contemporary voter suppression techniques include voter ID laws, voter caging, intimidation of voters at polling places, and felony disenfranchisement. Research has shown that suppression of voters has become an integral part of politics for right wing parties in the USA [Roberts, Darryl Lamont. "Voter Suppression, Party, and Democracy", Social Science Research Network, Tuskegee, 8 October 2013]. When political entities advocate for voter suppression policies, they typically use positive language such as "voter security" and "anti-voter fraud," to justify their actions; but there is little evidence to prove that voter fraud is a significant problem in the United States. [Wikipedia]
I myself have no more feeling about ID laws than I do about any other attempt to suppress people's right to vote. Nation wide there has been very, very, few cases of voter fraud. In fact some of the states that have passed these laws, there has never been a case of voter fraud. There can be only one reason to pass such a law---to suppress the vote. The question as to if such a law would do that, is of no matter. The purpose is clear.
DeleteEd, a comment from Shannon Salter Burghardt, made on my Facebook page:
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely, without a doubt. In states with GOP majority state legislatures, solutions without problems such as the rash of voter ID laws, as well as an epidemic of gerrymandering, serve only to keep the establishment in power. Denial of proper resources to low SES [socioeconomic status] school districts guarantees the disenfranchisement will last another generation. Woe betide us all if the cure to cancer or a Mideast peace plan languished away in squalor in some inner city hellhole, denied access to education or the halls of power.