Whistling Dixie Past the GOP's Graveyard

 

Looking at the above picture where a handful of very white dudes watch another white dude sign Georgia's new voter suppression law into effect, I sit and wonder: did they realize you can dam a river and still not stop a flood? That bottlenecking a force can sometimes give it terrific direction? Did they sign a new lease on life for a party that just lost two US Senate seats in the state in an election we've been assured had no widespread fraud--or did they sign a death warrant for the national party?

I'm not going to go into the optics of signing this bill under a landscape painting of tree-lined Brickhouse Road which once was the site of an infamous plantation, but for a moment consider the image of Rep. Park Cannon, led away and jailed for knocking on the door where this act was taking place. 

She, an elected representative of the people of her district of that state, was just trying to see the business that was happening in her state. She was arrested for the "good trouble" she took--which even wouldn't be so troublesome if those men in that picture above didn't know full well and good the disapprobation they deserved from history for what they had just done. They were doing something wrong there, and blamed people who had the eyes to see it. 

They aren't making a mistake--as I've noted before on this blog, what is happening in Georgia and elsewhere is very deliberate. We aren't born yesterday, but even if we were, we could do math and recognize that Georgia has a problem with voter equity, and decided to double-down on an inequitable system. To do what? To maintain the status quo where the GOP is in power. (Attention to Tom Cotton, et als, this is actually the textbook example of some critically race-based shit happening. So, FYI--you are a bunny with a pancake on your head. People in power passing laws to stay in power--whether for race-based reasons or not, is like the law of inertia, as in, totally observable and endlessly reproduced.) But that is to say, they aren't making a mistake as to their immediate goals--trying to limit the votes of people they deem unlikely to vote for them.

They are making a mistake as to what the spirit of democracy and the rights of the citizens of their state entails. They are boldly making the statement of the autocrat: if the people don't support me, I'll just find a better people. The other guys--they can be unpeopled--in practice if not in fact. What is said of books might apply: where they burn voter registrations, they could....

But we all have eyes to see, ears to hear, or minds to understand. So we know, for example, that Mitch McConnell is dead wrong when he says there is nothing racial about the history of the filibuster. We need to end the filibuster for this, maybe not the last leg, but a big leg of our journey towards achieving a more perfect nation, with freedom and justice for all.  We need to undo it to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, because Shelby vs. Holder was flat out wrong. It is true that the US South isn't uniquely racist--if you mean that Wisconsin and Pennsylvania Republicans wouldn't do exactly what Georgia is doing right now. The point isn't geographical: it's that as a creedal nation, we hold one person, one vote to be important, without regard to circumstance except age and citizenship. 

This image above, shows that these men with their voter suppression bill might have known they were being iconic. But they are not in control of what this icon means. I say it means they are afraid that people will understand what they do and hope so desperately no one is looking they would even arrest their colleagues. I say that because that is what happened. They arrested their Black, female colleague because she was looking. But we all can see. We see you. We see you, Georgia. 

Better than what they did is possible and will be done because the people united will not be defeated. And people who incur hours long lines and deny food and water are showing their inhumanity and contempt of human rights. And that can't help but be seen for what it is. You reap what you have sown and people will show up to assist.