Here’s a worthy petition from Color of Change calling out GOP candidate Brian Kemp’s aggressive vote suppression tactics in Georgia, aimed primarily at African-Americans: http://act.colorofchange.org/sign/Brian_Kemp_GAsuppression/?source=fb_stage3&fbclid=IwAR2cynPXwUb0CUEa1mHhMsPnVMMc5sxkg-IdDSD306odhwxRCyqb5zofOC0
Please take a minute to follow the link and add your voice to those of myself and others condemning this practice.
Republicans, representing (now more than ever) the party of the Southern Strategy, have been perpetrating schemes to suppress the votes of POC for generations, and apparently Brian Kemp is keen to distinguish himself among these vote-suppressing jerks.
Apparently, he’s aiming for Katherine Harris territory… or Debbie Wasserman-Schultz territory.
– As Florida’s Secretary of State in 2000 (the “Bush for President!” co-chair who ran her state’s election), Ms. Harris intentionally disenfranchised thousands of legally registered black voters in order to give us “President” George W. Bush, who would turn out to be one of history’s most accomplished war criminals (the Democrats, of course, would join Bush not only in his appalling war crimes, which their next president would exceed, but also in telling those disenfranchised African-American Floridians to sit down and shut up, as documented in Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11”).
– Harris’s counterpart, Ms. Wasserman-Schultz, was forced to resign as DNC Chair after it was revealed that she had used her office to help rig the 2016 Democratic Party presidential nomination for Sec. Clinton, in part through a massive voter disenfranchisement scheme targeting POC, students, and the poor… which would ultimately result in Donald Trump landing in the White House.
(Great job, Democrats. Brilliant. You brazenly cheat the left, resuscitated after decades of dormancy by an aging progressive — and demoralize your base, especially young people — in order to nominate the least popular candidate in party history… except on Wall Street and in neoconservative circles, where she is very popular. You elevate Trump, whom you view as “beatable.” You move even further to the right in order to win moderate Republican votes, after telling your base for the thousandth time to sit down and shut up, because you owe them nothing. Then you lose to Donald Trump.)
It’s pretty shameful, the myriad ways that millionaires and the privileged have labored to disenfranchise whole populations, communities that have been relentlessly targeted by our institutions since the country’s inception.
But the duopoly systematically disenfranchises vulnerable populations — Republicans in general elections and Democrats in their party’s primaries, which are systematically rigged for the most conservative, corporate-friendly candidates available (the Democratic Party being the establishment’s most effective firewall against the nation’s few remaining liberals).
I highly recommend the investigative reporting of Greg Palast, who mostly focuses on Republican vote suppression tactics, but does not let “Good Cop” off the hook.
But all whataboutism* aside, I hope that my friends will take the time to sign this petition.
* (because we are morally obligated, according to the “Blue No Matter Who” crowd, to denounce any whatabout-ist who mentions “our side” of the duopoly’s massive voter disenfranchisement, corruption, fracking/drilling, neoconservative butchery, spying on citizens, racism, water privatization, assassinations, torture, mass-incarceration on steroids, etc.)
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A satirical addendum…
DO BOTH PARTIES GET TO PLAY THE “RUSSIA” CARD?
I was about to get really upset about blatant GOP suppression of African-American voters in Georgia, but then the whispers started (emanating from Kemp campaign headquarters and the media it controls) that this damning audio about their dirty election tactics wasn’t leaked at all — it was “HACKED BY THE RUSSKIES!”
Holy smokes, that’s a good diversion tactic (right up there with “Squirrel!” when dealing with any mob of Pavlovian mutts).
[Y’know, I can’t help but feel I’ve seen this story before… leaked communications of political operatives exposing a campaign built on racism, sexism, voter suppression, and dirty tricks galore, with supposedly neutral party officers and major media outlets working overtime to rig the election for a far-right, deeply corrupt candidate… who then goes on to LOSE the general election to an orange yeti. Quick, somebody mention Putin!]
From this point forward, even though no proof of the Russian “hack” has been made public — and even though there is proof that the “Russian hack” story was created out of whole cloth by the right-winger’s top campaign staff, John Podesta and Robby Mook, the day after they lost the election — I get to ignore everything that was revealed in the audio and all the most damning facts about my primary-rigging, massively racist, corrupt as hell candidate… because I am a Clintonite dumbfuck, aka, a run of the mill Democrat/Republican: a corporation-programmed “Blue/Red No Matter Who” reactionary conservative under the self-sparing illusion that I am a moral, decent Liberal/Christian — and not a racist, because I don’t use the “N” word and would’ve given Obama a third term, if possible.
Meanwhile, I’m largely unmoved by: a neverending, globe-destabilizing, U.S.-led world war that’s killed millions of Arab Muslims (a modern holocaust) under Trump’s three predecessors alone; systemic racism, mass-incarceration and modern slavery, the New Jim Crow; the Standing Rock Sioux and the people of Flint, MI (water rights); GITMO/the normalization of torture; police militarization and brutality; drone assassinations and state-sponsored terrorism (my country’s support for Nazis in Ukraine and al Qaeda in Syria); the effective repeal of habeas corpus along with the First, Fourth, and Eighth Amendments and Posse Comitatus; the repeal of the Smith-Mundt Act; the exaltation of corporations over nations through “trade” pacts; austerity and neoliberalism (the total capitulation of the institutional left to neo-fascism); the collapse of global resources and the ecosystem; the disappearance of 60% of the world’s wildlife over the last few decades; the utter corruption of our elections, campaign finance system, and government, at every level, by oligarchs who make Donald Trump look like Mother Fucking Theresa…
“Russia, Russia, Russia!”
Hooray for the ex-Soviet boogeyman who makes all of our own election-stealing, omnicidal capitalism, and monstrous crimes against humanity disappear!