States' rights, the Republican weapon of choice
They can't win on ideas, so they decimate our democracy
Issue #311 OpEd May 1, 2023
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Reconstruction was the first attempt made by white people of a certain mindset in this nation to at least partially atone for the sins of slavery by recognizing African American residents as human beings possessing the right to not only vote but to elect themselves as their own political representatives in government offices.
Ever since that time, the rest of white America has been doing whatever it possibly could to try to put the brakes on any acknowledgment of - or compensation for - those same sins of slavery or the incalculable number of other intentional wrongs done to African Americans by their own government.
Because where’s the fun in stealing someone’s humanity if you have to give it all back? Who likes to apologize, even when they’re wrong?
One of the most powerful political arguments that white nationalists and others have used to insist that they should be able to have their way no matter what anyone else thinks is the argument of state’s rights.
That’s the one that says who cares if everyone else on this ship thinks we need sails to catch the wind? We delusional few insist it’s best if we each stick our hands in the ocean and paddle.
And if you don’t do it our way we will burn this ship down, and everyone will have to paddle anyway. Oh yeah, and there’s no captain or any other higher authority on board so you can forget about sending any appeals up the chain. If you want a better result, find yourself another boat - if we don’t kill you first.
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Last Friday, in North Carolina, we saw more proof than we needed that the Republican support of states’ rights is alive and well, and well on the way to derailing American democracy.
This was actually the intent of states’ rights in the first place. Remember the southern states were willing to go to war with their own fellow citizens in the northern states to preserve their bloody and brutal ‘way of life’ which depended on slavery.
Today, creeping up on two centuries later, the South is pushing for states’ rights all over again, and the movement is spreading all across the country to key focal centers of the newly formed Maga Republic.
In North Carolina, now that its Supreme Court is 5-2 Republican-elected versus the previous balance of 4-3 in favor of the Democrats thanks to last November’s election, the new court decided to reverse a decision made by the earlier Democratic-leaning court which tried to right the wrongs that gerrymandering had perpetuated in North Carolina.
One of those wrongs was that gerrymandering virtually ensured that Black people and others were not proportionally represented in Congress. The previous court tried to rectify that.
But today, gerrymandering is all good in North Carolina all over again, which will bolster the GOP-controlled General Assembly's ability to craft state and congressional districts that favor Republicans in the 2024 election and, in the long term, grant North Carolina’s legislature sole authority in drawing future political maps.
In other words, states’ rights.
In the State of Michigan, where I live, gerrymandering had been running rampant for more than four decades until last November when enough Michiganders voted to put an end to that bullshit and now we are finally on the road to more proportional representation if we can just hang on.
Two years prior, we had an independent commission to redraw the voting districts to be much fairer, and the Democrats, who are actually the majority in Michigan, finally won a majority of the state and local elections.
But in North Carolina, a wholly different state, they’re going in the opposite direction, soon to be followed by other Red states. In Michigan, New York, and other Blue states, a woman’s right to abortion is still protected.
But in Red states like Texas, a doctor could lose his or her license, and possibly face jail time, for providing a service that is perfectly legal elsewhere.
As it stands, we are clearly not the United States of America. Perhaps we never were. But if we just stand on the platform and watch as this train picks up speed backward in time, we soon won’t have any time left.
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