Can an entire state be an asshole?

[luzribeiro.livejournal.com]

How is this democracy?

North Carolina legislature researched black voting practices to suppress turn out

Good thing this law was struck down. It was so obviously racially discriminatory that it had the word "watermelon" written all over it. The worst thing? Not only did the North Carolina GOP "kinda" know the law, in that form, would specifically target African American voters, but it deliberately sought intel on the ways that segment tends to vote, in order to hit it where it hurts most:

"A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit found that the state legislature not only enacted laws that disproportionally made it harder for black people to vote, but that it wrote the laws specifically with that intent."

They've even admitted it outright:

Republican congressman admits voter ID laws are about rigging elections

"Republican congressman Glenn Grothman ... asserted that not only was (yet-to-be-nominated) Hillary Clinton the “weakest candidate Democrats have ever put up,” but that newly enacted voter ID laws “just might make a little bit of difference as well.”"

Talk about being major assholes, and unashamedly so.

The good news is, there's a tendency to finally stand up to this kind of bullshit, what with Wisconsin, Kansas and Texas now seeing voter ID and registration measures also being ruled discriminatory in court decisions that could affect the November results big time. Granted, some of these are not exactly swing states, but others definitely are.

Comments

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

I don't know if an entire state can be an asshole, but almost an entire party definitely can.

[paft.livejournal.com]

No, not the entire state, unless you are willing to classify all those disenfranchised North Carolina voters as "assholes."

[luzribeiro.livejournal.com]

What about the legislature of a state - could it be an asshole as a whole?

[dreamville-bg.livejournal.com]

If it votes assholish laws, why not.

[luzribeiro.livejournal.com]

So if it votes on douchebaggey laws, could we say it's a douchebaggey legislature?

[dreamville-bg.livejournal.com]

That would definitely qualify them as such.

[paft.livejournal.com]

Only if it voted in favor of the voter ID laws unanimously.

[luzribeiro.livejournal.com]

If a majority of said legislature voted in favor of the voter ID law, could we say that legislature is "predominantly asshole"?

[paft.livejournal.com]

Sure.

It's painful to see this. I lived in North Carolina back when, in spite of its senator, it was a literate, relatively liberal part of the south.

[luzribeiro.livejournal.com]

But what happened? What must have caused this regress?

[paft.livejournal.com]

The rise of the religious right, along with liberal and moderate complacency. It began on the grass-roots level with a concerted and deliberate effort by the RR to stack school boards, city councils, etc, and expanded from there. An unwillingness to confront racism as "racism" also played a big part in re-introducing it into the mainstream.

The Bush II administration gave right wing extremists a real taste of power and a chance to consolidate their influence. They aren't going to give that up willingly.

[dexeron.livejournal.com]

To add on to what Paft said:

Over the last few decades there has a concerted effort by certain groups within the "religious right" to place their own people in positions of authority, starting with local teachers and city officials, and continuing outwards from there to judges, county officials, upwards through the state level in order to eventually have people of their particular flavor in pivotal positions throughout all of government, education, and society with the end-goal of shaping public policy to reflect their specific Protestant Evangelical Christian values. This is sometimes known as the "Wedge Strategy," so called because it was revealed to the public when an internal memo from the Discovery Institute (a Christian creationist think-tank) called the "Wedge Document" was leaked to the internet.

Sometimes related (not always) are the "Seven Mountain Dominionists," another group of evangelicals who believe that it is their right and duty to take over seven "mountains" of earthly authority in the name of God in order to rule as He intended. These people have also cultivated political and educational leaders from within their own movement (Ted Cruz's father is a pastor within this movement.)

The result is that these groups, having spent literal decades infiltrating governmental and other public-policy making organizations, now have their tentacles spread everywhere, and it's quite easy for them to pull these kinds of strings, regardless of how far from their rigid belief systems the average voter has grown. (Keep in mind, while almost no politician in America today would deny believing in God, few of these folks reveal just how fundamentalist their beliefs are before getting into office.)

Aron Ra talks about this a bit, starting at 2:40 in the video below:



It's an ongoing challenge to those of us who value science and reason in our public-policy making over superstition and bigotry.

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

It is a serious ongoing strategy for the right which first bore fruit with Reagan's Presidency, and has been a pretty-much continuous success ever since at local and state level, and has had impact on the Presidential elections too.

And is something those of the rational amongst us who have seen it happen regard as abhorrent both politically and morally. If you like, it is American Christianity's version of the Muslim Brotherhood or Erdogan: fundamentalism through the ballot-box.

[garote]

Daaaaaaayyyum.