The Dude is pretty upset that SCOTUS gutted the Voting Rights Act, setting the state of Tennessee up within just days of that Louisiana challenge to gerrymander the city of Memphis into three new districts that stretch hundreds of miles into rural areas, and the city of Nashville into five districts to further dilute minority voters ability to be represented.
To add insult to injury, one of the TN state senators who just voted to approve the new map, Brent Taylor, started his campaign less than an hour later for one of the new diluted US Congressional districts. 🧐 Protests started immediately.
Elsewhere, Virginia pursued a multiyear process to redistrict it’s map after multiple legislative sessions and a statewide referendum, but lo and behold, that work was struck down by the state supreme court on procedural grounds. Of course, THAT process wouldn’t have benefitted the Republicans, so we can’t have that, can we? Evidently when minorities are to be punished, things can move at the speed of light, but evidently rules for thee but not for me is supreme.
The Dude has been exposed to more U.S. Civil War and Reconstruction history than many, due to the Baby Boomer generation’s fascination with that time period, as well as those same folks having actually lived through the enormous unrest that characterized the 1960s and the Civil Rights movement.
One story that comes to mind is that of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, who, in an effort to “decide the issue of slavery once and for all”, wrote the atrocious Dred Scott decision– widely recognized as one of the worst judicial decisions in the history of SCOTUS. Judicial activism, bad reasoning, all are in play there. Additionally, instead of “tamping down” the rhetoric, that decision actually moved the country closer to armed and open conflict.
Similarly, the concept espoused by the current SCOTUS that “racism is a thing of the past” is farcical — one can just look at current ICE policy for that, as well as the actions of the Southern states who are desperately trying bring back Jim Crow 2.0. The Dude can only hope that this decision will be as widely reviled.
The Republicans won’t be happy until the entire U.S. government is solely white men– no women, no people of color, regardless of the statistical improbability that they are the only qualified parties to govern.
The title is a paraphrase of a famous Rage Against The Machine song– those lyrics are actually sung live in some performances though. 😎 Finishing the post with the obligatory William Tecumseh Sherman meme — the Confederacy should remain dead and buried, and a source of shame for the country. If you’re going to take pride in something, take pride in the slavers being slapped down the first time.
