I’m reading WEST FROM APPOMATTOX, The Reconstruction of America After the Civil War. It is historian Heather Cox Richardson’s account that reveals the trajectory that has brought us to the national crisis we’re facing today, which was keenly illustrated by the attempted coup that took place on January 6th this year.
What jumps out at me in Richardson’s book is how quickly rich white folks on both sides of the aisle began calling any organized (or organizing) group who wasn’t also rich, white and male “special interest groups.” (They also called them communists and socialists. No big surprise there!)
The “special interests'” crime?
Attempting to name and claim the same rights and perks (voting, careers, and respect) as the rich white men sitting in the catbird seats!
By framing the issue as “us versus them,” they have been able to hold blatant, nearly uninterrupted marginalization power over the vast majority of U.S. citizens. It seems to me that they are the “special interest”: They appear to have a maniacal, pathological special interest in staying in charge of everyone else’s fate.
The Facts
In this nation, there are more women than men, and there will very soon be more people of color than white men and women; in fact, in several areas of the country, there already are, and in some areas, there always have been. (Before the Europeans came, there were no white Americans, and after they arrived, they made short work of killing most of them and sequestering the rest on reservations without adequate provisions or in prisons, returning the imprisoned to forced slave labor.)
And we remain pretty much in the same place, with our best interests and national life under constant attack by white supremacist malcontents, most recently championed and encouraged by the former president to become violent usurpers of well-documented (checked and rechecked) fair elections!
And the rich, white, mostly-male supremacist GOP is gerrymandering districts and disenfranchising women and people of color in multiple “purple” states as fast as it can because it knows it can’t win legitimately based on the popular vote. It can only “win” by cheating.
Irony Abounds
Back in the day, Republicans used to be the good guys. They’ve since gone to the dark side. Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower must be spinning in their graves. (If my Republican mom’s cremains box ever starts rattling, I will know why. She looked in on the current GOP!)
Privileged white folks can ransack the Capitol and stack the courts with other white supremacists who stand ready to vote in favor of keeping things the way they always have been — a documentable nightmare for anyone who is not white, male, and racist/sexist/misogynistic.
I think we need to unite to take White Supremacist Patriarchal Privilege down a considerable number of pegs, and we need to do it RIGHT NOW. If we wait any longer, our future elections will be stolen by them to keep them in power.
And as long as they’re in power, the rest of us will never get ahead. They are dedicated to making sure we don’t.
