So MAGA arranged, by voting for an extremely corrupt and dangerous president, to overturn Roe v. Wade. Obviously that was not their end game -- despite what the rubes believe, conservatives aren't at all interested in 'protecting babies.' During the 50s and 60s they used racism to motivate their base; during the 70s and 80s they used the existence of gay people. Starting in the 90s they used abortion, which previous to then not many people had cared about.
Once they overturned Roe v Wade they had to find a new target, something new for their base to get outraged about. They've tried various things -- trans people and immigrants, currently, pedophilia and voter fraud formerly -- but sadly these aren't really getting the base enraged enough to actually, you know, do anything like vote, probably because even MAGAts know most of the claims being made by the Right are silly lies.
Since the attacks on our civil rights and liberties does enrage leftists enough to actually vote, you see the problem, from their point of view.
What to do about this? It's simple, for a simple sort of mind like we see in most conservatives these days. If certain groups of people vote 'wrong,' keep those groups of people from voting.
Not a new tactic, I know. It's the same one that was used in the South from about 1890 to 1965, and in various places and ways since about 2000. Keep the 'wrong' people out of the voting booth, America Becomes Great Again. Or White again, at least.
The latest idea, which I'm seeing bruited about more and more from those on the Right, is to remove the right to vote from women and from anyone who isn't 'head of a household,' which is to say certain married men with children.
For people who scoff at this, the notion that Roe v Wade could be overturned was equally laughable twenty years ago.
Women have only had the right to vote in America since 1920. Brown and black people didn't really get the right to vote until the Civil Rights act in most places in America. Universal suffrage is a really, really new concept.
If you don't think conservatives can strip away that right, look at all the other rights they've erased over the past year, never mind that last decade.
P.S. They're also coming after contraception, obviously. Keeping people bound down with more children than they can support or educate (this is why conservatives are attacking public schools), especially if several of those children are chronically ill (this is why they're opposed to vaccines), they won't have time or money or energy to kick up a fuss. Plus all those uneducated, malnourished, sickly people will make excellent workers: desperate enough to work for low wages, in such terrible health that they will die in their fifties or sixties, well before society needs to worry about paying retirement.
They really got scared by that terrible ad that had women secretly voting for Kamala Harris.
ReplyDeleteFull suffrage, even for White folks, really didn't come all that long ago. I'm pretty sure that neither of my grandmothers (both born in the late 1890s) had the right to vote when she turned 21, though they probably knew it might be coming soon (I'd have to look up the timeline, but I'm guessing the amendment was in the ratification process; of course the ERA was in the ratification process for much of my childhood, and we still don't have that).
ReplyDeleteEven more to the point, one of my great-grandmothers was for several decades the head of a household that paid taxes (certainly property taxes, and possibly others; I believe this was before income tax) but had no members with the right to vote, at least among her nuclear family. Her husband, a doctor, died when my grandmother, their youngest child, was 2 or 3. My great-grandmother made ends meet by finding another doctor to take over her late husband's practice, the consulting rooms for which were located on the ground floor of their row house. That doctor also became a boarder in their house. Presumably he could vote, as could her brother/my grandmother's uncle, a hotel clerk, who lived with them for a time, but my great-grandmother, the homeowner/head of household, couldn't, nor could her sister, who also lived with them for a time. Her oldest child was a son, so he was presumably the first voter in the nuclear family since his father died (but then he married and moved out).
I'm still trying to figure out who, under the regime some MAGATs imagine, would be in charge of me, a 60-something woman whose nearest male blood relatives are 20-something nephews. They're perfectly nice people, and I trust them (and the additional early-30s nephew I've acquired via my niece's marriage), and we mostly agree politically, but I'm still much better equipped to make decisions for myself than they are (and the same is true of their mother, my brother's widow, who is also lacking any older male kin ).
Right?
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