If the world doesn’t end

Last updated on: February 2, 2021 at 6:52 pm by Fred Clark

If the world doesn’t end 2021-02-02T18:52:33-05:00 Fred Clark

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• The Trump GOP’s efforts to recreate Jim Crow voting restrictions are as transparent as they are absurd: “Bill seeks two copies of photo ID to vote absentee in Georgia.”

Georgia voters would be required to make copies of their photo ID and mail them to election officials twice before being allowed to cast an absentee ballot, according to a bill introduced Wednesday.

The legislation, Senate Bill 29, would create a photo ID requirement for voting outside of polling places in Georgia. Voters would need to submit ID both when applying for absentee ballots and when returning them.

The bill is the first major proposal to limit absentee voting after Republican Donald Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden in last year’s presidential election. State and local election officials have said there’s little indication of fraud besides isolated cases.

… Fair Fight, a voting rights group, said Republicans are trying to increase their chances of winning elections by preventing eligible Georgians from casting ballots.

“By requiring access to a printer, which many Georgians obviously do not have, Republicans are attempting to purposely take away the ability of many Georgians to vote by mail simply because they believe too many Democrats and too many people of color voted by mail,” Fair Fight spokesman Seth Bringman said.

One way for the Georgia Republican Party to overcome it’s huge deficits with Black voters would be for them to adopt policies and platforms that would improve the lives of Black voters in Georgia. But the Georgia Republican Party has no interest in doing that. In fact, the Republican Party adamantly opposes doing that. So, instead, they’re trying to suppress and dismiss Black votes. It’s racist and unconstitutional, but they could probably still get a majority of Shelby County Supreme Court justices to pretend it wasn’t because those justices are “pro-life,” meaning they don’t think the Reconstruction Amendments really count.

The weirdest part of this is the idea of photo ID by mail. Photo ID isn’t flawless, but it’s a fairly reliable form of identification in person. “Can I see some ID?” the bouncer says and you give him your driver’s license and he holds up the photo while looking at you, standing there, and goes, “Yup, that’s you.” That’s how photo ID works. And that’s how photo ID absolutely doesn’t work — or serve any meaningful purpose — if it’s done by mail.

This idea shows that the Republicans in Georgia’s legislature aren’t the brightest. But then again, absurd and Kafka-esque is probably what they were going for with this. The absurdity is part of the point.

• “Ain’t gonna study war no more,” the song says, paraphrasing Isaiah 2:4. I was reminded of that reading this fascinating NPR interview with historian Kathleen Belew, “When White Extremism Seeps into the Mainstream.” That headline is inaccurately flattering and exculpatory — imagining some unprovided evidence of a “mainstream” that isn’t normally hospitable to the violent ideology of “white extremism.” But the interview is quite insightful.

This bit, from Belew, is what reminded me of Isaiah 2:

If you look at the surges in Klan activity throughout its life from the late 1800s forward, the best predictor for a major surge in that kind of action is not economic need, anti-immigration fervor, populism or any number of explanations that people have sort of pointed to. The best predictor for rises in Klan activity is the aftermath of warfare. So when I first learned that, I wondered if I would find a story about veterans coming home and continuing the violence of combat.

But it turns out that that phenomenon of increased violence after warfare is much bigger than veterans, and in fact runs across all of American society. Everyone is more violent after warfare. All of our measures of violence, not just among people who have served, but across age groups, across gender, all of those measures go up after wars.

Another reason that war is always a bad idea (and almost always the worst idea).

• This story has me thinking of Franklin Graham, “Dodger Stadium’s COVID-19 vaccination site shut down after protesters gather at entrance” (LA Times paywall story).

Dodger Stadium’s mass COVID-19 vaccination site was shut down Saturday afternoon as about 50 protesters gathered at the entrance, stalling hundreds of motorists who had been waiting in line for hours.

The Los Angeles Fire Department closed the entrance to the stadium — one of the largest vaccination sites in the country — for about an hour starting just before 2 p.m. as a precaution, officials said.

The demonstrators included members of anti-vaccine and far-right groups. While some carried signs decrying the COVID-19 vaccine and shouting for people not to get the shots, there were no incidents of violence.

On the one hand, Graham inherited the family business of Samaritan’s Purse, his father’s disaster-relief and medical-missions charity that has helped respond to the pandemic by setting up field hospitals in virus hotspots.

On the other hand, Franklin Graham has never met a conspiracy theory he didn’t like. He was among the most loyal and enthusiastic supporters of Trump and Trumpism, and he has spent years bearing false witness against his neighbors in every way imaginable, supporting the wildest nonsense coming out of the chans and the other cesspools that spawned Pizzagate and Q-Anon and James O’Keefe and “Release the Kraken” and thereby empowering the death cult of protesters who oppose vaccination against the disease that has killed millions of people around the world.

Graham seems to understand the truth about the pandemic and he has a very large platform and a very large audience that needs to be confronted with that truth. But he can’t tell that truth. It’s a slippery slope, after all. If Franklin Graham were to start telling his followers the truth about COVID-19, then he might also wind up telling them the truth about the free and fair election, and the truth about Satanic baby-killers being imaginary, and where would it end? He won’t take that chance.

• That story is also a great excuse to post this, from songwriter Jensen McRae, who tweeted, “in 2023 Phoebe Bridgers is gonna drop her third album & the opening track will be about hooking up in the car while waiting in line to get vaccinated at dodger stadium and it’s gonna make me cry,” and then followed it up with this:

https://twitter.com/Jensen_McRae/status/1349967380458266625

And then she went and finished the song.

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