“480 Minutes” - The G.O.P. - Whites Only
Americans who aren’t racist (or at least recognize racism when they see it) are pissed off because House Minority Leader Mitch “Please” McConnell publicly said something which sounded suspiciously like an intentional gaffe, something he can later “poo poo” & take back but something that was heard loud & clear by his intended audience — the Republican base, which believe that whites should maintain power regardless of demographics & that those “other” races need to know their place (that is, beneath whites) in the social, political, & economic order of things.
The words “African-American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans” dripped cooly from McConnell’s lips as he stood at a lectern luxuriating in having just lead his caucus in blocking the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. It was easy to dismiss it as a simple gaffe, but it hung in the air like a deadly virus. He didn’t correct himself. The white guys flanking him didn’t correct it.
Was it a simple gaffe? Maybe. More likely it was by design to hammer home his party’s commitment to maintaining white power by whatever means necessary. It’s long been an open secret that without this base of racist deplorables the Republican party would never win another national election. Hell, even with the full support of the modern day confederacy no Republican has been voted into the White House with a popular vote victory since George H.W. Bush in 1988 (his son Dubyah won the popular vote in 2004 as the incumbent after Al Gore won it in 2000).
The McConnell gaffe also served to very effectively distract most everyone from the real story: by blocking federal Voting Rights legislation the Republican Party is working to undermine American democracy, “driving a stake in the heart of the federal republic,” as one member of the House Freedumb Caucus texted to Mark Meadows, then The Big Liar’s White House chief of staff, on Seditionist Day.
Even though McConnell has distanced himself from The Big Lie, he is taking full advantage of it. By blocking Voting Rights legislation McConnell is working to ensure that The Big Lie wins, representative democracy loses, and with his stolen Supreme Court seats & stolen elections to come, he will secure minority party rule.
Securing voting rights didn’t use to be a partisan issue, it was simply a core American value. The Republican Party is working to undermine that core American value.
We see you, Mitch, and you will not succeed.
Once again my head nearly exploded this week due to the fact that representative democracy is under attack in the U.S.A., it’s an inside job, & those tasked with protecting the American experiment from enemies foreign & domestic do not seem up to the task. Fortunately there was good music to sooth my increasingly furrowed brow, some of which we will debut for you today including new music by Big Thief (Brooklyn, NY, @BigThiefMusic), Courtney Barnett (Melbourne, Australia, @CourtneyMelba), Elvis Costello & The Imposters (London, UK, @ElvisCostello), Equals Conquest (unknown), & Young Prisms (San Francisco, CA, @YoungPrisms).
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480 Minutes / Year 18 - Episode 3/770
