There is a commercial on MSNBC featuring Chris Hayes, where he talks about voting. He makes a statement at the end that says something about how there's something "profane" about preventing someone from exercising their basic right to vote.
That has sparked this post, along with the news this week that, after recent court losses in almost every State where the Republican Party has tried to suppress minority voting rights by enacting voter ID laws, the Republican-led State governments are using underhanded tactics to misinform voters in their States about voter IDs being required to vote - even if the courts have overturned or stayed enforcement of the laws. The idea being, of course, that regardless of what the actual law is, if people think an ID is required and they don't have one, they just won't bother to show up, thus getting around those pesky court rulings.
Chris has it right. The suppression of voting rights IS profane. Even where it is legal, it is still profane. I think Chris (or whomever wrote the copy for that commercial) got the right word.
Even before this country began its fight for independence, while the struggle with England was not over independence, but over representation (or lack thereof), the American people have valued their right to vote and to choose their leaders. Beginning with that struggle, people around the world, not just the US, have died to gain the right to vote.
Think about that. Died. Murdered, really, as anti- democratic forces resisted their efforts, violently.
I won't pretend, like the right wing does, that every American soldier in every war since this country was founded died to protect that right, because plenty of our fights were about seizing territory, or over economic issues. But, on the other hand, there have been times and places where they did, and you cannot denigrate the willingness of every US soldier to die in defense of that principle, even if they are never called to do so.
Outside of the US, as recently as this year, people in countries such as Yemen, Libya or Egypt, have fought an oppressive government for the right of self-determination. These have been (and in Syria still is) real struggles against real dictators who have every determination to remain in power and deny their people that right.
Literally hundreds of people around the world as recently as this last year have died in the struggle to gain the right to vote.
Just to be sure you got that, here it is again:
Literally hundreds of people around the world as recently as this last year have died in the struggle to gain the right to vote!
It IS profane to deny the right to vote in the face of the deaths of these people. It would be profane if only one person had died in the effort to gain that right, yet today, in the US, in the Twenty-first Century, members of the Republican Party are taking actions which are designed to deny the right to vote to people with whom they disagree.
This is PROFANE! This is WRONG! This is UnAmerican! This is anti-democratic and disgustingly twisted and - well - profane! (Damn, I love how that word sounds in this context...)
To take these actions is to insult the memory of every American who has worn the uniform of this country and of those who lie in cemeteries around the world having defended our right to vote or fought for the right of their countrymen to gain that right.
If you are an American who has done anything, and I mean anything, however small, to support the actions of the Republican Party in this effort, you should be ashamed. You should beg the forgiveness of all the ghosts of all the people who are dead today because they fought for your right to be politically active for the candidate of your choice, because without those people, you wouldn't be able to.
Have I repeated myself adequately enough to get the point across?
The principle over which these people have fought and died is that an election is a way to find out how the majority of a people in a country want to run their government. Who their leaders should be in order to perform the kinds of activities they want to see enacted or performed in moving their country into the future. In that process, it is important that every person have the right to participate.
If your particular Party and its ideals are so unpopular that you cannot win outright, and you feel you must cheat to win, then you have already lost the fight. You may win through cheating, and you may gain temporary power, but in the long run, when you lose - and you will lose - your lose will be greater, your credibility will be tarnished more and in the end, any respect you may ever have had will be lost and you will be remembered as a disgusting loser.
You and your party may believe that God himself anointed you to win and rule, but if you have to cheat to win, where is your victory? Where is the glory in covering yourself with the mud of dishonesty?
Once your favored policies have lost, you have two choices, either continue to push a losing cause, or reconsider your positions and re-examine the facts and see where you went wrong. Not where you went wrong in losing the election, but where you went wrong in losing the argument and why your side's solutions failed.
Cheating doesn't help you do that. It merely perpetuates the already lost cause, which after enough time, begins to stink, just like the rotten corpse it is. If you stay with that cause, then you will be tainted by that stink, and you might as well get a day job sorting garbage, just to cover up the smell.
The right to vote is just about the only thing this country's secular government guarantees that can be truly called sacred. Yes, we honor the flag, and liberty and freedom. But it is the right to vote which, as much as any of the Armed Forces, protects those other things and keeps them alive. Without the right to vote, the others all fade into history and become footnotes in obscure cobweb covered tomes in dust laden libraries in forgotten corners of abandoned citadels of a lost civilization.
The Republican Party, as long as I remember, has prided itself on its support for, its love for, and its defense of freedom, liberty and democracy. Today, by taking the actions it is and has done, it has violated the basic principles those things stand for, and has dishonored its past and the people who founded that Party so long ago. By continuing to publicly support those things while defiling the basic principles of democracy in suppressing their opponents' rights at the ballot box, they have revealed themselves for the disgusting, nasty traitors they are.
There just aren't any other words for it.
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