Monday Reading

 

For generations, the Republican / New Confederate / Insurrectionist Party has employed the politics of exclusion, even when their Dixiecrat forebears were denying African-Americans the vote through Jim Crow laws. Adam Serwer has a brilliant op-ed in the New York Times that goes into the history of this cruel and un-American effort: 

"Donald Trump has claimed credit for any number of things he benefited from but did not create, and the Republican Party’s reigning ideology is one of them: a politics of cruelty and exclusion that strategically exploits vulnerable Americans by portraying them as an existential threat, against whom acts of barbarism and disenfranchisement become not only justified but worthy of celebration. This approach has a long history in American politics. The most consistent threat to our democracy has always been the drive of some leaders to restrict its blessings to a select few.

This is why Joe Biden beat Mr. Trump but has not vanquished Trumpism. Mr. Trump’s main innovation was showing Republicans how much they could get away with, from shattering migrant families and banning Muslim travelers to valorizing war crimes and denigrating African, Latino and Caribbean immigrants as being from “shithole countries.” Republicans have responded with zeal, even in the aftermath of his loss, with Republican-controlled legislatures targeting constituencies they identify either with Democrats or with the rapid cultural change that conservatives hope to arrest. The most significant for democracy, however, are the election laws designed to insulate Republican power from a diverse American majority that Republicans fear no longer supports them. The focus on Mr. Trump’s — admittedly shocking — idiosyncrasies has obscured the broader logic of this strategy."  (our emphasis)

After the John Roberts Supreme Court stripped the Justice Department of its ability under the 1965 Voting Rights Act to stop voter suppression measures from being enacted (Shelby County v. Holder, 2013),  Republican State legislatures in states that had historically practiced such discrimination were free to enact the kinds of new Jim Crow laws we're seeing now. Now the Justice Department has to act after the fact, and in the case of Georgia's reactionary new laws, DOJ might not prevail according to Ian Millhiser:

"Attorney General Merrick Garland announced on Friday that the Justice Department filed a lawsuit challenging several provisions of Georgia’s recently enacted voter suppression law. And the Justice Department has a strong case on the merits against this law.

Yet it is far from clear whether the strength of their case will matter: They will have to litigate this case before a judiciary that is increasingly hostile toward voting rights claims.

The complaint in United States v. Georgia, which is signed by the most senior lawyers in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, alleges that several provisions of the Georgia law 'were adopted with the purpose of denying or abridging Black citizens’ equal access to the political process, in violation' of the Voting Rights Act.

The DOJ does not attack the entire Georgia law, and it does not directly attack the single most troubling provision of the law, which allows Republican officials to effectively take over local election boards that have the power to close polling places and disqualify voters."   (our emphasis)

The surge of the Delta variant has prompted new quarantine measures, most notably in Australia. There's growing concern that the low percentage of vaccinated people worldwide -- and lax observance of masking, social distancing, etc. -- will trigger another pandemic cycle.

"Australia is on the verge of a national coronavirus outbreak just as most other developed economies are emerging from restrictions, with the delta variant of the virus seeding new virus clusters across the continent.

The highly transmissible variant, first detected in India, is confounding authorities’ ability to stay ahead of its spread, even with rigorous contact-tracing and domestic border closures that have allowed the country to remain largely open for most of the pandemic.  [snip]

By Monday, the country’s most populous city, Sydney, and its smallest capital, Darwin, in the remote Northern Territory, were in lockdown. Mask mandates were introduced in the federal capital, Canberra; in tropical Queensland; and in Perth, capital of Western Australia state. Victoria, home to Melbourne, imposed border restrictions on several Australian states.

Hindering officials’ efforts to contain the virus’s spread: a sense of complacency that has crept into many communities after going months with effectively zero transmission of the virus."  (our emphasis)

For a glimmer of hope that the far-right in Europe may be receding, this news that neo-fascist Marine LePen's National Rally party lost ground in France's regional elections:

"The far-right National Rally party failed to secure a single region in the decisive second round of voting for France's regional elections, according to preliminary estimates for French national media.

The second round had been seen as a key test for Marine Le Pen who had been hoping to win in one of the country's regions."

As always, we recommend a visit to Infidel 753's excellent link round- up for an eclectic and extensive collection of interesting links to posts from around the Internet.