The red state paradox

I finished the book Just Like Being There by Eric Choi. It is a collection of science fiction short stories (though at least one is novella length). I recommend it. Back in 1994 Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine (which I used to read) asked for submissions for a best new writer award. Choi submitted the first story he had written – and won. That story, Dedication, launched his writing career and leads off the collection. It is a story of a crew on Mars paying homage to the Viking 1 lander and how it gets them out of a tight situation. Most of the stories are about a situation that includes some sort of scientific speculation – the kind of science fiction I like. There’s none of this battling the Ultimate Evil – there’s not even any battling of monsters. There were three stories for which I was less pleased. I might call them technological alternate histories. One of them was about the Canadian development of a passenger jet in the early 1950s, but the company that developed it dropped the project in favor of military jets. Choi’s story proposes if a certain little thing happened Canada might now have an airplane manufacturing industry to rival Boeing. One of the other alternate histories is about the Columbia shuttle disaster in 2003. What if the possibility of a damaged wing were taken more seriously? Could the crew be rescued? Here’s a bit more on the Tennessee House expelling two black men for leading protests against inaction on gun control. Laura Clawson of Daily Kos reported how rare expulsions are – a child molester had been a member for years and the Republican Party helped get him reelected. Clawson wrote:

Expelling two members for a peaceful protest was an extreme act by Republicans and they’re not backing down, releasing a statement claiming, “Unprecedented actions yield unprecedented consequences. Unfortunately, we were obliged”—obliged!—“to levy unprecedented consequences on those members today.” Thursday night, NewsChannel 5 investigative reporter Phil Williams tweeted, “Scrolling through Tennesse legislative Twitter, Republicans are incredibly quiet tonight!” He added, “Privately, some Republicans express concern to me that these events are not only alienating independents, but also GOP women who don’t want their kids getting killed at school.” (Kids getting killed at school is apparently not a concern for GOP men.) So maybe Tennessee Republicans are feeling a little concerned about the backlash against their actions, which saw the state Capitol once again filled with protesters. But it didn’t stop them from expelling the two men, which required near unanimity, and it wasn’t the first anti-democratic action the Republican lawmakers have recently taken. After Nashville government rejected the Republican National Convention, Republicans in the legislature moved to strip power from that local government.

David Nir of Kos explains how the two expelled members may be back in a matters of days. And if their districts send them back, they can’t be expelled for the same thing again. Besides, these two black men now have national name recognition and a good pulpit to speak from. Kos of Kos discussed what the abortion issue is doing to the Republican Party. Conventional wisdom long held that abortion bans were something the party dangled to keep the anti-abortion crowd loyal to the party, but they didn’t really want a ban. Then the Supremes actually overturned Roe v. Wade. And Republicans rammed through as many abortion bans as they could, doing it as fast as they could. Their sense of superiority and maintaining the social hierarchy kept them at it. They’ve been paying for it since. The recent progressive win for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court was because the progressive candidate ran on protecting abortion and the conservative candidate ran on crime and transphobia. The progressive won by 11 points in an evenly divided state. Here’s some of what Kos wrote:

But the fallout isn’t limited to Wisconsin. Many conservatives have finally realized they’re in trouble—as in lasting trouble—over their abortion stances. ... [Republican Party chair Ronna] McDaniels is right and wrong at the same time. She’s right that the message is the problem. She’s wrong in that it’s a messaging problem. There’s no way to message, “We’re taking away your rights, and you should be happy about it!” ... Moderates and liberals are done with any effort by Republicans to restrict abortion. The jig is up, and it’s now common knowledge that abortion is just the first step. They are using the same legal reasoning to go after same-sex marriage, contraception, and other cherished rights. Suddenly, pretending there’s a reasonable middle ground is fooling no one. Meanwhile, the same people who have spent half a century claiming that abortion murders children in some sort of holocaust are now going to proclaim, “It’s okay to murder babies for 15 weeks”? If the center and left are like “nope,” imagine the hard-core true-believer right. They really have no interest in Lindsey Graham’s supposed compromise. The anti-abortion movement spent decades radicalizing its activists, convincing them that they weren’t just morally right, but that their position was popular with the American people. But it wasn’t.

Ariel Alberg-Riger, writing for CityLab and posted on Pocket Worthy, discussed the history of the American Public Library. There are 16,500 of them in all parts of America. 70% of Americans visited their library in the last year (don’t know if that is pre-pandemic). 80% of Americans believe what they find inside is reliable and trustworthy. They are one of the last free places that caters to everybody, providing a place that is safe, helps them grow as people, is a critical part of the social infrastructure and allows the public intellect to grow. The first American libraries were clubs for wealthy white men to share books and mold character. Soon there were similar societies for people of color. After the Civil War rich white women’s clubs were also formed, with books about suffrage and other women’s issues. Black and working class women started their own clubs. In 1896 women’s clubs brought books to children who couldn’t access major city libraries using bookmobiles. At the turn of the 20th century it was women’s clubs that pushed Andrew Carnegie to fund 1,687 US libraries. But they remained segregated – Richmond refused Carnegie funding to keep blacks from accessing a library. Across the country twelve colored Carnegie libraries were built. Libraries were a battleground of the Civil Rights era. But even with racial restrictions removed libraries in poor communities have limited hours, if they manage to open at all. This history lesson ends with:

A healthy democracy demands an informed, engaged, and empowered public where all citizens freely have access to information, and a forum to explore and discuss ideas with a community of neighbors. Libraries are our institutions dedicated to doing just that.

Mark Sumner of Kos wrote about what’s happening to libraries. Since well before the Library of Alexandria, built sometime around 300 BC, libraries have been an essential part of civilization. And now Republicans are moving to eliminate them.

Because, just like Donald Trump, the Republican Party loves the poorly educated. Ignorance may not be bliss, but it certainly makes people easier to control. ... When someone who is not a parent of a child in the district, or even a resident of the district, can insist that a book be removed, and a demand for removal can be made without a stated cause. Those laws have very serious potential consequences, including fining school officials or librarians for every “violation,” avoiding those complications by just not having a library at all is a compelling solution. County officials undoubtedly feel the same about public libraries. ... Schools are being charged with crimes for refusing to remove books. They’re being sued when they do remove books. How is it possible for schools to operate a library under these conditions? Answer: It’s not. And that’s the point. ... What [Republicans] care about is how they can use these issues to enrage the public and to attack public institutions. It’s not about banning specific books, or limiting the content of certain classes. It’s about limiting the channels through which knowledge is transmitted to ones where Republicans can exert explicit, overt control.

The target isn’t just public libraries, it also includes public schools, and for the same reasons. Republicans claim “without the Second Amendment, the others don’t matter.” But back in 1789 Thomas Jefferson wrote “A well informed citizenry is the best defense against tyranny.” And that, of course, means if one wants to impose tyranny one must make sure the citizenry is not well informed.

The VisiGOPs are here to sack institutions that have defined civilization as long as there has been civilization, and which the Founders rightly identified as essential to the character of America. And somehow, they call that conservative.

SemDem of the Kos community looked at the red state paradox. Even in red states progressive ideas are popular with a majority of voters. They don’t like gerrymandering, they want to keep Medicare and Social Security, they support legalizing marijuana, protecting the environment, restoring voter rights to felons, securing abortion rights, raising the minimum wage to a living wage, and many more. Yet Republicans consistently refuse to adopt such ideas. And when citizen initiatives try to implement them anyway Republicans routinely try to thwart the effort and are sometimes successful. So why do voters in these states keep electing Republicans? Gerrymandering is part of the answer. But it is not the full answer, because these states also elect Republicans to statewide offices. SemDem wrote that psychology is a better predictor of behavior than politics. And Republicans are good at manipulating psychology. Fox News relies on keeping its viewers in a perpetual rage. Candidates attach ideas, such as “Christian” and “Patriotic,” to their policies. They’re also good at exploiting grievance and demonizing marginalized groups, both of which exploit their fear of losing their place in the social hierarchy. That place in the hierarchy is more important than the actual policies.

Democratic politicians in red states would do well to highlight their patriotism and rally around traditional American imagery (flags, monuments, etc.) as Republicans do, but include in their message that they are championing policies that will actually help the lower socio-economic class regardless of race. We can do much to make living wages, voting rights, health care access, and union protections synonymous with American patriotism, and help supplant the twisted Republican version of hating and scapegoating other people for their problems.

A recent issue of the Hightower Lowdown, written by Jim Hightower, explains why doing it that way is a problem – the Democratic Party seems to have abandoned red states. Dr. Cynthia Miller-Idriss, columnist for MSNBC, tweeted:

I really don’t think we are ready for the ugliness that this campaign season is going to bring- & what it will unleash in communities across the country. Every community needs to be shoring up victim support services & preventative, community resilience efforts now

Karl, a freelance writer on the dystopia beat, added:

Many of us on the academic and research side are trying to tell people this is the beginning of a new phase of the movement and it’s nothing like 2016 or 2020 it’s gonna be far darker, and far far far more dangerous. The republicans are intent on ending it all in a wave of hate.

Lean McElrath tweeted about progressives flipping the Wisconsin Supremes:

Ali Alexander telegraphs the GOP plan for 2024, which is to win not via the popular vote but through vote challenges and corrupt courts stacked with right-wing judges: “We just lost the Wisconsin Supreme Court. I do not see a path to 270 in 2024.”

Later, she quoted Chris Hayes, who said the nasty guy is unpopular, the Republicans have tied their fate to his, and it has been a political disaster. She added:

I need people like @chrislhayes to understand that Republicans do not plan on trying to win the popular vote to gain the White House. They plan on using legislative and judicial means to challenge vote counts and manipulate the electoral college.