Republicans Can't See the Pitchforks Coming

The two time popular vote loser and twice impeached, previous occupant of the White House has convinced nearly two thirds of Republican voters that the 2020 election was stolen and that he had  nothing to do with inciting the insurrection at the capitol on January 6^th. Texas Republicans along with those in other Republican controlled state legislatures are using that bull excrement to push through a wide range of voter suppression measures. They’re doing this out of fear that the high voter turnout seen in the 2020 election will continue and that will cause them to lose power. It’s a foregone conclusion that they’ll use partisan gerrymandering again to hold on to a greater share of the legislative and congressional seats than their vote totals support when redistricting comes up in the special session the governor plans to call later this year.

I frequently disagree with conservative pundit Jennifer Rubin on issues and policy but I think she’s spot on with her recent analysis of Republican rhetoric and actions in the Alabama state legislature regarding a nearly 30 year ban on yoga classes in public schools. While a guest on MSNBC Rubin said of Republicans, “They've come to believe that this is politics. That talking about yoga in classrooms is a substitute for governing, for solving actual problems. You know the state of Alabama is not one of the top ten states when it comes to education, health, longevity. It's not like there's any dearth of problems in the state of Alabama. But this is what they focus on. And it's actually, it's funny. But it's actually strategic because if they didn't talk about this nonsense; if they didn't fan the flames of white Christian nationalism, then they'd actually have to address the problems of Alabama. They'd actually have to vote for things and be held accountable. So they can't have that. So let's talk about yoga and Dr. Seuss and the whole, you know, grab bag of nuts that these people obsess about.”

Now replace yoga with permitless open carry or abortion and replace Alabama with Texas and Rubin’s analysis still holds. All the culture war issues they rant about are a diversion to avoid addressing real issues like the terrible maternal mortality rate in Texas, the low quality of public education in much of the state due to under-funding, the 19% of Texas children that suffer food insecurity, the high rate of families lacking medical insurance, and so much more. The same holds true for Republicans in our federal legislature.

The only point that Rubin missed is that reason Republicans cling to power is to make sure that big business and the wealthy keep their unfair tax breaks and continue to get contracts for government business funded by the taxpayers. All this has caused massive and continuing wealth inequality.

Back in 2014 Seattle based entrepreneur Nick Hanauer and member of the 0.01%, you know, the folks with private jets, 200 foot yachts, and 10 cars in the garage, wrote an op-ed for Politico titled “The Pitchforks are coming … for us Plutocrats”. In the column he said, “…there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn’t eventually come out. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples.”

Republicans are desperate to hold on to power but unwilling to change their policies to achieve majority support so they cheat. In a 1962 speech, John F. Kennedy said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

Published in the Seguin Gazette - May 26, 2021