No, this is not a left-over snipe at the failed Texas power-grid (thanks to the state’s failed regulatory system). It is a sorrowful acknowledgement that I am powerless to step in and right wrongs and injustices everywhere I see them. So, unhappily, is Congress — at least for the moment.
We can do some things, both the government and I. We lend a hand to help the elderly stay safe and receive health care. (Even if all I do is drive a neighbor to a doctor’s appointment.) We pack sacks of food for kids who lack the free hot lunch the school cafeteria used to serve. And we can send money to help organizations like the World Central Kitchen feed hungry people whose jobs evaporated in the pandemic. (While we’re at it, our cash helps support hundreds of restaurant jobs.) Habitat for Humanity still needs to put roofs over people’s heads. Our hands, our leftover building supplies, and our money can help them do it.
So why am I so disheartened? After all, both the time-change and the season-change took place without undue interference. Robins have come back to my lawn; the first logy bees have come sniffing the skimmias I planted last week. Vaccination numbers are creeping upward…
And yet so is the number of people whose lives were snuffed out by gun violence. The year has barely reached the vernal equinox, and 9,783 people in America are dead from an encounter — intentional on their part or otherwise — with a weapon. Once again, Republican politicians weep crocodile tears. They might find a way to blame those victims who don’t resemble them. But all reliably declaim “now” is not the right time to talk about stanching these self-inflicted wounds. And so another moment passes us by.
Also creeping up is the number of people whose freedom to cast an unimpeded ballot has been challenged. Or in the case of Georgia, actively degraded. Their governor just signed an odious bill into law that makes Jim Crow days feel all shiny and new again. Republican Georgia legislators wrapped their law up in a righteous flag of voter accuracy. To me, this new law might as well be wearing the South’s loathsome stars-and-bars.
Below Mongolia; on par with Romania
Did you know America’s once-stellar ranking among democracies has slipped 11 points in ten years? Indeed.
Freedom House, a democracy watchdog organization, now ranks America’s democratic behaviors below those of Mongolia and Chile. They applied the same metrics that once placed the United States in the same top tier for decades. Our country managed to remain on par with Romania, where I would like to point out the Ceaușescus met an unhappy and thoroughly justified end.
What worries the watchdog?
An incumbent president attempted to overturn election results, a violent mob assaulted the Capitol as Congress met to formalize his defeat, and lawmakers failed to hold the outgoing leader accountable for his reckless actions, leaving him in place as the de facto chief of his party.
The problems that came to a head in January 2021 had been accumulating for years… a gradual decline in respect for political rights and civil liberties in the United States over the past decade. The deterioration was initially marked by harmful new restrictions on voting, legislative gridlock that has made it nearly impossible for the country to address serious public policy challenges, and the growing political influence of well-funded special interest groups.
From Crisis to Reform: A Call to Strengthen America’s Battered Democracy
The report makes for grim reading. And herein lies my point of sorrow: I can do very little about it.
State of the states
I don’t live in Georgia. Or Texas. Or Arizona, or any of the other states the Brennan Center describes in its latest report on voting in America. The report notes that 253 bills with provisions that restrict voting access have been introduced in 43 states.
In a backlash to historic voter turnout in the 2020 general election, and grounded in a rash of baseless and racist allegations of voter fraud and election irregularities, legislators have introduced well over four times the number of bills to restrict voting access as compared to roughly this time last year. Thirty-three states have introduced, prefiled, or carried over 165 restrictive bills this year (as compared to 35 such bills in fifteen states on February 3, 2020).
Voting Laws Roundup: February 2021
So what can we do?
I’m free to write to legislators in those states; they are free to ignore me — I’m not a constituent. I can’t vote them out. They are immune from my displeasure.
Washington is not immune from this … malarkey. I live here, and I can register my displeasure with these Republican state senators. But I don’t live in their districts, and as far as I know, I don’t even know anyone who does. Any protest I send will go straight in the circular file. Their constituents presumably think these restrictions a swell idea. I could only wish someone, anyone, would tip them off that our state’s elections system isn’t broken.
I can tell those senators who do represent me I don’t want them to support such unwarranted nonsense. Furthermore, I think I can guarantee that the legislators I helped elect already share my views.
Somehow, this doesn’t assuage the powerlessness I feel watching so many states seize democracy’s essential wiring and pull the plug.
An addendum: Republican legislators are now rallying their constituents in a new effort to reduce voter participation and choke off easy access to the ballot box. Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat points out: “A new report on the national election, called America Goes to the Polls 2020, found that Washington state now has the fifth-highest voter turnout in the nation. That’s largely because it’s so convenient and trusted…”
Why would you support politicians who want to roll back 10 years of successful, reliable vote-by-mail in Washington? Answers on a postcard (or comment below)…