Tuesday, May 23, 2017

Trump’s Policies to End Pluralism – Losing America (1)

The attack on voting rights is but one of the elements in this administration’s strategy to hold together it’s coalition of old Jim Crow South, and anti-Hispanic and Native peoples in the West.  The strategy is shaping up as an attack on policies that disproportionately help those poorer minority populations.

This appears to be designed to reestablish the pecking order (not the power structure) of the Jim Crow South, and the anti-native American West.  It will enable poor whites to once again feel they are not at the bottom of the heap.  It is the old strategy of the Southern elites: splitting the poor so they can’t effect change.

To this end, three major tools are being crafted:

  • First, the taking away of voting rights of poor minorities.  Robert Barnes reported in yesterday’s Post that Chief Justice Roberts has clarified that his vote against the review of the NC voter ID case is not be understood as support for getting rid of those laws.  Further, Barnes reports Gorsuch is likely on the side of the new voter restrictions.

  • Second, Sessions efforts to reimpose tougher sentencing coupled with the end of DOJ review of police departments’ malpractice, will quickly reestablish our world record rates of incarceration of our minorities.  To facilitate this result, the DOJ is also relegitimating the use of private prisons.  That will increase capacity quickly.

  • Third, giving the states more control of America’s social safety net’s structure will permit the cleansing of many blacks, hispanics, and native Americans from the roles of recipients in states where these groups are not properly empowered.

Other aspects of the Trump presidency may be disturbing, but these strategic moves need to be discussed and fought openly for the preservation of our union.