Hyperpartisanship is not a thing, only in Jamaica. In the powerful United States, it is pervasive, the sound you hear is the sucking sounds of the last dollars being sucked from the pockets of the middle-class, into the accounts of the oligarchs at the very top.
It happens so fast these days, that after only a matter of a few years, Jeff Bezos is able to step down from the day to day running of powerhouse marketplace Amazon, and yes, Jeff Bezos is worth a staggering $191.8B.
In America, the vast majority of poor whites vote against their interest, against health care, against programs that directly benefit them…just so that the people at the very bottom, the people they despise, do not have an opportunity to climb out of the dangerous quicksand of poverty.
It comes as no surprise that the poorest states are states that vote Republican.
According to (Politifact)Census data also show that 9 of the 10 states with the lowest median household income were Red: Mississippi, Arkansas, West Virginia, Kentucky, Alabama, Tennessee, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Oklahoma. Nine (9) of the 10 states with the lowest median family income were Red: Mississippi, Arkansas, West Virginia, Kentucky, Alabama, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and South Carolina.
The only Blue state on each list: New Mexico.
By the way, 9 of the 10 states with the highest per-person income voted Blue in the 2012 presidential race: Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Virginia, and Washington. The only Red state on the list: Alaska. Whether you look at per-person, household, or family income, nine out of the ten poorest states voted Republican in the last four presidential elections.
According to the data coming from Politifact, it is clear that many white voters go into the voting booths and cast ballots against their financial interests.
In many of those states, voters vote republican straight-ticket for decades, regardless of the regressive policies put forward by Republicans, i.e., trickle-down economics, what Herbert Walker Bush famously labeled voodoo economics.
Voters in those states are not voting for their economic interests as the mainstream media has tried to fool us into believing for decades. They are voting for their whiteness.
That group was labeled ‘white working-class,’ for a while vacillated between the two political parties, and they were touted as a group of voters who had economic anxieties.
Barack Obama’s Presidency peeled back the scab to the raw nature of their racism. Even as they benefitted from the Affordable care Act Obama championed, many of those geniuses were interviewed and recorded telling the press they did not want Obama-care; they wanted to keep their affordable care act.
Yup, genius.
In my native Jamaica, hyper-partisanship is not about race; but, about deeply entrenched polarized ideas about what Government should be, much like the Republicans and Democrats.
Blinkered partisanship allows political parties of both sides to get away with incompetence and corruption because their supporters engage in what-about-ism in defense of their party to the detriment of the greater good.
Jamaicans have come a long way from the days of murdering each other and burning their property over political differences.
As a small fledgling democracy, Jamaicans deserve much praise, not just for following a path toward Democracy since the Manley flirtation with autocratic rule in the 1970s, in which he all but locked up the political opposition and declared a state of national emergency.
To its credit, the PNP has not attempted to go down that path since Jamaicans showed Manley that they would not stand for that kind of governance, in an embarrassing drubbing at the polls in 1980.
Ever the forgiving people, Jamaicans gave Manley a second chance in 88; he never attempted that experiment again. illness forced Michael Manley from the political stage and his deputy Percival James Patterson took over.
After Manley left, the party retained control for an unprecedented 22-years. A period of unprecedented disaster for Jamaica, both on the economic and national security fronts.
Nevertheless, the PNP never again attempted autocratic rule. The Achilles heels of the PNP have since been kleptocracy, corruption & incompetence.
As tiny Jamaica matures and begins to be a beacon for electoral integrity, her powerful neighbor to the north has been having grave challenges with the concept of Democratic governance. The idea of a small government-run by ‘we the people’ is no longer sacrosanct to one of the two political parties.
It is not the two political parties behind the problems in the United States. Despite its faults and shortcomings, the Democratic party has held true to the principles of democratic governance.
The Republican party jettisoned whatever idealistic principles of Democracy it may have harbored, out of fear that it will not be able to compete nationally in short order.
The problem for the republican party, dating back to the Nixon era, and maybe even beyond, is that it allowed itself to become the party of white nationalists.
A credible argument can be made that the Republican party ceased being the so-called party of Lincoln, (whatever that means), from as far back as the signing of the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act, and the 1965 voting Rights Act that followed.
White Nationalists, not wanting autonomy for Black people, ran away from the Democratic party of then-president Lyndon Baines Johnson and sought refuge with the Republicans.
Some people argue that the Republican party could stop being the racists’ party, as if the party is separate from the people in it.
What would change the paradigm is the formation of a third political party. The thing that has now prompted panic among Republicans and has resulted in scores of voter-suppression bills emerging in Republican-run Legislatures around the country, is that even with the racist-in chief on the ballot in 2020, and even after unprecedented numbers of votes for the Republican party, they still lost the popular and the electoral college vote.
Without the electoral college, the Republican party would have been a dead party for well over two decades.
The intrinsic nature of whiteness and what it represents in the American body politic has prevented the Republican party from changing course. I find it laughable that left-wing television talking heads continue to wring their hands in despair, and wonder when the Republican party will turn and become a big-tent party representing everyone in America.
The party long purged moderates, (RINOS) Republicans in name only, leaving a hard-core cadre of white supremacists.
They now operate as the Republican party, but it is for all intents and purposes, the party of Donald Trump and, by extension, the Q Anon party.
An Elephant cannot cease being an Elephant; it is what it is, so the country is forced to deal with what is now the Q‑Anon party, one that does not believe in Democracy or fair play.
The makeup of the insurrectionist crowd that attacked the Capitol building on January 6th, is a testament to that fact.
In that crowd of anti-democracy racists, were business people, real estate agents, cops, soldiers, lawyers, doctors, and a who is who of the American society.
What that combustible crowd that attacked the Capitol building on January 6th had in common, was the singular defining characteristic called whiteness. A sense of entitlement that they own America, that they have the God-given right to determine the direction the country takes, regardless of the wishes of the majority.
It is a toxic arrogance from the first white settlers who came and murdered everyone in sight, took what they wanted.
All these hundreds of years later, these neanderthal miscreants still believe that they and they alone have a right to where they stand. Never mind the massacre of the native peoples. Never mind the enslavement of African people, some of whom they came and saw. Never mind the perpetual crimes against humanity they perpetrated on everyone that wasn’t pale and devoid of melanin. Still today, they fundamentally believe that they have a right to the land they stole, and all that’s in it.
Even with the unfair advantages, Republicans enjoy (a) two United States Senators per state that disenfranchises tens of millions of people, except roughly 18 million. (b) an electoral college that ignores the direct will of the people, and gives them the power to potentially corrupt party officials, ©, grotesquely gerrymandered congressional districts that chose their voters, rather than voters choosing their elected representatives,(d) blatant voter suppression, laws, and practices. Republicans can only win elections when they cheat.
It follows that the Trump strategy of projecting onto the Democrats what he pulled out all the stops to achieve, cheating.….. found favor with this group of dishonest, insufferable people…
They are in the minority; their supporters are some of the wealthiest people on the planet, and some are just dumb racists. Their cause is despicable and unjust, but unless every stakeholder, every voter fully realizes what’s at stake and get up and vote, Democracy in America will be something children read about on whatever they will be reading from a hundred years from now.
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.Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, a black achiever honoree, and publisher of the blog mikebeckles.com.