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There is some movement afoot in the Connecticut legislature to make voting easier permanently, not just during the pandemic. The matter is complicated by our state constitution, but one pattern holds depressingly clear. Here, as elsewhere, Republicans mainly oppose easier ballot access.

The idea that one of our two viable political parties has evolved into an anti-democratic institution- one that does not want free and fair elections with high voter turnout whose results are respected is almost too upsetting to contemplate. But as Republican machinations graduate from voter purges and computer-assisted gerrymandering to their congressional attempt to overthrow a national election, it is incumbent on those of us who would think clearly about America to cope with this reality. Global warming is no fun to think about either, but not thinking about it wont help.

A good first step in understanding our situation is to acknowledge that throughout human history, representative democracy with a wide voter base has hardly been the norm. We in this country have had the exquisite good fortune to be able to take it for granted until lately, but in the big picture its the exception not the rule.

After the USSR dissolved and the Berlin Wall came down, there was a triumphalist moment in political science when some academics argued that liberal democracy had clearly won the battle of ideas and would vanquish all competitors forthwith, but the end of history didnt quite happen. Ours is certainly not the only polity in which liberal democracy is endangered or has never arrived. There is nothing inevitable about a system like ours, and nothing indestructible about it once established.

The average human being has not, while evolving from other primates, developed an instinctual and deep-seated love of democracy. Realistically, we want what we want and need what we need, and tend to like a political dispensation that we think will satisfy our needs and wants. If we dont think fair elections with lots of people voting are going to deliver the results we want, we are not genetically programmed to say Oh well, I guess its for the best. Whether from the perspective of world history or of human behavior, there has never been any reason to be complacent about the continued existence of a system like ours.

In the case of the contemporary GOP, the turn against democracy is not especially mysterious. This is a minority party. A Pew Research Center study from October 2020 found that 29% of registered voters identified as Republican. Its an unsurprising result in terms of banner Republican policies: most Americans favor a womans right to choose, and the GOP isnt having it; most Americans understand about climate change, and the GOP basically denies it; most Americans are having a more or less hard time making ends meet, and the GOP likes the federal minimum wage where it is, at $7.25/hr. How does a party like that win?

Certainly there are many independent voters who vote Republican, but its worth remembering that of three GOP presidential victories this century, two were popular-vote losses. Gore got more votes than Bush in 2000, and Clinton got way more than Trump in 2016. She beat him by about as many votes as Bush beat Kerry by in 2004, and we did not consider that to be a close election. The GOP happens to benefit, in a huge and anti-democratic way, from the electoral college.

It benefits similarly from the structure and behavior of the Senate. A vote for a senator in bright-red Wyoming is 67.6 times as powerful as a vote for a senator in deep-blue California, because thats the population differential, and they each get two senators. Once theyre in, these minority-party senators thrive in a body in which plain-old majority rule is now a rare exception; it generally takes 60 votes to do anything.

The Republican party also benefits from some apparently natural voting (or non-voting) patterns. Young people tend not to vote Republican, but then again they tend not to vote at all. The same is true of poor people. White people are more likely to vote, and to vote Republican, than non-whites, but here the result is not especially natural. Selective voter suppression has been the norm throughout U.S. history, with a relatively brief pause while the Voting Rights Act had teeth.

With all of these advantages natural, unnatural, and happenstance they lost in 2020; Trump was just too repellent. So now the Republican party is against our elections. It wanted the right to put them aside. When the courts wouldnt do it, they tried it in Congress.

I dont think it makes sense to think of this as an aberration. The Republican party in America is not well-situated to win free and fair elections in which lots of people vote. They know it, and will probably continue to act accordingly. They dont seem to care what gets broken along the way.

This is what we face.

Eric W. Kuhn lives in Middletown.

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Opinion Why the GOP is now anti-democratic - The CT Mirror

George Zimmerman, currently a hot topic on social media platforms. If that name seems familiar to you then let me jog your memory. A black kid who was just 17 years old wonders near a gated community. And adult male shoots him because he looked suspicious.

George is the same man who took the life of a 17-year-old Trayvon Martin back in 2012. He was convicted for second-degree murder and manslaughter. But, just after a year, he was released due to a lack of evidence.

Many who read about the tragic incident wonder, where is George Zimmerman now in 2020? Is he serving time for his deed? Is he repenting for the life he took? To answer both questions, no, he is not. He lives comfortably posing as a painter.

Whats more, he even sued the dead boys parents and attorney for $100 million. Now, if he was a good man, he would be drowning in guilt. Beg for forgiveness to the dead boys parents and family. Not sue them for $100 million.

George Zimmerman was recently convicted for DUI. As they say, when the justice system fails, there is always Karma. However, he was once again released after a short amount of time.

The killer of Trayvon Martin faced multiple charges of domestic abuse. But the changes were always dropped for some undisclosed reasons.

George Zimmerman was a married man. I say was because his wife divorced him. Back in 2013, after he was cleared of all charges he returned home.

However, the story does not end there. No, no. However, his wife reported to the police that Zimmerman was abusing her. Moreover, she stated he assaulted her father and even went as far as to threaten her with a gun. Soon after the former married couple divorced.

Geoge Zimmerman was involved in two other relationships. However, they did not last very long due to his aggressive nature.

Moreover, both of his girlfriends claimed that their relationship with him was very abusive. Likewise, the dating app Tinder banned him for life.

As of 2020, George Zimmerman holds an approximated net worth of $100 thousand. Moreover, he made hundreds of thousands of dollars from the auction of the gun he shot Trayvon Martin. The gun was sold for $250 thousand.

As for his job he poses around as an artist. Moreover, he made thousands of dollars while posing as an artist. Furthermore, back in 2013, he sold a painting of an American flag for $100,099.99 on eBay. However, it was later revealed that he copied the painting from a stock image taken from Shutterstock.

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Where is George Zimmerman Now 2020? Is Trayvon Martin ...

In March 2014, the Cream Bmp Daily web site published an article positing that George Zimmerman, the man charged (and ultimately acquitted) in the fatal shooting of teenager Trayvon Martin in February 2012, had accidentally shot and killed himself while loading a gun:

911 first responders found George Zimmermans lifeless body at a Florida gun range after responding to an emergency call that he shot himself while loading his weapon.

Im not saying we took our time getting there, but weve shown up faster to black neighborhoods. According to a first responder, they stopped at every light, didnt use a siren and drove behind an elderly woman all before finally arriving on the scene. If he was a rapper hed be more famous now that hes dead, but nope! Everybody just glad hes dead.

Soon afterwards links and excerpts referencing this item were being circulated via social media, with many of those who encountered it mistaking it for a genuine news article. However, this item was just a spoof as noted in Cream Bmp Dailys About page, that web site deals strictly in satire:

CreamBmp.com Written by comedian CREAM. This website is comprised of satire and parody of current news and urban culture. For entertainment purposes only.

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George Zimmerman Found Dead After Accidentally Shooting ...

George Zimmerman was acquitted in the killing of Trayvon Martin on a Saturday night in 2013. The next morning, I went to church wearing a hoodie.

This was mid-July, hardly hoodie weather. But other brothers showed up similarly attired, including our pastor. This gesture an expression of solidarity and raw pain was no surprise. Indeed, Id wager it was repeated in many black churches and almost no white ones.

And that, I think, speaks to a central thesis of The Black Church, a documentary that premieres Tuesday on PBS. Namely, that when Black people and white ones talk about faith, they largely tend to mean two different things. For African Americans, faith is not confined to the hope of heaven, but must also contend with the hardship of Earth.

Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr., who executive produced and hosts the documentary, tells me this is why Karl Marx was mistaken when he criticized religion as keeping people from rebelling because they could suffer anything on Earth and go to heaven forever. That may be true for some, but it was never the case for Black people. For African Americans, says Gates, church is where we learned to worship a liberating God. We learned to develop faith in the future and not a future after death, which was part of the religion, of course, but a future here on Earth where our children and their grandchildren would one day be free.

It is a perspective that often not always, but often confounds our white brethren. Note that the more directly a black preacher confronts racial and social inequality, the more likely he is to be treated by them as somehow counterfeit not a real preacher. Its happened to Sen. Raphael Warnock, to Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Jeremiah Wright.

And yes, it happened to Martin Luther King, who, on the last night of his life, said, Its all right to talk about long white robes over yonder, but ultimately, people want some suits and dresses and shoes to wear down here. That message is at odds with how some of us conceive faith. But as Rev. William Barber of the new Poor Peoples Campaign puts it, Theres something wrong with a religion that has nothing to say about the oppressive realities that exist in life. God is the God of the oppressed.

Nor is that oppression some mere artifact of the past. Barack Obamas election woke up the sleeping giant of white supremacy, says Gates. I tell my students at Harvard, there are two streams flowing under the floorboards of Western culture. One is anti-Semitism, one is anti-Black racism. Barack Obama in the White House, man, that stream came erupting like Old Faithful at Yellowstone Park.

African Americans deal with that stream now as they always have: marshaling faith as a redemptive force for a nation whose original sin was found in their own ancestors enslavement. This faith, says Gates, enabled them to make a way out of no way, not to kill themselves or kill everybody around them, to hold on, to have families, to suffer the indignities of slavery from beatings and rape, through uncompensated labor making other people rich, because one day, you would be a journalist at The [Miami] Herald and I would be sitting at Harvard University. Now, they wouldnt have known about The Herald, they wouldnt have known about Harvard, but they knew that a better day was coming, here on Earth.

It is a faith that still, somehow, miraculously, abides, as The Black Church documents and that Sunday morning in July attests. For 400 years, the church has been where we took our hurt.

And found our hope.

We are making critical coverage of the coronavirus available for free. Please consider subscribing so we can continue to bring you the latest news and information on this developing story.

Leonard Pitts is a best-selling author and nationally-syndicated columnist for the Miami Herald.

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PITTS: Faith not confined to hope of heaven - Muskogee Daily Phoenix

February 12, 2021 | :

by J. Luke Wood & Frank Harris III

The concept of gaslighting comes from the 1938 playGas Light by Patrick Hamilton. In the play, the main character, Bella, lives in London with her husband, Jack. Throughout the play, Bella is manipulated psychologically by Jack, who intentionally causes her to question her own sanity. Once a vibrant woman, Bella becomes emotionally withdrawn. Jack shamelessly flirts with maids in front of her and then denies doing so, leaves the house without explanation for extended periods of time, and hides objects such as pictures, silverware, and penchants, and then accuses Bella of stealing them. When Bella asserts she has not stolen anything, Jack retorts, You know perfectly well how you imagine things. Bella starts to believe him. Soon after, Jack hides his watch and then accuses Bella of stealing it. He then gives Bella the silent treatment for denying she stole the watch and refuses to speak to her until Bella cries out, Hit me, hurt me, but for pitys sakespeak to me. Jack largely succeeds in making Bella second guess her own sanity by convincingly and forcefully telling her what she sees, hears, and feels is not reality. He appears to be a devout Christian, even reading the bible and leading household prayer. Given that Bellas own mother suffered from mental illness, and the insistent manner in which Jack asserts her insanity, Bella comes to doubt herself, even when faced with glaringly obvious truths.

Dr. J. Luke Wood

Derived from this play (and subsequent film adaptations likeAngel Street), the termgaslightreferences Bella seeing the gaslight in their home dimmed (meaning Jack was using light elsewhere in the building) but believing him when he said the light wasnotdimmed and she had only imagined it. Informed by this play, gaslighting occurs when one begins to question their own sanity and reality because they are being manipulated by others. This type of psychological abuse causes people to second guess their experiences, emotions, knowledge, judgment, memories, and ultimately their humanity.

Although gaslighting is devoid of a racial context, similar manipulative tactics (whether intentional or unintentional) impact the daily lives of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). For example, it is well known that slave masters provided enslaved Africans with heavily redacted versions of the bible that reinforced their state of bondage as indeed ordained by God. Many of the enslaved were convinced to believe that their subjugation was part of a natural order and that their submission to this order represented Gods will. They were manipulated and brutalized into questioning the sanity of their desires for freedom. A more contemporary example of gaslighting occurred when former National Football League player, Colin Kaepernick, was widely criticized and lost his career because he chose to kneel during the national anthem in silent protest against racial injustices experienced by Blacks in the United States. Responses by those who opposed Kaepernicks silent protest accused him of being unpatriotic and desecrating a national ritual while completely disregarding the systemic racial oppression that was the impetus of Kaepernicks protest. Perhaps the most visceral gaslighting response to Kaepernicks actions came from former U.S. President, Donald Trump, who had this to say during one of his rallies: Wouldnt you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, Get that son of a b**ch off the field right now. Out! Hes fired. Hes fired! The pervasiveness and passion with which these claims were made led some Black people to question Kaepernicks actions. Overall, the tactic of deliberately asserting false information to and about communities of color has been used as a weapon against thema weapon made even more powerful when they themselves begin to believe them.

Informed by the notion of gaslighting, we offer racelighting as a concept to represent a unique type of gaslighting experienced in the daily, normalized realities of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. Racelighting refers to the process whereby People of Color question their own thoughts and actions due to systematically delivered racialized messages that make them second guess their own lived experiences with racism. When racelighted, People of Color may begin to question their interpretation of reality and begin to wonder if they are being overly sensitive. In our own experiences, racelighting most often occurs when other Black people question our mistreatment. When this mistreatment is called to the attention of the perpetrator, the perpetrators passionate delivery of innocence and claims of the victims misinterpretation can be incredibly convincing. A common example of this is when a Black student is told, with a sense of surprise, that they are actually smart. If this microaggression is brought to the attention of the person who said it, their most common response is to state, with extreme conviction, that the student misunderstood, took their comments out of context, or is being too sensitive. The level of conviction can lead to the student considering if theyactually created the problem in this interaction rather than the person who caused the infraction. Whether the goal is to protect themselves from accusations of racism, deliberate lying, or obliviousness, the power of racelighting cannot be

Dr. Frank Harris III

underestimated.

When experiencing racelighting, People of Color often feel invalidated and become overwhelmed by feelings of inferiority and self-doubt. For example, a Black staff member who has been passed over for a promotion may start to believe it was because they are not professional enough. A Black administrator who receives unnecessarily harsh feedback and destructive criticism of their work from colleagues may begin to question their own intelligence and capabilities. A Black professor whose scholarship is viewed as lacking rigor because it focuses on racial equity and social justice may question if they belong in the academy.A Black boy who is suspended from school for a minor action while their White peers are not punished for the same exact behavior may question whether they are actually bad or a troublemaker. In all cases, self-doubt can emergewhere Black people begin to internalize racist and stereotypical notions that they are bad, not smart or capable, undignified and unrefined, overly sensitive, and ultimately unworthy of honor and deserving of mistreatment. These messages sow seeds of doubt. The persistence and veracity with which such messages are delivered can make them begin to seem verifiable and reasonable. This phenomenon was exemplified when former U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams, who is Black, advised Black and Latinx people to avoid tobacco and alcohol due to the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on communities of color. He stated: African-Americans and Latinos should avoid alcohol, drugs and tobacco. Do it for your abuela, do it for your granddaddy, do it for your big momma, do it for your pop-pop. We need you to understand, especially in communities of color. We need you to step up and stop the spread so that we can protect those who are most vulnerable. Many saw Adams remarks as racially insensitive and unfairly targeting BIPOC who were being exposed to the virus because of systemic social inequities not because irresponsible or unhealthy behaviors. Many also questioned why he did not extend the same counsel about avoiding tobacco and alcohol to Whites and wondered if he believed BIPOC were more irresponsible in their use of alcohol and tobacco than Whites. Both external and within-group racelighting is why many BIPOC students, educators, and corporate professionals struggle with imposter syndrome and, at times, begin to tacitly accept criminalized messages about their communities, and even start to believe stereotypes that their culture and communities are lesser than. Chester Pierces and Derald Wing Sues work on racial microaggressions demonstrates the pervasiveness and normality of such messages. Our own research has shown Black students are most commonly affected by assumptions that they are criminal, less intelligent, and come from communities that are undervalued.

Although gaslighting is usually discussed as occurring at the individual level (i.e., one person to another), racelighting is both systemic and experienced individually. For instance, after a Black person is murdered by police officers, it is common for media to victim blame by conveying the person somehow deserved being killed. For example, Trayvon Martin was assumed to be a criminal because he wore a hooded sweatshirt at night, which prompted George Zimmerman to confront and ultimately shoot Trayvon because he defended himself. Some tried to attribute George Floyds death to him having small traces of fentanyl and methamphetamine in his system rather than the criminal actions of officer Derek Chauvin, who placed his knee on Floyds esophagus for nearly 9 minutes and restricted his breathing. Many pointed to Breonna Taylors relationship with an assumed drug dealer as the reason why she was shot and killed rather than the actions of the police who recklessly fired gunnshots into her residence while serving a controversial no-knock warrant. Overall, when racelighting occurs, media amplifies past mistakes, suggest they did not fully comply with law enforcement, blame them for their clothing, or cite small infractions. This can even lead to Black people questioning the morality of the Black community and whether these narratives are indeed accurate. The consistency of these victim-blaming messages makes them more believable, even in part.

At the individual level, racelighting could occur after a Black kindergartener is pushed by another child. The child may go to the teacher to tell them they have been pushed. In many cases, the teacher may respond by saying, What did you do to cause this to occur? In our research, we often refer to such instances as reverse causality (i.e., victim blaming). Incidents like these may lead a child to question whether they deserved being pushed or brought it upon themselves. The negative effects of these individual-level incidents may also be further intensified by the pervasiveness of similar messages at the societal level. Of course, we know from William A. Smiths work on racial battle fatigue that the accumulation of these messages has long-term negative impacts on the psychology (i.e., depression, anxiety) and physiology (i.e., fatigue, exhaustion) of Black people.

Dr. J. Luke Wood is vice president of student affairs & campus diversity and Deans Distinguished Professor of Education at San Diego State University.

Dr. Frank Harris III is a professor in the College of Education at San Diego State University.

Link:
Racelighting: A Prevalent Version of Gaslighting Facing People of Color - Higher Education - Diverse: Issues in Higher Education