The Question No One Asks

Are We Already Half-Slave?

Supporters of voting rights warn incessantly about the Administration’s threats to block free elections in states run by Democrats.

But what about in states run by Republicans?

States like Texas, Georgia, and Ohio have serious challenges to Republican rule going on. Republicans in those states, meanwhile, have nominated foursquare allies of the Administration. They run the voting machinery. How far will they go to maintain power?

This is a question no one seems to be asking.

There are things that Republicans can do at the margins to win close elections. They can reject “late” ballots, toss people off the rolls, and they can refuse to send mail-in ballots to certain people. But these are at the margin. The wave coming at them, after losing the Iran war, dropping millions off health insurance, and seeing the stock market plunge, is higher than that.

Elections in these states are already closer than they’d like. This despite a long history of suppression that includes huge voting precincts for Democrats and small ones for Republicans. In Georgia, I’ve seen the lines here in DeKalb County and the lack of them in Cherokee County. We see it with every election in the South.

What else might they do? Are they going to send the National Guard into Democratic precincts? Will they follow people into voting booths? Are they just going to report false numbers?

Then, what if that doesn’t work? What if, as has been happening in every by-election since 2024, Republicans just don’t show up? Or what if they revolt? What if you gave an election only for white, male, property owners and you still lost? It’s possible.

Will these Republicans be like Viktor Orban? Or are they something far worse?

Keeping Our Civil War Civil

America has been in a state of civil war for a decade.

So far, it’s been civil.

Despite enormous provocation from the President’s side, Democrats have mainly used the tools available to free people.

There is precedent for this, when you look at the 1850s. Confederates were killing abolitionists, torturing people, beating them on the Senate floor. But northerners roundly condemned John Brown and sought to tone down the rhetoric of Frederick Douglass. When given a choice in 1860, they plunked for the man they considered the least extreme alternative.

There’s every reason to keep this struggle even more on the down low. The Confederates control Washington. They control most state governments. Violent opposition of any kind would inevitably lead to repression, and the confederates are persistent, as Jim Crow demonstrates.

The present era won’t end in 2026, or even 2028. I’m now convinced it will follow me to my grave, even to the graves of my children. The existential crisis that began in 2016 is going to be a long war.

Maybe that’s why Democrats don’t talk about threats to voting in Texas right now, or to threats in Missouri, or Alabama, and Tennessee. We don’t want to get ourselves depressed, or admit that, no matter how high the blue wave rises, it will be just one day of protest. After November the struggle will only intensify, regardless of the result.

It’s depressing as hell. So, let’s just keep it to ourselves.