Common Sense Cure Blog, ending systemic corruption in government one idea at a time

Labeling Trump Voters as Racists or Bigots Will Only Alienate Potential Allies

1/24/2017

Donald Trump is an unrepentant liar with disturbing attitudes regarding gender, class and race… this doesn’t mean everyone who voted for him is as well. Certainly, plenty of racists and bigots voted for Trump but this isn’t about them.

This is about Trump voters who might be convinced to support inclusive, progressive policies in the future.
…but who won’t if people keep calling them racists, sexists, fascists or Nazis.

Would you listen to or be swayed by a person or group calling you any of those things?

~~~~~

This isn’t to say we shouldn’t fight back against the worst of Trump’s policies…we must!!

However, labeling Trump voters racists or bigots is like eating too much sugar – it may feel good in the moment, but it will cause untold damage in the long-run.

A better approach is to lead with our values! Point out Trump’s lies and hypocrisy, but stay positive and offer an alternative vision without judgment or contempt for those who disagree. Ask open-ended questions to get people thinking about their own values.

Questions like…

~ If your child was caught repeatedly lying, would you punish or reward him? Shouldn’t we hold our President to the same standard?
~ Isn’t clean drinking water at least as important as cheap energy? Is protecting oil & coal industry profits worth the air pollution and the risk pipelines pose to our national waterways?
~ Are we really okay with the same Wall St. firms who crashed our economy in 2008 coming in to our cities, buying up foreclosed houses and then running up rents on the very people they displaced?

…and so on.

Don’t argue if people get defensive – cognitive dissonance is a tough nut to crack. Simply repeat the question and walk away. It’s like scattering seeds; most won’t germinate, but as the consequences of Trump’s policies unfold over the subsequent months and years, more and more might.

~~~~~

On the flip side, accusing all Trump voters of being sexists or bigots simply because they didn’t vote for Hillary is negative, counter-productive and needs to stop.
…especially since it’s not true.

All this labeling does is create a false equivalency between progressives and the Democratic establishment; the same establishment these people abhor and repudiated in 2016.

Here are just two examples of people who voted Trump, yet deserve none of the negative labels being ascribed to them:

1. Voters who have seen their jobs vanish thanks to either globalization or through
environmental degradation.

Hillary Clinton and Democrats were so busy celebrating Barack Obama’s successes and telling people how much worse things would be under Trump that they failed to acknowledge how many people currently struggle to make ends meet; unable to adequately provide for themselves or their families.

Donald Trump spoke directly to the issue of lost jobs and this resonated with huge swaths of Americans who have felt the negative effects of globalization while reaping few of its benefits. Hillary meanwhile represented the establishment within both parties who have supported trade policies like NAFTA and open trade with China.

…Policies which have led to vanishing jobs with no comparable ones to take their place.

Trump voters watched Obama bail out Wall Street after it sunk our economy. No one went to jail and nothing was done to help average Americans, but they’re supposed to trust Democrats?

These people accurately see a world where both political parties cater to the rich and abandon everyone else. They are clear-eyed when they observe that no matter which political party is in charge, the political donor class gets away with pretty much anything it wants.

From Florida to Alaska, big political donors damage or degrade the environment (and people’s livelihood with it) only to ever be fined a pittance…if they are punished at all. Yet should the same people whose lives have been disrupted get caught hunting or fishing without a license, or dulling their pain with drugs, the full force of the law will always come down on them.

Trump voters don’t see government for what it might be – better or worse – they see it for what it actually is and know that it’s not working for them.

Feeling ignored and forgotten, suddenly here was someone speaking directly to their concerns...so they chose the devil who promised change over the devil promising more of the same. When their lives are mostly a parade of hardship and misery, can you really blame them?

2. Voters scared of Islamic terrorists/terrorism who don’t feel like Hillary or Democrats
take this issue seriously enough.

The vast majority of Americans want to live in a tolerant nation; one that bends toward justice and equality and which does not single people out based on their race or nationality.

However, to ignore cultural differences and assume everyone who enters our country shares our values is potentially dangerous. Saying there should be no difference in our standards for accepting immigrants from Middle Eastern countries in which we currently conduct military operations than from say, Japan or Canada, is not inherently racist. It is possible to disagree with Trump's proposed solutions but still acknowledge that the fears of Trump Voters are not completely baseless.

This is a complicated issue with no easy solutions, but Obama didn’t help with his strange mix of diplomacy and drone killings with little context or explanation for either. It created a vacuum which his critics have used to dominate public discourse these past eight years.

So in stepped Trump, and he did a masterful job of triggering people whose fear of terrorism outweighs their willingness to be accommodating to Muslims or people from certain parts of the world. These voters aren’t necessarily racists or even intolerant – they simply have concerns which Hillary did nothing to assuage even as Trump hammered the point home.

Even those with more nuanced views were unlikely to support Hillary since her hawkishness would just continue a cycle that perpetuates blowback and makes us less safe in the end. For people who care deeply about this issue, Trump destroyed Hillary.

~~~~~

You can stick a tube down someone’s throat to make them take water, but they’ll appreciate it a lot more if they decide to take that drink themselves. Those preaching tolerance while exhibiting none for Trump voters only undermine our collective ability to combat the worst of his policies both now and in the future.

Absolutely fight back, but please do it in a positive way! Anything else just perpetuates the same destructive cycle which led us to Donald Trump in the first place.

Above all, we must make it clear that there is a real difference between progressive policies and the establishment politics of the Democratic Party. Call Trump on his lies and make people question whether what he says or does aligns with American values…or their own. Finally, take on the special interests that dominate the thinking within both major political parties to offer solutions which address the very real problems facing not only Trump voters, but all Americans.

Do this, and in 2018 and 2020, not only will voters make a better choice, we’ll all have better alternatives from which to choose.

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Garden Walls vs. a Tsunami of Public Opinion...Reframing The Voter ID Debate

6/16/2016

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Sorry, but most people don’t care that Voter ID laws are actually intended to rob minorities, the poor and elderly of their vote. They’re not heartless; they simply don’t see the harm.

…and the vast majority probably never will.

Certainly politically active progressives care a great deal, seeing how these laws disproportionately target constituencies which tend to vote Democrat. This group has been making a compelling, impassioned case about how voter fraud isn’t actually much of a problem, and that in solving this non-problem via Voter ID, we are in turn denying thousands upon thousands of citizens their right to vote.

Unfortunately, they have now been making this case for well over half a decade and not only do existing laws remain on the books, but new ones keep popping up.

The Root of the Problem

What makes Voter ID laws so easy to sell, and so difficult to combat, is how thoroughly pervasive photo IDs are in the lives of most Americans. We show ID when using a credit card or writing a check; we show ID when checking in at the gym or when we get a library card. Some people even wear pictures of themselves around their necks all day long. Most Americans produce a photo ID for a myriad of reasons all the time.

So when right-wing politicians and their media lapdogs come along with anecdotal horror stories of people stuffing ballot boxes and dead people voting…and then proceed to tell voters who aren’t really paying much attention that this enormous problem can be solved simply by showing a photo ID when voting. Well, that’s a no-brainer to a society mostly conditioned to present ID for a whole host of reasons we care about far less than cheats and zombies stealing our elections.

Democrats and their allies can scream the truth about what these laws are actually designed to do until they’re blue in the face, but they will keep losing time and again if that is their only strategy. While there are legitimate reasons why people don’t have ID and that requiring them to obtain one is a much greater ordeal than most would imagine, none of that really matters a bit in the broader court of public opinion.

It’s time for a new approach.

A Brief Background…As If It Mattered

No ID, No Access

For those who don’t know, Voter ID laws are ostensibly designed to prevent election fraud whereby a person attempts to cast multiple ballots in the same election. This is extremely rare thanks to stiff penalties already in place to deter anyone foolish enough to try. While there are rare instances of this (and again…stiff penalties when caught), is preventing a handful of extra votes being cast worth the enormous cost to society when doing so disenfranchises voters by the thousands?

Of course, this isn’t how the issue is framed by Republican-controlled statehouses eager to deny the vote to large blocks of voters who just so-happen to lean heavily to their opponents’ side. Instead, the threat of voter fraud is overblown enough to justify the law, and then American’s ambivalence about being required to show photo ID does the rest.

If the professed intent of these laws were really to prevent voter fraud as stated, then why simultaneously make it much more difficult to obtain the same ID now suddenly required to vote, as multiple states have done? Basically these politicians robbed people of their right to vote in broad daylight, told a story they knew to be complete garbage, and dared anyone to call them on it.

While a few Republicans have spoken out against the practice, exposing insider details behind the laws’ true motives, most seem comfortable sticking it to the ‘other side’. The justification that Democrats would do the same if given the opportunity probably shouldn’t be a surprise given the current partisanship and tribalism in a deeply divided America.

Yet with the passage of each new Voter ID law, another batch of American citizens is denied their right to vote. Not all of these voters support Democrats, but Republicans are clearly comfortable strategically sacrificing a number of their own voters to eliminate a much higher number who would oppose them given the opportunity. It’s a smart play by a political party looking out for its own self-interest, but it is also a cynical and morally bankrupt practice, and an absolute catastrophe for our system of self-governance.

In a democratic republic such as ours, voters choose the people who represent their interests within the framework of our government. When those in power flip that script and instead start choosing their voters -whether it be through Voter ID laws, gerrymandering, or any other ethically challenged method- that form of government is nothing but a sham; an illegitimate institution likely to ultimately collapse under the weight of its own corruption.

In the meantime, most voters with their ever-present photo IDs simply do not care that Voter ID laws are currently disenfranchising countless thousands of their fellow citizens. The sooner we all accept this fact, the sooner we can begin countering these laws in ways which might actually have a chance of success, rather than continuing down the same futile path.

A Better Approach

Voting is Smurf-Tastic!

So if the current strategy of dragging Voter ID laws into the sunlight is doomed to failure, what are the alternatives?

The first step would be to expand the vote in other ways; making it easier for all citizens to cast a ballot. This strategy has already been taken up by several states, with Illinois recently becoming the sixth state to automatically register voters when interacting with the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) or other select public agencies; unless a person declines to do so.

Oregon, the lone state to have run an election with this system in place, saw a notable uptick in voter participation in this year’s May primary from 2012.

Many are now calling for automatic registration nationwide, as well as a federal holiday on Election Day to give all voters full and equal opportunity to participate in our democratic process. Both are fantastic ideas and should enjoy broad support. That said, neither would do much to help people in Voter ID states who currently don’t possess ID and would have difficulty procuring it.

Being registered to vote and having that vote be counted are two very different things.

To aid those who are running afoul of Voter ID laws, I propose that the federal government provide funding to local post offices and libraries to act as intermediaries between low-income and rural voters and their state DMV.

Both currently serve a similar function in aiding the State Department in issuing passports. Why couldn’t they do the same for voters in need of photo ID?

Post offices especially could aid in reaching rural voters for whom traveling to a metropolitan area to obtain ID is a burdensome requirement. Why not allow letter carriers, or a designated person from the post office or library, to visit these people, take a photograph and then ensure that the necessary paperwork is properly delivered to the state DMV for processing and issuance of ID?

For residents who lack the documentation to prove they are who they say they are, the government could also mandate that states must accept as proof-of-identity, a signed affidavit from a letter carrier willing to vouch for that person.

Throw in a little extra money to subsidize the cost of acquiring ID for the poor or indigent, and most of the damage done by Voter ID laws will have been undone, while strengthening post offices and libraries across the country in the process. This seems like a much easier idea to sell than trying to convince most Americans that producing photo ID when voting is a genuine burden to anyone.

Finally, federal lawmakers considering a slate of election reform would be wise to address voter fraud, seeing as how that’s how this whole thing began. Voters are correct to be concerned about the sanctity of their vote, and the government should do everything within its power to ensure voting results to be as secure and accurate as possible.

Voter fraud at the ballot box seems pretty well covered between Voter ID laws and the legal penalties that predated them. What about other forms of voter fraud which Voter ID does nothing about?

As Stalin wryly noted, “The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.” We need to strengthen protections at voting’s ground level to ensure the vote is conducted fairly and above board, and that all ballots are accurately counted.

Across the country, the infatuation with electronic voting machines seems to (thankfully!) be fading. These machines are notoriously easy to hack, and in cases where no paper trail is produced, the vote count is equally easy to manipulate by unscrupulous election officials. It seems that given the lengths we are willing to go to address a mostly nonexistent problem like in-person voter fraud, we should devote at least some attention to votes being stolen on a potentially much greater scale.

…and with an ease that in-person fraudsters could only dream of.

Meanwhile, election officials with a bias -whether for their party in the general election, a specific candidate in the primary or something else entirely - can easily influence election results in countless other ways both subtle and obvious.

Thus, the final part of any reform should ensure that, at a minimum, a verifiable paper trail exists when voting machines or electronic counters are being used, while also establishing national standards for our elections and those entrusted with conducting them.

These standards should cover a wide range of issues, including but not limited to base-line standards for voting equipment; minimum requirements for access to the ballot and/or polling places; as well as finer details like basic training requirements for poll-workers and the information they are required to provide voters.

Reforms of this nature would help shore up a broken system sorely in need of repair…as this year’s primaries demonstrated with uncomfortable clarity.

Of course, getting the government to act is admittedly the weak link in this plan; especially given how much both major political parties seem to view voting rights as a struggle between sides, rather than a fundamental American institution.

Still, that doesn’t mean people of conscience shouldn’t continue making the case for protecting the sanctity of the vote without denying entire groups of people their vote in the process.

All I ask is to stop framing the issue in a manner which clearly doesn’t concern most voters. Focus instead on a broader picture of which Voter ID is only a small slice. Focus instead on creating an electoral environment where anyone who wants to vote can do so easily and the accuracy of that vote is unimpeachable.

That’s an idea most Americans can get excited about!

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Shifting Public Focus from the Symptoms of Systemic Corruption to the Root Problem

5/6/2014

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On issue after issue, public debate continuously focuses on symptoms of the root problem – systemic corruption caused by money in politics – with these symptoms always skillfully re-cast as the actual problem. Political elites, abetted by the media, use clever half-truths to distort perception and inflame voters, effectively distracting us from the fact that most of our problems are rooted in the systemic corruption engulfing our government.

Whether it be the economy, education, health-care or any other major issue; the root problem is how money distorts policy time and again, and then ensures that all subsequent “debate” about policy failures stay within an acceptable framework. Absent this influence, lawmakers would be free to choose the best course of action without worrying about deep-pocketed special interests blocking any and all solutions not favorable to their own narrow interests.

So how do they keep getting away with it? For starters, because most voters align themselves with one of the two major political parties, self-interested politicians and the media have little trouble in establishing the framework of debate for just about every issue of importance. The two parties craft opposing narratives, which dominate the direction of debate to the point of virtually excluding all other viewpoints. Finally, they demonize their opponents to win elections, while spouting self-serving half-truths which resonate with voters because there is always at least a kernel of truth wrapped up somewhere inside the lies and distortions.

By the time they’re done, even in cases where both sides’ arguments have genuine merit about an issue, agreement is still unlikely because we’ve been conditioned to devalue the views of political opposition as the sad babblings of demented and misinformed cretins.

The end result is stalemate and dysfunction, and a political system which doesn’t work for anyone but the moneyed interests.

A better system would yield better results, but you never hear that viewpoint in the media, and that too is by design. Those currently pulling the strings in government and media are not interested in people imagining how high we could soar unencumbered by the systemic corruption constantly weighing us down. They know this is the fuel which could ignite a movement, and they will forestall that at all costs.

Ending systemic corruption is a powerful idea with the potential to unite multiple political factions, but only if it is uncoupled from the current partisan debate and treated as the uniting issue it is. Just as lawmakers bristle at the notion that they are personally corrupt – all while taking part in perpetuating a systemic corruption far more harmful than any one (or ten) corrupt congressperson could ever hope to be – so too will voters bristle if asked to admit they’ve been wrong about closely-held beliefs. The easier it is made for voters to unite against corruption without having to examine their viewpoints on any particular issue too closely, the greater the chance of success.

Better to simply ask voters to look at issues from a perspective of root problem vs. symptom and then talk about issues in that context. Focus on how special interests limit the overall scope of debate and leave us endlessly arguing over the symptoms caused by their corruption. Finally, give voters a way to end systemic corruption via pro-reform candidates who don’t require them to invalidate their opinions and feelings as a condition of support.

But before voters can be asked to end the corruption and its toxic fallout, they must first recognize how most of the noise generated by politicians and the media is meant primarily to divide and distract. Real change will only come once people understand that the problems we face are mostly byproducts of a broken system. Until we end the corruption infesting our politics, nothing will change, things will not get better, and the debates in which we engage will remain full of sound and fury; signifying nothing.

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Labeling Trump Voters as Racists or Bigots Will Only Alienate Potential Allies

Garden Walls vs. a Tsunami of Public Opinion...Reframing The Voter ID Debate

Shifting Public Focus from the Symptoms of Systemic Corruption to the Root Problem

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Labeling Trump Voters as Racists or Bigots Will Only Alienate Potential Allies

Garden Walls vs. a Tsunami of Public Opinion...﻿Reframing The Voter ID Debate

Shifting Public Focus from the Symptoms of Systemic Corruption to the Root Problem

Author

Archives

Categories

Garden Walls vs. a Tsunami of Public Opinion...Reframing The Voter ID Debate