Do cardboard cutouts vote for Brian Kemp?
Democracy must be built on reality, not conspiracy theories
The novel by Philip K. Dick that became the movie Blade Runner was titled, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I thought of that dystopian tale when I saw a picture of the cardboard cutout fans populating the Atlanta Braves’ Truist Park on April 2. That’s the day Major League Baseball announced that the All-Star Game would be moved out of Georgia because of the state’s new voter suppression law.
I am not really worried about how the cutouts will vote. The Republicans have not gone quite that far, at least not yet. My concern is that the GOP’s war on reality is so unrelenting that the difference between real voters and imaginary ones may cease to matter.
That is why it is important that MLB acted as it did. Georgia’s and other states’ new voting restrictions are motivated not by actual voter fraud but by opportunists using as a pretext the popular concerns whipped up by the 45th president’s Big Lie about a stolen election. The Georgia law changes absentee voting and early voting requirements, limits drop-boxes, and gives the legislature broader power over elections.
In the absence of a shared commitment to verifiable reality across party lines, we are left with an endless, high-stakes battle. Our best hope may be that the Republicans go too far, as when Georgia state legislator and queer black woman Park Cannon was arrested for knocking on Gov. Kemp’s door as he signed the so-called Election Integrity Act in front of all-white-male witnesses below a painting of a plantation.
On March 31, 72 black executives signed an open letter urging corporations to fight such laws. Many other corporate leaders also criticized infringement of voting rights, setting off retaliatory threats from the right. Our attention-craving, twice-impeached “former guy” called for a boycott of MLB, claiming “they are afraid of the radical left Democrats,” while his Fox News pal Tucker Carlson said MLB “believes it has veto power over the democratic process.” These poison merchants have the nerve to talk about cancel culture, as if anyone who doesn’t buy their howler about the election being stolen from 45 must be a radical leftist.
Speaking of poison merchants, Rep. Matt Gaetz is too easy a target with his viciousness and mendacity, his revolting impersonation of a patriot, and his enthusiastic defense of the indefensible former president. Is anyone surprised that the only member of Congress to vote against a sex trafficking bill is himself under investigation for sex trafficking, or that his readiest defenders were Jim Jordan, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and (ahem) QAnon believers? Please.
Inhabiting an ideological bubble does not change the reality outside it. Republicans’ jury-rigged minority rule will ultimately collapse. In the meantime, the more they use inflammatory rhetoric, the more violence will erupt. The greatest threat may not be from the organized January 6 insurrectionists (many of whom face prosecution), but from mentally disturbed people like the man who crashed into a barrier near the U.S. Capitol on April 2 and killed a police officer.
Our diversity as a country cannot be erased by partisan ferocity, disinformation, or mockery. One shrinking population group cannot monopolize power just because their ancestors did. The same for the fossil fuel industry. We must deal with a changing world. We need not accept a descent into civil war just because a significant minority regards others’ protests as inherently violent and anti-American while excusing or denying its own violent betrayals.
Helping workers recover economically from the pandemic, which even the most scornful Republicans know was not caused by the “welfare state,” does not constitute collective ownership of the means of production, which is the definition of socialism. The GOP’s fatal choice is using gerrymandering and voter suppression to insulate themselves from the will of the people in favor of their big donors’ interests. This is unsustainable.
We can be proud of the LGBTQ leaders who are raising their voices despite all that is raging around them. They include Park Cannon in Georgia and her fearless colleague in Pennsylvania, Malcolm Kenyatta, as well as Dr. Rachel Levine at Health and Human Services, the first openly transgender person confirmed by the Senate to a federal post. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is at the heart of the battle to rebuild our infrastructure. These stalwarts are making themselves part of the solution.
Many battles lie ahead. But as Kenyatta tweeted on Easter morning, “He got up.” Let us do likewise.
Richard J. Rosendall is a writer and activist at rrosendall@me.com. Follow him on twitter: @RickRosendall
Copyright © 2021 by Richard J. Rosendall. All rights reserved.
