JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: TRUMP ENGAGES IN VOTER SUPPRESSION AND FLIRTS WITH RACISM AS ELECTION WEAPONS – HIS EFFORTS TO DAMAGE MAIL-IN VOTING – HE SAYS HE FEARS FRAUD BUT WHAT HE REALLY FEARS IS AN INCREASED EFFECTIVE TURN-OUT RATE FOR DEMOCRATIC VOTERS, ESPECIALLY THOSE IN POORER COMMUNITIES – WHY HE IS AMERICA’S “ALT-RIGHT” PRESIDENT – A RECENT ARTICLE I READ SAID WITCH HUNTS STILL EXIST IN SOME POOR PARTS OF THE WORLD WHERE PEOPLE BELIEVED TO BE WITCHES LITERALLY ARE HUNTED DOWN – BUT HARSH IRRATIONALITY IS NOT LIMITED TO SUCH PLACES, IT IS FOUND IN PARTS OF AMERICA, INCLUDING THE OVAL OFFICE

John Chuckman


COMMENT - SOME GOOD MEASURES OF TRUMP’S IRRATIONALITY


Nationwide mail-in balloting represents a big surge in costs for the United States Post Office in the Fall, a Post Office already long underfunded. Trump supports no additional funding, and we learn that hundreds of high-speed mail sorting machines in urban areas are being removed, supposedly in an effort to cut costs. This will greatly slow the delivery of ballots.

Actively working against mail-in voting is a particularly nasty thing to do, given the pandemic, which is expected to hit hard with a second wave in the Fall. Indeed, the overlap with the annual flu season could make things very difficult.

Trump constantly says mail-in ballots will produce the most corrupt election in history, an assertion with absolutely no basis in fact. Absentee (mail-in) ballots have been in use for a very long time, and they are no more subject to fraud than other forms of balloting, all of which have experienced fraud of one kind or another in the past – paper ballots, voting machines, and computer voting systems.

So, it comes as something of a surprise to learn that both Trump and his wife have requested mail-in absentee ballots for Florida's primary election, a fact in today’s news.

What Trump really fears from national mail-in voting is an increase in the effective turn-out rate of Democratic voters, especially in poorer communities where people are not always motivated enough to go through the effort to vote in person and may lack transportation to get to a polling place. It is in such communities, especially in parts of the South, where “voter suppression” has been practiced in the past.

Voter suppression takes many forms, from closing a polling place early while people are still waiting in line outside to using false printed notices misinforming people about the location of their polling place or to operating the polling place with such deliberate slowness that people become very tired of waiting in line. These are historic fraudulent election practices in parts of the United States.

Trump adds a new twist to old practices by opposing any extra funding and removing post office sorting machines to suppress mail-in ballots.

Trump is already flirting with racism in the election. At a press conference, he referred to whether Kamala Harris was qualified to run, suggesting she was not born in the country, as the Constitution requires.

But she was born in Oakland, California, and Trump surely knows that. Whether he knows it or not, questioning her qualification is simply not something people should hear from a President. There are appropriate officials who deal with such matters. Of course, Trump always maintained that Obama, too, wasn’t qualified by birth, Obama and all his acts being special targets of Trump’s rage. I wonder why that should be?

This is the Alt-right President. If you ever look at Alt-right Internet sites, as I do sometimes, trying to understand society’s undercurrents, you know they are thickly layered with prejudice and racism and just plain venom towards those who disagree with their views. Those are parts of a spectrum of ignorance over many topics, from calling medical masks a form of tyranny to insisting that proved ineffective, and dangerous, drug treatments are effective. Labelling opponents or those they especially dislike with vicious nicknames is common, a practice much followed by Trump in his obsessive tweeting.

I read recently that there are still parts of the world where witch hunts are conducted – literally, people regarded as witches being hunted down and killed. This occurs in backward locations, places heavy with superstition, in parts of Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa.

Well, it isn’t just in backward places that such irrationality exists. It exists in parts of contemporary American society, as the words of the Alt-right clearly announce to the world, and they have the President with them, just as he many times has said that football players who kneel in protest should be punished and that Confederate names on American military posts were fine.



NOTE:

In the recent tell-all book about Trump by his niece, psychologist Mary Trump, she quotes Trump’s older sister, Maryanne, a retired judge, as having said he was too much of a racist to be President.


FURTHER NOTE:

Expanding his efforts at mail-in voter suppression, Trump now  has the Post Office removing mailboxes from many streets and reducing the number of hours postal stations are open.


Readers may enjoy this sarcastic essay of some years ago somewhat related to the topic:

INSANITY IN AMERICA

https://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/05/31/insanity-in-america/