Why We Should Still Turn Out Regardless Of What The Republicans And Their Far-Right Goons Do To Keep Us Away From The Polls

From voter suppression to voter intimidation, it’s pretty clear to see that the Republican Party is growing desperate to hang on to their status as America’s majority party. That reason alone is exactly why we need to still come out and make our voices heard in the upcoming midterm election in 2 weeks. If you live in a Republican-controlled state, don’t let yourself be intimidated out of exercising your right to vote.

As Barack Obama correctly pointed out in a video on Youtube, voting is the only way to improve our already dire circumstances. Now is not the time to become disengaged. Let’s answer his call by heading out to the polls on November 6.

The Republicans Have Just Signed Their Own Death Certificate By Killing Net Neutrality

Apparently the Republicans can’t seem to shake their fixation on killing net neutrality, and today they’ve succeded. This is going to come back to bite them in the butt in November’s midterms. Voters are going to take their fury out on them for giving them higher internet bills.

Comcast & Other Big Cable Companies Must Be Nationalized To Save Net Neutrality

For too dang long, big cable companies like Comcast and AT&T have been throwing their weight around and now they're intent on getting rid of net neutrality altogether. They've proven that they're enjoying the threat they pose to free speech on the internet that net neutrality offers, and they need to be stopped. The only way to do so is to nationalize all the big cable companies before they shut down free speech online. Contact your Senators and Representatives in Congress and tell them that you're going to remove them from office next year if they don't pass legislation nationalizing big cable. This isn't about government controlling free speech, it's the American public shutting down a threat to the 1st Amendment right of free speech.

Dispelling The Myth That Racism Is Respectable

I'll be very clear, there are many people in America who absolutely think that racism and race-baiting is respectable. These people in my opinion need to have their heads examined. If anything, we in America are tired of race-based dog-whistle politics and we're tired of it being used as a distractionary tactic from the thievery that's been happening in Washington. Americans are tired of having these Southernized politics for a clear reason, it's an ugly reminder of how horrid we behaved in the past when it came to race.

It's not respectable to go around making dog-whistle calls, or for that matter, start to shout "White Power!" at political rallies. White supremacy has made an ugly stain on our past, and the best way to overcome it is through understanding the experiences of people on the receiving end of its most violent forms. This is why we need to make our voices heard to the racial demagogues and White supremacists that we soundly reject their calls to reestablish a racial caste system yet again.

Let's make 2016 the year that we reject the old racialized establishment we've inherited from our parents and grandparents.

New Low for Racial Discrimination

I don't know where to start. What is the point of US Airways telling two Black passengers that they cannot board unless they change their outfits, but letting a White passenger on wearing the same outfit they were? This seems like racism at its most basic core in my eyes, and I think Alter Net really deserves the credit for putting this story up to its followers and for showing us that racist chauvinism is still lurking within our country to this day, even though it's faced a successful mask since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Still, it doesn't help that the Black community still faces too many barriers to achieve their dream of full racial equality, and receive the same opportunities as their White counterparts. I have to say, as someone who is a student of History, we are entering a new phase of race-based violence and terrorism, but at the same time, entering a new opportunity to look our inner-most demons in the eye and learning from our past mistakes. If anything, the Tea Party, like the Coffee Party and Occupy Movements, have shown us that activism, from either the Left or Right, brings change that is neither simple nor clean. However, they serve as a reminder when the political extremes break loose. Only this time, the side going off the rails is not the Left, it's the Right. How might one ask? The answer is convoluted and messy, just like the process of change.

Think of the 40 years of Conservative governmental control, and you can start drawing a series of confirming moments about how we ended up in our current mess. Much of the social aspect goes back to the reaction in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, the Voting Rights Act in 1965, and the Housing Rights Act in 1968, all of which culminated in Richard Nixon's election to the Presidency. Unsurprisingly, Nixon campaigned on "Law and Order" to appeal to mostly conservative Whites in the South, as well as on a new expanded version of Barry Goldwater's campaign theme of States' Rights. At the close of the 1960's, this message was especially popular given all the upheavals that came with that decade of radical change. In fact, Nixon's campaign put forth a platform of running against the newly adopted Supreme Court ruling mandating the states put forth busing programs to desegregate schools. The policy Nixon advocated during the 1968 campaign was to end this order immediately. Well go to the 1980 campaign and its aftermath (of course following Nixon's forced resignation following the Watergate Scandal in 1974, and Jimmy Carter's victory over Gerald Ford in the presidential campaign of 1976), we see the Conservative Movement's resurgence in the victory Ronald Reagan heralded in that year's presidential race. Reagan instilled not just supply-side economics which America had not seen since the 1920's, but also a series of roll-backs of Civil Rights policies nearly to the point where they were back in the 1950's. Well, fast foward to the Republican Congressional take-over in 1994, following the Democratic (Bill Clinton) Presidential triumph just 2 years earlier, and Presidential win in 2000, now we're getting to where we are currently, especially at the closing of the Clinton years and the start of the Bush era.

It was under George W. Bush that most of this far-right ideology began taking root, especially following the attacks of Tuesday, September 11, 2001. For the next 4 1/2 years, think of the amount of activity the Religious Right and Crony Capitalists engaged in. I find it's easy enough to see how these actions, together with a real growing disdain for the Black community continued to grow, due to their constant agitation for full equality. However, this cycle of constantly railing about the "Black agenda", the "Homosexual agenda", etc., would eventually catch up with the Conservative movement. Think of the debacle in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans (Case in point), and that should be enough to draw a line towards the Democratic Congressional take-over in 2006, and Barack Obama's presidential sweep just 2 years later.

It's the fact that Obama's been office since 2009, and that under him racism has exploded to the most severe extent since the late 1950's and early 1960's. However, Obama is not the one to blame, as his victory in 2008 marked a shattering of a major glass-ceiling for the Black community and began a new era of racial definition. At the same time, Obama has provided the American people with a whole different kind of opportunity, not just because of his race, but because of his real ability to connect with people of many walks of life, and embodying what our most difficult daily struggles are. Going back to my earlier commentary, the fact is that when Obama took office in January 2009, some of the worst lunatic fringes of the far-right went completely haywire. The reason: a Black man should not occupy the White House. The previous statement is a testament to the fact that the fringe in question is the White Supremacist faction that tends to be one the most vocal backers of the Republican Party (No, this is not to say that all Republicans are racist, not all are, just many from this particular fringe tend to be). Well you see where that got them, as of last year's election, just in control of the recently gerrymandered House of Representatives, as Obama's still in the Presidency, and the Democrats still have control of the Senate, albeit by a slightly bigger margin.