All Your Vote Are Belong To Us!
This may be the most offensive headline I've read this year:
Why the Maga’s Effort to Steal the Black Male Vote Has Surged, But Must Be Stopped
Penned by a Democratic strategist/consultant named Antjuan Seawright, it incensed me when I first read it, and I scrambled to put fingers to keyboard to vent my outrage. I'm not going to link the article, because, but if you really want to read it Google will help you out. Penned on August 31, 2023, it voices outrage at Trump's success in snookering (my word) 14% of black male voters to pull the lever for him.
The headline and the article engage in a trope that has become so common, we overlook its arrogance. That trope: that members of the various oppressed classes 'belong' to the Democratic Party, that their views necessarily align with the Left, and that their votes are expected to be Blue top to bottom and forever after. So much so, that if only 86% of black men vote “D,” it’s an affront.
This despite all the harm that the Democrats have done to the black community ever since LBJ (purportedly) said, "I’ll have those n******s voting Democratic for 200 years" after signing the Civil Rights Act.
The Act itself was a monumental step forward for liberty, despite the problems that its public accommodation provisions created in subsequent decades, but the balance of LBJ's Great Society has proven to be a major detriment to the black community. Black upward social mobility, which had improved dramatically in the decades prior to LBJ's War on Poverty, ground to a halt. Poverty became institutionalized as many fell into the Welfare Trap. Public education has likewise failed minority communities, with affirmative action being instituted as a smokescreen for that failure.
Yet the message remained, "vote for the Democrats because we give you stuff and because everyone else is a racist."
That's the message I get when I read someone refer to "the Maga" and freak out that one in seven black men actually voted for the former Democrat known as Donald Trump.
The same "ownership" of votes is applied to ethnic and religious minorities (Latinos, Jews, etc), to all women (if you're a pro-life woman, you're apparently not a real woman, by the way), to gays and lesbians, to transgender persons, and to all immigrants. Fail to vote Democrat and you are a traitor to your identity group(s), a fool voting against your interests, an apostate transgressing against your faith, or a combination of all three.
Given how sensitive the Left is to language, one should wonder at the use of the word "steal" in relation to black votes. "Stealing" implies ownership, and ownership of human beings was outlawed in America (at enormous human cost) 158 years ago. Yes, yes, "owning" someone's vote isn't owning the person, and we can allow for rhetorical excess, but the mindset cannot be denied. Consider that Biden echoed the same presumption when running in 2020:
If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.
His slipping of "ain't" into the phrase isn't the first time Biden has tried to rhetorically pander to the black community and to assert possessiveness of their votes, nor is he the first politician to attempt a "black" speech mannerism or accent.
Presumption of a voter's choice based on skin color or gender or sexual orientation or ethnicity or religion, whether it be by the Dems or the Repubs, is an offense to liberty, to the sovereignty of the individual, and to the premises upon which this country was founded. Politics being a dirty business and a zero-sum game, I nevertheless get the allure of playing the tribalism card in this way.
Doesn't mean I should let it pass without comment or rebuttal. Seawright’s headline is deliberately incendiary, but the content reflects the same attitude, so the headline is, I'd say, an accurate reflection of the author's views. That he's black may be used by some to excuse the unfortunate association with ownership, but I'd say the opposite should apply.
He should know better.
As for the broader message? The reason parties are so unresponsive to the voters, the reason that political machines operate with little regard to issues or policies, and the reason that government just continues to suck stem from the blind loyalty that is both presumed and given by so many voters. Biden shaming blacks into voting for him by declaring that they'd be betraying what they are by doing otherwise should have been met with far more outrage than the Left showed, by a roar of denunciation rather than a raised eyebrow of "did Joe be Joe again?"
The only way things improve is if tribal loyalty breaks. It's an incredibly big ask, because there is so much social pressure to conform to what you're told your tribe is and does, but there's no other way out of our current mess.
A footnote: In the interest of brevity, I didn’t delve into the false conflation of Republicanism with Trumpism suggested by “Maga.” DeSantis, who was referenced in the article as part of Maga, isn’t Trump, and while their policies as Presidents would overlap, the conflation is itself a rhetorical stunt intended to scare voters into what we can call “Democratic brand loyalty.”
Those of a certain age and nerdiness will catch the title’s reference. Regular readers may recall my using the reference a few months ago. The rest can click here for illumination.