We’ve come a long way, baby
Let’s say you have a political party and you lose an important election and when election results are examined, it turns out you didn’t get a lot of support from Black voters. If America worked as advertised (and as you might have noticed, it rarely does) you might want to adjust your platform and policies so in future elections you get more Black voters to support you.
Or…
You could do your best to make it difficult for Black voters to vote.
Three guesses which path the Republican Party has decided to take and the first two guesses don’t count.
In key states where Donald Trump lost, Republicans are introducing bills that would make it more difficult for Black voters to cast a ballot and if you can’t change the law, maybe you can use the existing election process to make it harder for Black people to vote.
According to a story from the Washington Post (which ran in the Kansas City Star) one of the sneakier ways to suppress the vote is make sure there are long Election Day wait times in areas where your opponent is more likely to do well.
Jonathan Rodden, a political science professor at Stanford University, recently did a report that said in Atlanta’s metropolitan area during the 2020 primary in polling places where minorities constituted more than 90% of active registered voters, the average minimum wait time in the evening was 51 minutes.
When Whites constituted 90% of registered voters, the average wait time was about six minutes.
If you want to limit the number of Black voters who are unlikely to support your policies, you can reduce the number of polling places, cut back on early voting and absentee voting and make sure there are time-consuming ID requirements. You might also consider a moat filled with alligators, flaming hoops to be jumped through and a Pop Quiz on the History of Country and Western music, all of which I’m kinda sorry I mentioned because at this point I wouldn’t put it past the Republican Party to give those ideas a shot.
When you think about it, despite all the flag-waving and Lee Greenwood power ballads, making it difficult to vote means you don’t really believe in democracy because too much democracy hurts your chances of staying in power.
As the cartoon indicates I believe we’re still a racist country, but some people have gotten a bit more more subtle about it.
A weird complaint about 2020
As you might have already noticed, 2020 gave all us plenty to complain about, but I have a gripe you may not have considered.
So many news events of 2020 involved crowds – riots, protests, lawmakers running for their lives – and drawing crowd scenes is incredibly time consuming and I’ve already got plenty of items on my to-do list.
As you may or may not be aware: I recently had eye surgery which has screwed up my depth perception (at least temporarily) so my day is chock full of knocking over water bottles because they weren’t precisely where I originally believed them to be, running into door jams because they were to my left and didn’t register and convincing everybody in my family that each and every item in our house weighs more than 10 pounds because that’s the limit on weight I can lift and I’m guessing if I lift something 10 and a half pounds my left eye will shoot out of my head like a Fourth of July bottle rocket, although I’m not a doctor so that may or may not be true, but do you really want to take a chance and if you don’t why don’t you carry this trash bag to the curb for me?
So where were we before I got lost describing my optical limitations?
That’s right, drawing crowd scenes.
Because things have gotten slightly better coronavirus-wise, some people decided to go to Spring Break and party like it was 1999 and the state of Texas decided to lift its mask mandate. So I could draw dozens of spring breakers or a single car to make my point and I went with the single car because I’ve got lots of water bottles to knock over before quitting time.
A friend of mine who’s a doctor and knows a lot, told me the 1918 flu pandemic lasted as long as it did because people would think they had it beat and ease up on mask-wearing and social distancing and because they stopped doing what was keeping the virus at bay (which is a cliché I’ve never used before, so enjoy the moment) the virus would come roaring back, which assumes viruses can roar which I kind of doubt, but my schedule doesn’t allow for me to think of something better.
And speaking of viruses we need to keep at bay…
Have a nice day, while I see if I can fit my car down my driveway.
BTW: For some reason people with two eyes think guys with one eye are supposed to be virile and sexy which is pretty dumb because the guy with one eye either did something stupid or ran into someone who turned out to be a smidge more virile.
Just looked up the Hathaway Shirt Man who wears an eye patch and at various times has been depicted: coaching a football team, directing a movie, getting fitted for a top hat, loading a shot gun…and I’d suggest running for your life if you’re ever adjacent to a guy with no depth perception loading a shotgun…pouring a glass of whiskey, playing a cello, playing the organ (Jesus, this guy is versatile) and holding what appears to be an elephant’s tusk which might explain how he lost his eye in the first place.
All of this is bullshit.
In reality, if you went on a date with the Hathaway Shirt Man, he’d hit a car while trying to park his vintage Jaguar, slam his shoulder into the frame of an open door, miss the chair when he tried to sit down, stain your new dress when he tried to pour you a glass of wine and miss his mouth when he tried to enjoy a morsel of his coq au vin which probably sounded really sophisticated when he ordered it and seemed less so when he jammed some of it into his left nostril.
Now take those depth perception problems into the boudoir and ask yourself if you’re really that adventurous…and if you are, I’d salute you, but I’d probably poke myself in my good eye if I made the attempt.