I’ve been contemplating why so many people could vote against their own best interests. First, it occurred to me that you don’t really need a lot of voters to sway each election. Elections are won/lost in the margins which often are very few votes one way or the other. My Texas county (Brewster) has 7,408 registered voters. In the Prez race the difference between Red and Blue was only 571, slightly under 8%. And a recent County Commission race was decided by a margin of 13 votes and there were 30 ballots with no vote at all. And look at how Senate and House races across the country are down to the wire.
Well, given that, how do you sway the marginal voters? One answer: You lie to a lot of people with constant, loud, emotion-packed lies. Anyone we know?
Second, you control the sources of information. In these days we like to call the “The Information Age,” local newspapers have gone away, cable is collapsing and much of the printwaves and airwaves are dominated by entertaining music and sports. There’s precious little in the way of useful info that guides folks on policies that directly affect their lives enacted at the federal, state and local level. It is a fact that in this election the Republican vote was strongly associated with belief in several pieces of serious misinformation. For example, Trump proposes raising “tariffs” on imported goods, lying that it will bring in money from the importing country; the truth is that they are sales taxes paid by American importers and the customers, thus raising the price of those goods. They are inflationary and hurt consumers. Another big example for us in Texas is the claim that immigrants are an “invasion” taking jobs away from citizens and costing taxpayers to provide for them. Actually, immigration creates more jobs than it endangers and they contribute more to the economy than they cost. We need immigrants in our labor force and deporting large numbers of them would devastate our economy and our society.
As Mark Twain once said, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” That seems to apply to our nation, state and even more so to rural counties.
Third, you suppress voting by your opponents by several means, such as gerrymandering, limiting public voting directly on issues (called Initiative), kicking people off the voter registration rolls, restricting information about candidates and complicating processes to cast a vote, etc ad nauseum. Again, anybody we know? Memo to Greg Abbott: There is virtually no problem of noncitizens voting in our elections. It’s all a lie!
Finally, you give money to people to get them to vote how you want. It’s illegal and arguably immoral, but Texas’ tradition of patronage election is on steroids. As it is said with a German accent “Ve have vays” (of getting you to vote our way). Elon Musk just bought himself a Country we all like to consider our own. Go back to my first statement and contemplate how many employees he directly or indirectly controls in Texas and across the country. Nor is he alone since Big Oil and Gas has ruled Texas for decades using the same playbook. They identified the places where the marginal vote could be swayed in their favor and set about changing the direction of the margin. That’s the real “Infowar” they run with help from “Mother Russia.” Trump was right about one thing – it was a rigged election, by whom and for whom we are just starting to find out.
This, of course, is what happened to Germany in the last century that caused her own downfall and worldwide carnage. It’s autocracy of, by and for the oligarchs, a nation wherein the policies and actions of the government are against the will of her own people. What could possibly go wrong? Sadly, we may soon see and we should prepare with our own playbook, and be prepared to protect and help those who will suffer under this regime.
MB Lockhart's Blog 