The Ties that Blind
Back in the 1970s, one of the more colourful politicians in Australia was Al Grassby, who briefly served as Minister for Immigration when Gough Whitlam’s Labour Party won government. As soon as he was appointed, he set to work completing reforms to the country’s appalling and racist immigration system and establishing the basis for inclusive human rights. A champion of diversity, he is often cited as the ‘father’ of Australia’s policy of multiculturalism, the term for a society which celebrates and supports its diversity of cultures, languages, and religions.
While he was Minister for Immigration Grassby became famous for his flamboyant dress sense, wearing bright suits and highly colourful ‘kipper’ ties, (the ones with a broad triangular end). When asked about his somewhat outrageous fashion sense, he was reported to have said: “The ties came with the Whitlam government because I decided that we were liberated from a dull and colourless past to a new and colourful Australia. And it just went from there.”
However, when the White Australia policy was formally revoked in 1973, Grassby’s actions had triggered a reaction among sections of the Australian community, in his Riverina electorate and even among some Labor Party colleagues, who thought his reforms too radical. Ignoring the rumblings, Grassby argued popularity within multicultural Australia grew support from this community, hopefully offsetting any loss from white Australia voters. The right wing did not give up. Anti-immigration groups targeted him during the 1974 general election campaign, and he was defeated by a National Party candidate, (losing by just 792 votes).[i] Sounds familiar?
Following his defeat, he was appointed the first federal Commissioner for Community Relations, administering the new Racial Discrimination Act he had championed in parliament. However, in 1980 he was charged with criminal defamation, alleging he had asked a New South Wales politician to read a document in parliament implying that Barbara Mackay and her family solicitor were responsible for the disappearance (and probable murder) of her husband, Donald Mackay, a prominent Riverina businessman and anti-drugs campaigner. He was eventually acquitted on appeal in August 1992, but it was too late. It was said loyalty to others led Al Grassby into trouble, ignoring friends’ advice: a case of ‘the ties that blind’.
And now it is 2018 in the US. In the last days of the midterm elections, that evocative phrase seems especially apt. Evidence of the ties that blind is everywhere. You might think I am concerned about the ties that bind. Certainly, many Republican candidates today are tightly bound to Donald Trump, seeking his support and praising his actions in order to ingratiate themselves with his unthinking supporters. They want to ‘Make America Great Again’, too. No, that’s the obvious part. My comments address a different issue.
Perhaps naively, I believe some Republican candidates for office are fundamentally good people. Sitting across the table from them (alright, a few, certainly not all), I think we could have a good discussion about our differences. We could agree on those areas where our views are not too far apart, and we could choose to put others under the heading of “I can understand what you are saying, but I don’t agree with your viewpoint/don’t believe the evidence supports your views”. Good robust discussion, the kind that can lead to better ideas, clarify topics where disagreement is a function of deeply held ideologies, while accepting the other person is a decent, caring individual. Walking away from the table, I might shake my head, but I would not consider the other person stupid or dangerous, but let’s say ‘sadly mistaken’ when it comes to views on the role of government, the welfare system, the importance of community.
Or am I wrong? Reading the pernicious rubbish uttered by candidates today, many appear more akin to aliens, not like you and me at all. I can only conclude they are suffering from the ties that blind: they can’t see clearly, not just through a glass darkly, but not seeing things at all.
Let us imagine we find a reasonable, intelligent and caring Republican member of Congress and we sit at a table. Taking up a role in Congress, he or she would have taken an oath:
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.”
Support and defend the Constitution. The Constitution today includes both the original document, the Bill of Rights, and all the other Amendments that have been ratified (some have not [ii]). Some are notoriously familiar. There is the Second Amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Alas, it is hard to believe that it was as recently as 2008 that the Supreme Court ruled the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that firearm for ‘traditionally lawful purposes’, such as self-defense within the home. No comment needed on that ruling or its consequences.
With our friend across the table, let us pick a few items (not randomly, I must admit). We could begin with those that relate to voting. There are four [iii]:
- The Fifteenth Amendment: “Prohibits the denial of the right to vote based on race, color or previous condition of servitude.
- The Nineteenth Amendment: “Prohibits the denial of the right to vote based on sex”
- The Twenty Fourth Amendment: “Prohibits the revocation of voting rights due to the non-payment of a poll tax or any other tax.
- The Twenty Sixth Amendment: “Prohibits the denial of the right of US citizens, eighteen years of age or older, to vote on account of age”.
Hang on a minute. The right to vote is not in the constitution? That’s correct. Although this is surprising to many Americans when they find out, there is no constitutional guarantee of the right to vote. Qualifications to vote in House and Senate elections are decided by each state, and the Supreme Court agreed in Bush v. Gore that “[t]he individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States.” In the United States, each state conducts its own popular vote election for President and Vice President. The voters are actually voting for a slate of electors (the Electoral College), each of whom pledges to vote for a particular candidate for each office. Most States award all electoral votes to the candidate for either office who receives the majority of the state’s popular vote. The candidate who receives an absolute majority of all electoral votes nationally (270 since 1963) wins the Presidential or Vice Presidential election.
Leaving that on one side, while the right to vote cannot be denied on race, colour, sex, age over 18 years and so on, the ability to vote can be circumscribed. There are two familiar – I nearly said popular – ways to achieve this: gerrymandering and limiting access to polling booths.
Gerrymandering refers to the deliberate manipulation of voting district boundaries to give unfair political advantage to one party over another. We can trace the name back to Massachusetts’s Governor Elbridge Gerry in 1812, who did some clever redistricting to benefit his party. It’s been on the agenda ever since. Over here in North Carolina, for years District 12 was like a peculiar snake wriggling between several other electoral districts, carefully designed to capture a large percentage of African Americans, running more or less along Interstate Highway 85. Its absurd nature was well known, and one State legislator observed: “if you drove down the interstate with both car doors open, you’d kill most of the people in the district”! [iv]
The contortions used to determine gerrymandered boundaries could certainly lead to winning a gold medal in an Olympic gymnastics’ competition. What does our nice Republican across the table say about that? Something along the lines of “we try to ensure fair representation” in each of the districts. Rubbish! Unfortunately, if this was a Democrat in the hot seat for the same reason, he or she would come up with an equally pathetic explanation. The situation is simple. Arrange boundaries to ensure your side gets elected. Of course, one person’s vote in one district is worth a lot less than the same person’s vote in another district, but why not make it more so?
And we can also restrict access to polling booths. The 2016 presidential election was the first in 50 years without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), with America suffering a wave of state and local measures engineered to disenfranchise voters of color and young voters. How did this happen? Three years earlier the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a dreadful ruling in Shelby County v. Holder, which made Section 5 of the VRA inoperable and opened the door to racial discrimination at every juncture of the electoral process.
Yes, the Supreme Court at it again! “Under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, jurisdictions with a demonstrated record of racial discrimination in voting were required to submit all proposed voting changes to the U.S. Department of Justice or the U.S. District Court in D.C. for “preclearance” in advance of implementation. Preclearance was a crucial element of the Voting Rights Act because it ensured that no new voting law or practice, such as closing or moving a polling place, would be implemented in a place with a history of racial discrimination in voting unless that law was first determined not to discriminate against minority voters. However, the Supreme Court invalidated the formula that determined which states and jurisdictions are covered by Section 5 of the VRA and thus are required to undergo preclearance. Without that determination, the preclearance provision essentially became inoperable .”[v]
In practice, that has led to two measures. First, States can make proof of identity demanding. Use your driving licence? Not surprisingly, that tends to discriminate against the poor and African-Americans. More ingenious requirements can be used. Closing polling places is a common tactic. Decisions to close, move or reduce voting locations are often made without much notice, restricting access by minority voters without personal or public transport. There are many reasons to close polling places other than discrimination, of course: financial issues are often quoted. When Section 5 was in place, jurisdictions would have to demonstrate that saving money did not disenfranchise voters of color. Now that protection for minority voters has gone.
Our Republican congressperson seems rather quiet. Perhaps we should turn to the first Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Tell me, congressperson, how well does that apply to Muslims living legally in America, or Mexicans or other Hispanics here with permanent residency. There’s more: Donald Trump would tell you it is immigrants that are the major source of crime in America. However there is no empirical evidence that either legal or illegal immigration increases crime rate in the United States. [vi] Most studies have found lower crime rates among immigrants than among non-immigrants.
And finally, there is climate change. The president’s first public statement about climate change came in the form of a tweet on a December Thursday evening in 2017. With a record breaking cold snap heading for the northeastern US, he repeated a joke he’s been making for years: “In the East, it could be the COLDEST New Year’s Eve on record. Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against. Bundle up!”[vii]
This tweet doesn’t say anything surprising about Trump’s views on climate change, which he has consistently said is a “hoax”. In fact, he constantly uses the phrase “global warming” instead of “climate change.” There’s an important difference between the two: Global warming refers to the overall, average increase in atmospheric temperature and sea surface temperatures across the world, which is happening because of heat-trapping gases emitted by humans. Climate change refers to the many other weird things happening because of the increase in greenhouse gases. Climate change includes global warming; global warming is just one part of climate change. Deniers like Trumps continually argue scientists twist terminology in order to perpetuate their use of dishonest data; after all, ‘nobody really knows if climate change is happening’. Trump uses “global warming” because he can’t make his “ha ha it’s cold” joke with “climate change”.[viii]
Disenfranchisement, denying rights, ignoring science: you can’t see these things, congressperson? No? Nor the many millions of voters who choose not to recognise what is happening around them. Why not? I can only conclude it must be the ties that blind.
[i] The National Party and the Liberal Party comprise the Coalition, the conservative side in Australian Politics
[ii] That was the case for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA, which was intended to place into law the equality of men and women. It was sent to the states in March 1972, but it expired unratified in 1982.
[iii] Actually there is one more, which provides that the election of Senators is direct, not through the Electoral College.
[iv] Quoted by John Leo of US News and World Report in The Item, 19 August 1994, Opinion, page 6A
[v] From page 1 of ‘The Great Poll Closure’, a publication of the Leadership Conference Education Fund, November 2016. Yes, that’s the date of the most recent Presidential election!
[vi] ‘Are immigrants more likely to commit crimes?’, Econofact. 14 February 2017.
[vii] Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump), December 29, 2017
[viii] See < https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/12/donald-trump-climate-change-skeptic-denial/510359/>
