IT should be a lot less surprising than it is that the party that consciously and purposely took in the white racists who hated the Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts turn out to be a party that relies on voter suppression and, now, totally rejecting the will of the majority as expressed by their votes in order to maintain their power.
When Lyndon Johnson predicted that "the South" would be lost to Democrats for a generation he was explicitly acknowledging that those who would go over to the Republicans would do so BECAUSE THE RIGHT OF BLACK PEOPLE TO VOTE WOULD NO LONGER BE SUPPRESSED, the suppression of the vote was an integral part of their means of retaining total control as their dominant presence in the anti-democratically constituted Senate was another of their means of ruling against the will of the majority of Americans.
That non-racist conservatives, even some racists who, nevertheless stopped short of disenfranchisement made common cause with the racist segregationists, means that EVERY REPUBLICAN WHO HAS STAYED IN THE PARTY IS A PARTY TO THAT CORRUPT CALCULATION. I have no doubt that Mitch McConnell is an old line hater of Black People, that Jeff Sessions certainly was, that many of those from the former Confederacy and some in the North are. If Lindsay Graham isn't he's certainly not at all uncomfortable with them, neither is Susan Collins whose power base in the Second District is, I will assure you, the home of racists as vicious as any who live in Alabama or Kentucky. The Republicans on the Supreme Court who gutted the Voting Rights Act on the pretense that we've overcome racism is, clearly, within that category, the psychopathic self-hating Clarence Thomas someone I'll leave to those who claim to understand psychological pathology.
That the Republicans-fascists of 2020 observe no bounds in their desire to suppress the votes of those who won't vote for their corruption and those who, on the basis of their ethnicity, most of all because they are African Americans, and, once the votes are cast to suppress the counting of votes in the way the Rehnquist Court did in 2000 should come as no surprise, the modern Republican Party is a party of the minority, the privileged, the white and racist, the last thing an entitled, enriched minority wants is majority rule. As I will never stop pointing out, neither did the founders, just about every which one either held people in slavery for their economic benefit or who benefited, admittedly, from the violent holding of slaves, their forced labor, the degradation of their lives and their families. Not a single one of the founders does not belong in that category, not even the racist John Adams. The thing was a corrupt bargain is still there and empowered by law, corruption which was never repealed and amended out of the thing, the Electoral College, the anti-democratically constituted Senate - who the founders gave the power to confirm judges and justices and other important appointments and matters, just in case a person believing in equality and democratic rule ever became president.
As to the legitimacy of the 1787 Constitution as ratified by the several states, the 20th century historian Charles Beard in his indispensable An Economic Interpretation Of The Constitution Of The United States shows quite well that the ratification process was rigged by the financial and elites even in terms of the eligible, white, male, propertied citizenry who would have had any kind of a say in it, in no case did more than about five percent of those participate in the extremely difficult to attend process, even most of them were excluded by plan from it. I may go into that in the future. But an earlier section of the book in which he describes the various "founding fathers" and their participation in the scheme to draft the Constitution we are supposed to revere is full of contrasts that show the majority of them, even those who are (wrongly) exempted from the stain of slavery were in on the most corrupt aspects of it.
Benjamin Franklin, who at the time of the Convention was so advanced in years as to be of little real weight in the formation of the Constitution, seems to have entertained a more hopeful view of democracy than any other member of that famous group. He favored a single-chambered legislature, opposed an absolute veto the executive, and resisted the attempt to place property qualifications on the
suffrage. He signed the Constitution when it was finished,but he was accounted by his contemporaries among the doubters and was put forward by the opponents of ratification in Pennsylvania as a candidate for the state convention, but was defeated.
Elbridge Gerry, of Massachusetts, participated extensively in the debates of the Convention, but his general view of government was doubtless stated in his speech on May 31, when he expressed himself as not liking the election of members of the lower house by popular vote. He said on this point : "The evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy. The people do not want virtue; but are the dupes of pretended patriots. In Massts. it has been fully confirmed by experience that they are daily misled into the most baneful measures and opinions by the false reports circulated by designing men, and which no one on the spot can refute. One principal evil arises from the want of due provision for those employed in the administration of Governnt. It would seem to be a maxim of democracy to starve the public servants. He mentioned the popular clamour in Massts. for the. reduction of salaries and the attack made on that of the Govr. though secured by the spirit of the Constitution itself. He had, he said, been too republican heretofore: he was still, however, republican, but had been taught by experience the danger of the devilling spirit.”
It should be noted that elsewhere in the book Beard goes into Gerry's care in making sure the new Constitution and the system it set up was in accord with his massive land speculations in the West, turning public lands into his lands for his own profit.
It should also be noted that one of the favorite means of today's Republican-fascists of maintaining the power of the minority over the majority, the Gerrymandering of districts,was named for this scumbag among the founders. For anyone who doubts the evils of the founders are still alive, still permitted by the document they wrote to protect their own economic interests, to thwart democracy and, certainly, to prevent anything like equality from happening. He was Madison's Vice-President, chosen by Madison so as not to present a difficulty to him being succeeded by James Monroe. A deep dive into the politics of the Founders generation with political power under the Constitution they wrote is an interesting one, you will need a nose plug, their behavior in detailed history instead of in truncated hagiographic grade-school "history" may cure many of their dangerous romanticism concerning them and their motives. They were no better than our politicians today, though many Democrats and even the odd Republican rise above the general level of them. We've certainly got something they lacked, experience with what they wrought. Even Alito talked up learning from experience yesterday. If Trump had won the election I doubt he'd have said it.
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