Change
How do things normally change in our society? We can all think of “radical changes” in politics and culture. When Barack Obama ran and won the Presidency, it was a huge cultural shift. Before Obama, I didn’t really see a Black President until the far future (that would have been about 2028, back then).
Obama “called the future”, and changed America. Many of those changes were foreseeable, and some were great. An old coaching friend of mine was fond of quoting; “What the mind can conceive, the body can achieve”. For every minority child in America, the election of Barack Obama allowed them to “conceive”, that they too could achieve. The theme of the Obama 2008 campaign said it best: hope.
That election also had some, perhaps inevitable, bad consequences. The election of the first Black President created a backlash of American racism. First the Tea Party, and now MAGA has a lot of its basis in that disbelief. They thought America could NEVER elect a Black person as President (or a woman, or, for sure a Black woman!!). Those movements are dedicated to replacing the glass ceiling where Hillary Clinton put millions of cracks with a steel storm shutter that could withstand any effort to open. All of that isn’t Obama’s fault, but it is the reality we are facing today.
Step by Step
But most of our normal societal changes are incremental, rather than sudden. It’s hard to even recall that “women” couldn’t get financial credit in the United States only fifty years ago, or that segregation laws existed well within my lifetime. Even those incremental changes faced tremendous backlash. And few foresaw the “post-truth” era we live in today. We went from a common set of facts, with differing opinions, to completely different factual foundations. Today, the political sides cannot argue and debate anymore, because we don’t share the same fundamental truths.
A quick example: the “1619 Project” explained historic fact, that enslavement was an economic foundation of much of American success. But, instead of arguing the impact of slavery, those who didn’t want to acknowledge America’s deep dependence on the “peculiar institution” decided to call the whole project a lie. They turned the teaching of history back a half-a-century, when text books (remember them?) might talk about the contributions Black men like Booker T Washington and George Washington Carver, but said little else about Black contributions. And, at least to date, those “alternative facts” are working. Several states have written this false narrative into mandated curriculum legislation. It has become “fact”.
Governor Gerry
When I was learning American history for the first time, we were taught about Governor Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts back in the early 1800’s. He did many important things, including serving as the Vice President of the United States. But most of what we learned about him was considered “bad”. You see, Gerry decided to redraw Congressional Districts in Massachusetts so that they favored his own political candidates. The resulting district looked like a salamander, and the newspapers ran with the negative term: Gerrymandering.
For most of American history, gerrymandering was that “bad” thing. Almost all of the political parties did it in one form or another, but it was all “under the table”. Everyone acknowledged that it wasn’t good for democracy. But all continued redrawing political maps in their own favor.
It wasn’t until eighteen years ago that gerrymandering became more than just a good politician’s guess at how areas voted. That’s when political district manipulation combined with high speed computers. It gave us the “Red Map” program sponsored by the Republican Party led by then-Chairman Michael Steele (the current MSNBC host). They could determine voter identification of households by the street and the block, and used that information to draw narrowly defined districts with entirely predictable outcomes.
Jordan-mandering
Ohio had its own “gerrymander” for a time, this District looked more like a duck, and was represented by Jim Jordan. It stretched from the suburbs of Dayton, to the north towards suburban Toledo, the East to the Columbus suburbs, and even the Northeast towards Cleveland. It carefully skirted most Democratic areas, and made sure that Chairman Jordan could face no realistic opposition in the general elections. (Jordan’s district now looks a bit more normal, but he still wins by overwhelming margins. Even the ongoing scandal of his Ohio State wrestlers getting molested with his knowledge, hasn’t touched his political base.)
Texas
Now in Texas, at President Trump’s direction, the Republican Governor and Legislature is “Red Mapping” (gerrymandering) on steroids. In a state that is, at worst, 57% Republican and 43% Democrat, currently there are twenty-five Republican Congressmen and thirteen Democrats. That’s 66% to 34%. But, at the President’s “request”, the Texas legislature is re-drawing districts that were approved only four years ago. Trump, Governor Abbott, and the rest of the Republicans believe that with careful computer-driven manipulation, they can “squeeze” five more Republican districts out for the 2026 election. That would make Congressional representation in the Lone Star State 73% Republican to 27% Democrat.
Their goal: protect the Republican Congressional majority in the House of Representatives, now with a five-seat margin of control.
So what was a “bad thing for democracy”, Gerrymandering, that gave the old Governor a “bad name”; is now out in the open for all to see. It’s no longer an “incremental” change. And now with the Democratic members of the Texas legislature leaving the state to prevent a quorum from being present (to do business), Governor Abbott threatens felony charges, arrest by the Texas Rangers, and removal from office. Trump has even mused that the FBI might be called in to drag Democratic legislators back to Texas.
From Gerry, to Steele, to Greg Abbott in Texas; incrementally the United States is headed towards something very different from the Democracy we once held so dear. If the government, either of Texas or the United States, is allowed to dragoon the Democratic legislators back to Austin, well, we will have crossed another line on the way towards authoritarianism.
