Undercover in the red zone

It is so hot that the only time to walk or exercise is very early in the morning, and in fact, the garage where I keep my elliptical is still overheated even then. So, the other day I opted for a walk around the neighborhood of grid streets. And within a few blocks, I felt like an undercover operative in a strange dystopian country.

The area where I live in Northeastern Oregon is in a kind of limbo when it comes to politics. The local area is solidly in the red. Seventy-five percent voted for Trump the first time, and I think that even slightly increased the second time around.

And yet it’s Oregon. So, it’s easy to forget. We get all the bennies of living in a blue state—legal marijuana, extra health care, housing assistance for homeless families, trans-inclusive norms for public employees, etc. As a result, there is an increasingly vocal faction among the majority conservatives who want to break away from Oregon and join Idaho.

Creative Commons image by Juli of Flickr.com

And even living in a red county, the people I hang out with are mostly fairly moderate. The local farmer’s market required masks, even outdoors, all last year, and literary events put on by the local state university are brashly woke. But walking around a low-income neighborhood feels like going to another country, except it is one with A LOT of American flags.

There are also a lot of suped-up trucks with unreasonably tall tires, rusty vans and wrecks without wheels of any height outside many houses. By 6:30 am there were two different houses on two different blocks broadcasting far right talk radio from big speakers, so that the entire street was literally forced to listen.

“So, we are supposed to believe… supposed to believe… that these rapists and murders crossing the border… rapists and murders… they’re really apparently just innocent people who accidentally got lost on the way to the border checkpoint. That’s what we’re supposed to believe. The libtards are chuckling into their cigars, expecting we’ll just swallow that.” One of them blares with an odd, repetitive cadence over the sleepy sun-drenched eves and gardens, vaguely reminiscent of a fired up preacher.

The other was more on topic for a preacher and no less hateful. “If they want to, if a woman wants to, and I’m telling you I have good reason to know this. If they want they can keep from getting pregnant. But they don’t want that, do they? They want these abortions, because they’re being paid, paid to get pregnant, by those… those… I can’t call them humans… that wouldn’t really be correct… those women are paid by them for the bodies…”

That one makes me quicken my steps. I shudder. The hate for women dripping from the second voice, even more strident than the first, makes me grateful for my mostly quiet meth-using nearer neighbors. But my route brings me back in range of the first loudspeaker.

“We will defend our borders! That’s a fact! Those who say we shouldn’t. Well, you know what they are! Do I need to say the words? I don’t think so. But you know it. You know our second amendment rights are the only thing holding back the caravans and keeping a rein on those who hate our country from within…”

I don’t know what stations or podcasts these come from, but I grew up here and I do know about rural “conservatives.” I can even hold down a conversation and get along fairly well with most of them—by selectively not hearing certain things. But those snippets of talk radio were so far beyond what I grew up with, I know they would have been unintelligible to me a few months ago.

But I’ve been undercover, so I get most of the references.

You see, a year ago, when I first came back to the US from living in the Czech Republic for more than half my life, I got a new phone number from Verizon. And I had the misfortune to get a number that had recently been abandoned by someone else, someone who was not a particularly good citizen. For the first few months, I had debt collectors and school offices calling me, alleging that I owed money and was being investigated for neglect. After some hemming and hawing I managed to get them to accept that I am not who they think I am.

My mysterious alter-ego may have lived in Oregon once, which would be how she got an Oregon area code. But she moved to Arizona. And there, she commenced to run up debts and flake on doctor’s appointments—from what I’ve gathered. She also didn’t talk to some of her in-laws for at least a year, since they contracted me recently and were astounded that this was no longer her phone number.

Worse than that, she had signed up for a bunch political mass texts—all Republican. As soon as the election season started to heat up in Arizona, I started getting texts—first one a day, then two, then several every day. From groups claiming to support candidates for state or US senate seats or for governor and from supposed public opinion pollsters.

I got calls too, mainly from those wanting to ask questions about things like, “What would make you angrier, teachers mentioning same sex relationships in school or public officials memorializing what they say is racial injustice in our country’s past?”

At first, I just deleted and blocked the texts. But they were undeterred. It seems that even when communicating with those who signed up for their propaganda, Republican campaigns know it is better to regularly switch numbers to make sure they can keep hammering, in case someone decides they don’t want their messages anymore.

Finally, I started reading some of them—in a vain attempt to figure out how to unsubscribe and slow the flood.

Kari Lake, who secured the Republican nomination for Arizona governor on Aug 2, promised to “keep human sexuality out of our schools” and repeated claims that Trump won the 2020 election.

Abe Hamadeh’s campaign sent me a picture of him grinning while standing slightly behind and below Donald Trump. He promised that he would “secure the border and the elections” as attorney general of Arizona before winning the primary by a wide margin.

Someone named Mary, who claimed to be a Republican volunteer, sent me messages about Rep. Joel John and how much the NRA loves him. He lost the Republican primary Aug. 2. The NRA’s endorsement apparently wasn’t enough.

The thing that struck me about the texts wasn’t that they were for Republicans or had conservative politics. By and large, the messages looked like they were coming out of late night comedy mocking caricatures of uneducated Republicans. They all claim to be the most “loyal to our President Trump.” All mentioned something about the border wall and some explicitly stated that they want to “keep foreigners out of our state.” Several mentioned putting women “back in the kitchen to improve family life.”

A year ago, if you had told me that Republicans really consciously hold these kinds of racist, sexist and downright fascist views, I would have said you were exaggerating and that while many rural Republicans are taken in by confusing messages, they really are basically kind people who have just had little experience beyond their small towns.

At the same time, I wouldn’t have been able to effectively track what those two talk radio shows were on about. But after months of being subjected to real-live, paid-for and premeditated Republican propaganda, I am unwillingly well-versed.

As the Republican primary results for Arizona came in on Aug. 2, the last text was particularly chilling. “Our 2nd Amendment rights keep radical politicians in check. That's why we are proud to endorse Paul Gosar for US Congress!” Just in case someone didn’t catch the connotations of that, the text elaborated below. It’s “the radical Left in Congress” who “2nd Amendment rights” keep “in check.”

This official Republican party congratulation text for Paul Gosar essentially hints that the guns of the far right are the only thing holding back progressive members of Congress. And this was right smack in the middle of the hearings about the events of Jan 6, 2021. Not only is a coup the way these guys roll politically, but they’ll tell their supporters in the most official and trackable way that it isn’t just acceptable to think about using guns to intimidate members of Congress, it’s the “only thing” that will do that.

Unfortunately, what makes an undercover agent useful is someone to report to and some way to use the information. In my case, while I know that a lot of people underestimate the vicious craziness of the mainstream Republican base at this point, there is apparently nothing to be done. Even political candidates inciting followers to threaten or murder elected members of Congress is no longer something law enforcement cares about, or there’s been so much of it that it’s just the same old thing.

The strident anger of progressives sometimes grates at me when I’m living in my bubble. And I still don’t know that it’s the best approach, but this is the other side and there isn’t much in between or outside the box, these days.

I hope for all of our sake that we can find our way back to working together, because times are getting harder for everyone and it only looks like the times are going to get harder.

Post election blues over seeing red

Please forgive my mixing of puns. It isn’t that I don’t take this seriously. My nerves are as frayed as those of many of my readers. But coming up with a title that wouldn’t drive my readers away screaming wasn’t easy.

A title is supposed to tell you why you should read a particular post, but it is often hard to put into a catchy phrase. Why look back at this messy and painful election? Why dwell on a future that is still uncertain? Trump lost. Sometimes that feels like the only thing that matters.

But this really was a vote about the soul of the nation. And we’ve got to look at that soul, once it’s bared. Otherwise, we’ll end up having to go through the same painful things again and again and again. That’s why I didn’t give in to the strong temptation to write about herbs instead. So, bear with me if you are in need of some steadying or even if you just want a space to bounce your thoughts off of.

We finally got a moment of celebration, but it is likely to be very brief. I hear and read people all across America and in other countries marveling that so many American voters were still willing to vote for that uncouth, hateful and psychologically unhealthy man. We were all well aware that he still had supporters, but it seemed like many people had dropped their support for him.

It doesn’t surprise me that fundamentalist Christians didn’t change their tune, regardless of their posturing about “character” and “values” when it comes to other politicians. It doesn’t even surprise me that some Hispanic voters went for Trump. It is time America realized that this is a very diverse group of citizens with widely differing interests. And the Democrats did take them for granted and ignore them after all.

But what both surprises and dismays me is the gains Trump made among white women. I stand stunned. What could possibly possess more than half of white female voters to support a man who has made his opinion that women are objects and only valuable if they please men very clear? How could MORE of these women support him this time after having to endure his sewage-mouth for so long?

It’s been through a battle and the war ain’t over. Creative Commons image by John M. Cropper

This is part of the sickness we have found in the nation’s soul. One of the ways I try to comprehend this soul is by reading Christian bloggers to get a perspective that is definitely outside my bubble. One of those I read on occasion is Kieth Giles, who grew up in a right-wing, white Christian environment in Texas. He’s made the mental trip across the big divide in America and while I still may not agree with him on lots of things, his perspective on what makes Republican voters tick is invaluable.

“Republican Christians tend to care about the unborn, the traditional family, and the right to bear arms,” he wrote in a recent post. “Therefore, they vote for Republican candidates who at least ‘say’ they care about overturning abortion laws, defending traditional definitions of marriage [anti-gay marriage, etc.], and protecting the Second Amendment.”

Add to this that many right-wing, white Christians have been surrounded by a highly charged bubble of constant media messaging on these three topics and what you have is a deeply passionate response. They don’t just care about abortion. They are torn apart by the thought of innocent babies being killed. They don’t just dislike the idea of gay sex, they fervently believe that traditional families are the last defenders of all that is good in this messed up world. And feeling under threat, they truly fear gun snatchers.

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard any of this, but it is maybe the first time I’ve sat down and taken a good hard look at the emotions behind it. I always kind of figured that anti-abortion activists didn’t really care about the babies. They just cared about controlling what they see as “loose women.” They cared about punishing those they saw as breaking religious purity laws. That was what I believed.

But what this election and its fallout are telling us is that the leaders may have started the movement that way. The pundits who push the propaganda may be coming from that cynical perspective, but many white women are buying the message about protecting babies on a deep and emotional level.

The same goes for the issue of the “traditional family.” Now, I really don’t doubt that there is an element of hate mongering going on here. A lot of people have gotten caught up in the us-and-them game. People who abide by gender norms are on one side and those who don’t are on the other. Just like with sports teams, a lot of people can get whipped up into a frenzy of antagonism over something that doesn’t need to take over a person’s identity. But what I am seeing now is that there is also a deeper emotional element.

We can all relate to the root emotion—the overwhelming anxiety over the troubles in our world. Whether you are focused on climate change, pervasive racism, vast inequity and the finite nature of the earth’s resources or the loss of authentic opportunities, disconnection from spirit, fractious tribalism, endless consumerism or the addictive pitfalls of substances and entertainment, the world really looks like it’s going to hell in a hand basket a good share of the time. Our biggest differences aren’t usually in what we think the problems are but in what we think the solutions are.

Many women have subscribed to the idea that family is the one good thing in all that mess. Despite any unpleasantness, micro-aggressions, suppression of spirit or acrimony in family life, it is still the one thing we can really hang on to. My mother and I recently came to the same conclusion in one of our long, meandering discussions on life, politics and the meaning of the universe. So, we aren’t really that far away from these women either.

But the Trump supporting women have absorbed a worldview that narrows family to a very traditional model. And given the threatening pressures from outside and that sense that family is our only real haven, their attachment to that traditional view of family is authentically passionate.

How exactly that leads them to enthusiastically support Trump, rather than supporting him with the kind of resigned frustration that so many progressives feel for the Democrats, I can’t say. That is a mystery the Christian bloggers have yet to reveal.

I have tried my damnedest to be understanding in all this. I’m not writing people off as hateful and authoritarian just because their primary issues have to do with things that seem at first glance to be mainly about limiting someone else’s autonomy, whether that’s the ability of women to make crucial life choices or the rights of everyone to form loving relationships in the way that is most natural for them. I’m making the effort to see the heart behind these stances.

And I still find the soul of the nation in peril.

I will allow that a moral, thinking person can feel strongly about protecting babies or saving the traditional family. But in either case, Donald Trump doesn’t look like a choice to promote those causes. His actions are about as much for the traditional family as a gay stripper might be. And he clearly is happy to endanger the lives of immigrant babies.

Guns? Well, I guess it is legit to say he isn’t out to snatch the guns of rural and suburban white folks. But I have a hard time seeing defending one’s guns as an issue with heart.

Now pundits ask us to “come together” and heal the divide in our country. That would be a lot easier if the other side had concerns that were not focused on controlling or harming other people. The common ground isn’t there, because that is a deal breaker for most of us.

There is one thing I think we can find comfort in, despite the lack of a clear “blue wave” in the election. There was a sand bar in the way.

What this election showed about America, yet again, was that the majority has always been far more progressive than the politicians. And the political status quo is maintained by several anti-democratic mechanisms. One is the winner-take-all voting system where everyone has to vote for one of two major candidates or have their vote effectively turned against their interests. Another is the Senate system that gives preference to states with low population and thus primarily to rural, conservative states.

And most egregiously there is the Electoral College which was specifically designed to protect the institution of slavery and prejudice elections in favor of rural, conservative voters at the expense of urban, progressive voters.

Among my English-as-a-second-language students are adult professionals from the Czech Republic who mostly came of age around the time of the Velvet Revolution, when young activists overthrew the totalitarian Communist regime. They believed that America was the guiding light of democracy and now they come to me confused. Their Czech-language media has started to describe the US Electoral College for the first time and they are alarmed.

“How did the American election system get broken?” they ask.

“It didn’t,” I explain. “It’s working exactly the way it was meant to.”

I give them a history lesson—with grammar and pronunciation points in English to make sure class time is used well. The Electoral College is working just as it did two hundred years ago to extend the lifetime of the American slavery system far past the time when slavery was abandoned by Canada, Britain and Western Europe. It achieved this by weighting votes to give greater voice to rural conservatives. And it is still doing that today.

The fact is that a lot of people still voted for Trump, but more than four million more voted for Biden, a lack-luster candidate if there ever was one. In any country with a modern democracy it would not have been considered a close race. It might not have been a blue wave, but that also might be because of the artificial sandbars set up to make sure we never see a blue wave and the widespread voter suppression that acted as a flood break.

On Tuesday, November 10, I finally received my mail-in ballot for the 2020 election. I usually receive my ballot a month earlier than that and receive it automatically. This time new voter suppression rules by the Trump administration meant that I had to specifically request my ballot in the summer. Then, the Trump administration sabotaged the US Post Office so that even though my county elections office mailed the ballot two months ago, it still arrived a week after it had to be physically back in Oregon five thousand miles away.

This is voter suppression at work. It isn’t generally considered “election fraud” but it is fraud’s sneakier cousin.

I was lucky. I got caught up in only the fringes of voter suppression efforts and my county office was ready and eager to help. They had a backup system to allow me to vote via email and even though it took specific attention to a single voter, they made it possible for me to cast my vote legally and securely. But the point is that I was certainly not the only one hit by voter suppression measures and in many cases that cost Biden and Congressional Democrats votes, because these measures were made to impact groups that were expected to vote against Trump.

People in other western democracies look at the images of Americans waiting in line for hours with masks and umbrellas to vote in the United States and they shake their heads in bewildered sympathy. That is the kind of treatment voters get in Belarus. That is how regimes behave when they know the voters are not their friends.

So, despite the fact that I am disappointed and even ashamed that 55 percent of white women voted for Trump… again, I know that the soul of the nation is still there. It is tattered and torn from way too many battles, but despite a rigged, weighted voting system and voter suppression directed at voters expected to be less than enthusiastic for Trump, such as people who use mail-in ballots, we’re still here.

Getting the ballot to the box

What does voter suppression look like?

As most of my readers know, I've never been a good party-line holder. Not of any party and least of all the Democrats. I told them flat out after the debacle of the 2016 primary that I was pulling my primary registration and giving it to whoever showed a backbone.

The staffer on the phone, sighed and said, "Yeah, I get it." And in his tone of voice I heard that he probably really did. I'm not a good party member, but I don't judge people for making their own call. 

Volunteers for the Democrats kept calling me anyway and around about early August this year I was glad they did. "Send in a form to request your ballot," one of them told me.

"But I'm registered and we've had mail-in ballots forever in Oregon. They just send it to me automatically," I protested.

"Not this year. There's trouble with ballots. Fill out the form." 

So, I did. I may not be a good soldier on the party line, but we are on the same battle field and at the moment headed in the same direction. I appreciated the heads-up.

And it came none to soon. My ballot did not show up in September as it used to. By the first week in October, I had to wonder. So, I called the county clerk. Sure enough, they had sent my ballot three weeks earlier in response to the request form, but it never arrived.

Not only that but the county worker told me the rules have changed. No one cares about your postmark anymore. The ballot has to be in the box at the county by November 3 or it's all over. And my ballot already had less time to make the return trip than it had taken to get to my remote location.

Creative Commons image from the Milwaukee Teachers' Education Association photostream

Another volunteer from the Democrats called again. "Did you do it?"

"Yup. But I've got a problem," I told them.

This year the usual machinations around voting have become cut-throat, they tell me. Everything before was like child's play. Now everyone's dead serious and the lengths some will go to in order to keep people from voting are shocking. 

In just my situation, there was the unannounced rule that you have to request a ballot months in advance. Then there is the intentional crippling of the postal service, resulting in major delays. And finally, if you somehow manage to get your ballot, you have to get it back on a timeline you can't control or it's all for nothing.

I'm not even one of the people who has to take unpaid leave and stand in line for hours in the midst of a pandemic. I'm not even in danger of having my ID questioned or my registration pulled because my name shares three letters with that of a convicted felon. 

My husband, shakes his head, observing from the comfortable distance of a European. "Those lines..." he says. "You see lines like that in countries like Belarus, when they actually let people vote. You never see people waiting in line to vote in normal countries. It's just the countries with questionable democracies and... the States." He paused long before finishing. 

I had been telling him for a long time that there is trouble in American democracy, but I think this was actually something that shook him a little. 

This year of all years, there is more voter suppression in the US than anyone has seen before. Pundits on TV say that this is because Trump and his people know he can't possibly win if everyone votes. 

Voting is suddenly harder than ever and it has never mattered more than it does now.

One rainy afternoon, I lie on the couch with my ten-year-old son listening to a radio program. They play a clip of Trump telling white supremacists and neo-Nazis to "stand back and stand by" in that ominous way he did. 

My son, who is a dark-eyed, olive-skinned naturalized American, shudders and raises up on an elbow, fixing me with his round pools of serious soul. "Mama, I don't think we should go to America. It's too dangerous." 

We are, in fact, more than considering moving back to the mountain valley of my birth--for better special education services for the kids and for the cohesion of local community. I don't blame my son for being nervous. He may not even realize that he could specifically be a target of those racists, but he knows well enough that our little family always stands out with unmatching skin tones, a blind mother and a lot of free thinking. 

Like most, I can't guarantee the safety of my children. I can't personally hold a line and be sure they will be protected. But this vote does matter. My ballot may not matter any more than it has before--one card in a sea of paper--but if I'm feeling the pinch, so are a lot of others.

The Republicans have attempted to suppress the vote among people of color for generations. The reason is clear enough. While a few people in such areas might vote for them, the statistics are clear. Most people in diverse and disadvantaged areas vote for the "anyone but the Republican" candidate. Not to put to fine a point on it but it really isn't accurate to say they habitually "vote Democratic." 

The same holds true for civilian voters abroad. I wonder if overseas military bases are awash in voting options. They might be. It likely depends on the stats, though I know quite a few soldiers who have seen a thing or two of the world and are ready for change. But it doesn't take a sociologist to figure out that overseas civilian voters are going to vote for "anyone but..." 

That's likely why the hammer has come down and my ballot is AWOL. 

And more importantly, that means a lot of other ballots are AWOL, as the volunteer on the phone confirmed. There are also statistics showing that Democrats vote by mail far more often than Republicans, hence the dismantling of the postal service and attacks on mail-in ballots in general.

Oregon does supposedly have the option of email voting, which I've never tried, so I go back to the county clerk's office and ask if I can do it that way. Finally, after two months of persistence, I get a ballot. It's via email and it doesn't look much like the ballots I'm used to but it's the best shot I have. 

I spare a moment of thanks for the staff of our county clerk's office, who logged multiple emails and phone calls over one ballot, and the Democratic party volunteers, who are working like their lives depend on it. 

I'm sick with an intestinal parasite and my son is going back on Covid lockdown as his school is closing tomorrow. I can barely get out of bed but I"m going to get through the paperwork for the email ballot. This is the time we have to fight for our votes. 

And I'm also adding my voice to the rising warning about voter suppression. Get your votes in early. Make sure you're still registered the way you thought you were. Make sure you've got your ballot. Take no chances. There are no done deals. If enough people can be prevented from voting, anything can happen. 

Blessings from my hearth to yours. May you be warm, safe and well.