Both this election and this pandemic have revealed areas of systemic weakness in our society that are fixable if we put our collective voices and votes to work for us. At the top of my list is the prevalence of deadly misinformation campaigns, voter suppression tactics, and bigotry, all propagated by heterosexual white male supremacists.
I value the First Amendment that guarantees the freedom of the press. From the start, this freedom has allowed journalists to investigate and reveal what is happening in our country without government censorship. As citizens, we rely on this information to decide who is and who isn’t worthy of leading our city, county, state, and country. Until now, journalists have enjoyed the public trust because they were largely independent of political and profit motives. That has changed as white male corporate leaders and political leaders joined together with an agenda to preserve a nation whose actions and systems once greatly benefit white heterosexual males to the detriment of everyone else.
When listening closely to the information and misinformation that is pushed by conservative press outlets, it is evident that they are willing to lie and distort the truth in a way that injures people of color, non-white immigrants, outspoken women, LGBTQ people, and non-Christians. At first they work to damage the reputations of black and brown men and women by characterizing them as lazy, violent, absent of values, over-sexed, and dangerous. Non-white immigrants are characterized as job-stealing, law-breaking, welfare leeches who are a strain on our economy. Outspoken women are unattractive, subversive, emasculating, and shrill. LGBTQ people are a threat to children’s welfare and threaten the sanctity of heterosexual marriage. Non-Christians are a threat to Christianity and to national security with their un-American values. Under the guise of just reporting the news, these outlets poison white Americans and some members from these minority groups, into believing that America must be saved from its growing diversity. They are even willing to lie about the pandemic, knowing that COVID-19 will kill many more black and brown people than white people. This “make America great again” slogan is code for make white heterosexual male Americans unequivocally dominate again. And Donald Trump epitomizes this effort.
So it really matters who we listen to for our news. We have got to find a way to remind our fellow Americans about how news works, how science works, and how a democracy is supposed to work. We must remind our friends that opinions and commentary is not news. We have to gently point out to our family and friends that allocations and accusations without evidence are not news stories even if they are widely repeated by people on news channels. We have to shut these news organizations down by educating their viewers.
The epidemic of fake news is precisely why Trump and his supporters can’t accept defeat, even after doing all they could to suppress the vote and then after court after court rejected their calls to discard the will of the people. The only rigging of this election was done by Trump and his administration! The only one trying to steal this election is Trump and his band of supremacists. Thankfully, it hasn’t work. Trump and those in his camp are still scheming while also looking to 2024 to try again and they will try to suppress the vote even further if we do nothing.
This is why we absolutely need a new voter’s right act that will effectively end the Republican playbook of suppressing the vote of people of color. It is no coincidence that there are fewer polling places in areas where minorities reside. We need a House and Senate majority while Biden is president to push through a new voter’s right act that will make it illegal to enact laws that disenfranchise voters. They could make election day a national holiday. At the state level, we need to insist that our legislators make voting by mail open to every citizen who desires it. Early voting should be the norm to eliminate long lines and there should be polling places and drop boxes in proportion to population size. These are things we as citizens can and must demand of our legislators, starting now.
And finally, the most difficult weakness to deal with is the bigotry that has been illuminated since President Obama took office. The only solution I can offer for bigotry is what the studies by psychologist Gordon Allport revealed many years ago. People from different backgrounds who get to know each other personally while on equal footing experience a reduction in prejudice against people from the differing background. Mega studies of his theory have shown that the effect is especially strong among college age people, but it is true for all ages. Unfortunately, because America is so segregated in our neighborhoods and churches, it is largely up to workplaces and schools to make this happen. Our work to overcome bigotry has to be intentional and ongoing if we are ever going to overcome the dangerous force of white male supremacy that threatens our democracy through misinformation using freedom of the press and through voter suppression.
I understand that it is human nature to want to preserve the prestige, power, and privileged place one has enjoyed in a society. So, who can blame this small band of white males for resisting removal from the top of the American food chain? They are afraid. They are afraid they will have to compete with people of color, women, immigrants, LGBTQ and non-Christians for opportunities, resources, power, and wealth that was once guaranteed to them based entirely on the luck of their birth. America must continue to move toward a more perfect union. The alternative is to abandon democracy in favor of authoritarian rule by white heterosexual males who prove to not be the brightest nor the most competent among us. Exhibit A of the worst that can happen again is Donald J. Trump. Let’s learn from our mistake and not repeat it. It’s going to take the prudent among us to save our society.