Is it possible that “fighting racism” is just a cover for “grabbing power”?
It sure seems as though the Democrats have found a clever way of doing both; that is, they are taking credit for fighting racism while actually, in fact, they are grabbing power for themselves. To put the matter a different way, the Democrats are saying the former and doing the latter. And as we shall see, this power-grabbing is a nationwide movement.
But let’s start by illustrating how it’s working in a single state, Nevada. As we shall see, it’s a two-pronged effort: First, declare a public-health crisis; second, change voting rules.
Last month, Nevada’s Democrat governor, Steve Sisolak, announced that, as part of his effort at fighting racism, his state would define racism as a public-health issue. Sisolak’s initiative—joined by other states, including Michigan—thus became part of the “national conversation”—a conversation, or narrative, as defined, curated, and approved, of course, by our friends in the Main Stream Media. Hence this supportive headline at CNN.com: “States are calling racism a public health crisis. Here’s what that means.”
Yet Sisolak’s second action, dramatically changing election procedures in his state—Nevada will now mail ballots to each voter in the state—was mostly a local story. But perhaps that second action is more enduringly consequential, because it deals with Democrats cementing themselves in power. After all, there’s no better cement in a democracy than a big majority of votes, however arrived at.
Yet that first action was the big national news, because it hit the chord of “wokeness” in the country. That is, the national-conversation story was that Nevada—has formally declared racism to be a public health crisis. This anti-racism action is, as we know, a part of a nationwide wave; late last month, Joe Biden released his own plan to combat “systemic racism.”
Meanwhile, the MSM is doing everything possible to push this narrative onto the nation; in an insightful piece for Tablet magazine, aptly headlined, “How the Media Led the Great Racial Awakening,” author Zack Goldberg explains:
Countless articles have been published in recent weeks, often under the guise of straight news reporting, in which journalists take for granted the legitimacy of novel theories about race and identity. Such articles illustrate a prevailing new political morality on questions of race and justice that has taken power at the Times and Post—a worldview sometimes abbreviated as “wokeness” that combines the sensibilities of highly educated and hyperliberal white professionals with elements of Black nationalism and academic critical race theory.
We can quickly grasp that out of all this breathless jargon-tossing, the MSM can confect a crisis of epic proportions: Now that we are “woke,” we must take immediate action!
In the meantime, the much-less-covered local story is that Nevada has dramatically accelerated Vote By Mail—or, as it is often called here at Breitbart News, “Cheat By Mail.”
But of course, what happens in Nevada, politically, won’t stay in Nevada; the state possesses six electoral votes, which will help pick a president this November.
So now let’s take a closer look at both of these actions, to see how each feeds the other:
On August 5, Nevada’s Gov. Sisolak signed a proclamation declaring “racism as a public health crisis.” As Sisolak put it, “Institutional and systemic racism has gone on far too long in this country and in this State.” In this ambitious spirit, the proclamation includes sweeping language that starts with the coronavirus crisis and ends with a planned transformation of the Silver State:
The COVID-19 pandemic has magnified the challenges caused by racial disparities within Nevada’s communities, especially in the form of virus and environmental exposure risks, and through all major stages of health care.
As we can see, Sisolak and his allies see the current crisis as a rationale for taking actions—including, as mentioned above, “environmental exposure risks”—that go well beyond Covid-19.
In case anyone was wondering, Sisolak emphasized that his conclusions were “based on research,” enabling him to recognize “that racism manifests in measurable ways, including in public health.” And so the governor now looks forward to working with the Democrat-controlled Nevada legislature and the state’s Office of Minority Health and Equity to make the desired changes.
Virgil can observe that all this bureaucracy and bureaucratizing starts to look like a jobs program for “diversity experts.” As Christoper Rufo of the Discovery Institute has documented, what might be termed Diversity, Inc. is now a billion-dollar industry—and so now Nevada can be an even bigger part of it.
Virgil can also observe that this new emphasis on racism might help provide some PC “cover” for Steve Sisolak, who is, after all, a 66-year-old heterosexual white male—and thus not “diverse” at all. Yet if Sisolak can be “woker than thou,” he can be a hero to the woke diversitarians—especially if he helps get them jobs and contracts. So the August 29 report that Sisolak seems to have violated his own health edicts passed with a lot less notice than it should have, because the Established Narrative, courtesy of the MSM is that Sisolak is one of those “woke” white males, in the vein of Virginia’s governor, Ralph Northam—he who wore blackface and who now champions Black Lives Matter.
As the Reno Gazette-Journal reported, while Sisolak’s proclamation is ostensibly aimed at the epidemic, its wording will have the effect of making “long-term change across all sectors of government, including education, housing, and criminal justice.” Thus we can see: The “emergency” provides Sisolak & Co. with an opportunity to do all sorts of things, and one of those things is changing how elections are handled in Nevada. In fact, on August 3, just two days before issuing his emergency proclamation, Sisolak signed a bill passed by the state’s Democrat-dominated legislature, greatly accelerating Vote By Mail—which, again, is often known here at Breitbart News as Cheat By Mail. (Interestingly, this statewide change was made even after the odd results of the Silver State’s June primary, when more than 223,000 ballots in Clark County, alone, were mailed out to an undeliverable address.)
Reacting to the Democrats’ new move, Nevada Republicans cried foul; state GOP Chairman Michael J. McDonald called the new law “nefarious.” And state GOP executive director Jessica Hanson added, “Democrats changed the rules less than 100 days out from November’s election for one reason and one reason only: President Trump and Republicans have the momentum as Nevadans learn the dangers of Joe Biden’s radical left agenda.”
For a more detailed critique of this new legislation, we might turn to former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt, a Republican, who was defeated by Sisolak in the 2018 gubernatorial election. In a piece appearing in the Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal, Laxalt explained, “The crux of [the Democrats’ new law] is an unprecedented expansion of mail-in voting and an allowance for ‘ballot harvesting’ . . . that blows the door wide open to widespread voter fraud.” This blatantly opportunistic political move, Laxalt continued, is being billed as “a necessary safety precaution in the face of the COVID-19 epidemic,” and yet it appears in the guise of defending public health:
It requires that all active voters receive a mail ballot, whether they’ve requested one or not. It provides that ballots received by election officials without a postmark for up to three days after Election Day be considered valid by default.
There’s more:
It allows ballot harvesting on a broad scale, and for multiple ballots to be submitted in a single envelope with only a single signature required on the envelope, and no signature requirement for the enclosed individual ballots, leaving it to the discretion of election officials to decide whether the votes should count.
And still more:
It allows for an individual to sign a ballot on another’s behalf. And it allows for drop boxes for collecting ballots with no signature requirement—which is an even more dangerous form of ballot harvesting, which conventionally at least requires a signature.
Meanwhile, on September 12, the fair-minded election-caller Charlie Cook summed up the prospect in Nevada:
For the first time every registered voter in the state will receive an absentee ballot in the mail. No one knows how this will impact turnout in the state, but it’s clear that the president and his campaign believe it will benefit only Democrats. [emphasis added]
As every Breitbart News reader knows, this site has put real focus on Vote By Mail/Cheat By Mail. And yet as has been argued here in these pages, as a practical matter of political survival, conservatives and Republicans have little choice but to adapt and evolve. That is, we must learn to fight fire with fire, and, better yet, figure out how to master the next step in voting, which will be Vote By App—that is, voting by a computer, or cell phone, application.
After all, according to the Washington Post, a full 83 percent of Americans can now vote by mail, no questions asked. So the time has come for Republicans to get to work. Or else.
Indeed, if we step back, looking at Nevada and beyond, we can see that Democrats are getting good at conjuring up “emergency powers”—including, now anti-racism proclamations—to deal with with “emergency situations.” And the MSM is helping at every step along the way, wrapping the Democrats in the protective cloak of anti-racism and armoring them with the additional shield of anti-viral activism.
Yet as we are seeing in Nevada, the new political procedure of Vote/Cheat By Mail will likely last a lot longer than the health emergency. Yes, the coronavirus might go away, but the political power will stay—that is, stay in the hands of Democrats.
So if they wish to avoid extinction, Republicans had better wake up.
And just on September 3 we saw how this “anti-racism” push is becoming a nationwide crusade for Democrats. Two Massachusetts lawmakers, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (a member of AOC’s “Squad”), joined by other Democrats in Congress, have introduced “The Anti-Racism in Public Health Act,” which would create a Center on Anti-Racism in Health at the Centers for Disease Control, aimed at “improving the federal government’s ability to develop anti-racist health policy.” The bill would also create a “Law Enforcement Violence Prevention Program” at the CDC. It’s easy to guess what that program would do: have one more layer of lefty bureaucrats scrutinizing the cops.
If this bill becomes law—or if a hypothetical President Biden simply wills it into being by executive action—then we can see that we’ll have a whole new category of Deep State bureaucrats on the loose. Only come to think of it, they won’t be the Deep State: They’ll be the Obvious State.
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