{"id":29709,"date":"2017-10-01T10:12:32","date_gmt":"2017-10-01T17:12:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=29709"},"modified":"2017-10-01T10:12:32","modified_gmt":"2017-10-01T17:12:32","slug":"why-the-minority-hold-us-hostage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2017\/10\/01\/why-the-minority-hold-us-hostage\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the Minority Hold Us Hostage"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1917, an extreme-right fascist minority staged a military coup and overthrew the majority democratic socialist government.  Lenin [R-RU] called his minority Bolsheviks, which means majority.  He called the majority Mensheviks, which means minority.  This Republican Reich dominated Russia for almost a century, and now that nation has fallen prey to another Republican Reich under Vladimir Putin [R-RU].  A similar minority holds the US hostage under Resident Donald "Putin’s Pervert" Trump.  Here’s how they do it.<\/font><\/p>\n

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\"1001statemap\"<\/p>\n

There is an old saw that politics is about numbers, and in a true democracy that would be the case. But ours is not a true democracy. Even after addressing the fact that nearly 90 million eligible voters do not vote, our system weights some votes more than others, and these weighted votes almost always work to the Republicans\u2019 advantage, giving some 35 percent to 40 percent of the electorate a disproportionate share of power<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how it works:<\/p>\n

1. Rural votes are worth more than urban votes.<\/h6>\n

For the first few months of his presidency, Donald Trump delighted in showing guests an electoral map of the country in which huge splotches from the South through the Midwest and into the far West were red, indicating Trump\u2019s support. He was right, of course. Those were areas that voted for Trump. Except that those splotches were sparsely populated. The dark blue dots in urban America were the densely populated Democratic areas \u2014 areas with more votes.<\/p>\n

In most nations, geographical advantages don\u2019t mean much. In our system, however, geography plays an outsized role. It\u2019s not how many votes; it\u2019s where they are cast<\/strong>\u2026<\/p>\n

2. White votes are worth more than minority votes.<\/h6>\n

White voters are deeply advantaged not only because they still constitute a majority of the electorate, but also because (a) they can be gerrymandered into white-controlled districts while diluting minorities<\/strong>; and (b) because white majorities often work to increase their power at minorities\u2019 expense. We see the latter most dramatically in voter suppression laws<\/strong>. A Washington Post study showed that these laws, designed expressly to reduce minority participation, have a tremendous impact<\/a>:… [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Alternet<\/a><\/font>><\/font><\/p>\n

It is imperative that we correct these injustices, and I have shared only the beginnings of parts 1 and 2.  Click through to read the rest of those parts and for parts 3 through 7.<\/font><\/p>\n

RESIST THE REPUBLICAN REICH!!<\/font><\/font><\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1917, an extreme-right fascist minority staged a military coup and overthrew the majority democratic socialist government.  Lenin [R-RU] called his minority Bolsheviks, which means majority.  He called the majority Mensheviks, which means minority.  This Republican Reich dominated Russia for almost a century, and now that nation has fallen prey to another Republican Reich under […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29709\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}