Oct 7, 2021
Preserving Voting Rights 101
A Guide to the Fundamentalist Right’s Double-Speak
In the wake of Trump’s decisive loss, the fundamentalist Right’s new pet cause is “voter suppression” (How the Christian Right Embraced Voter Suppression, by Sarah Posner).
In the 1970’s it was segregation and “school choice.” In the 1990’s it was the “culture wars” and “purity.” Now, the demon the Religious Right must slay is the decline of the dominance of the White, heterosexual, fundamentalist Protestant voter.
What they couldn’t complete in 2013, 2016, and 2020; they seek to finish in 2022.
For the sake of our nation, we must not allow this to happen.
You’ll hear a lot of flowery language coming from the right about the need to “preserve voting rights” in the coming months. A lot of stuff that sounds good, and pure, but is Orwellian double-speak in their quest for power.
As someone long imprisoned by this cult-like thinking, I offer some of the language you will encounter and what it actually means — both to the fundamentalist Right, and to our future as a nation.
“Preserving voting rights”; protecting the exclusivity of the White, heterosexual, conservative, fundamentalist Protestant supporters of the fundamentalist Right’s agenda, while actively suppressing what they call, “automatic Democrat voters.”
“Automatic Democrat voters”; anyone, especially traditional racial, ethnical, religious, sexual, and ideological minorities, who are not automatic supporters of the fundamentalist Right’s agenda; who often actively oppose it. I’ve been in Washington State GOP meetings where officials encourage supporters to actively work to suppress these voices.
“Christian values”; the false construct, supported by “Biblical” teaching, which supports the “natural” order of White supremacy, exclusivity of the heterosexual expression, male dominance, fundamentalist Protestantism; in all areas of national, civic life, and religious life.
“Election integrity”; similar to “preserving voting rights,” this too, is double-speak for protecting the exclusivity of the White, heterosexual, conservative, fundamentalist Protestant vote, again, while actively suppressing “automatic Democrat voters.”
“Free and fair election”; once again, this is code for protecting the construct of White, heterosexual, conservative, fundamentalist Protestant dominance is natural and normal; while suppressing any voice or vote that would challenge this dominance.
“One party rule”; this disguises the goal of the fundamentalist Right, who desires unchallenged power, above all else. Another term for this is “projection,” as I explain below.
“Federal power grab,” “state’s rights”; like their Confederate brethren, they desire to oppress traditional minority citizens, to maintain the unquestioned, unchallenged rule of the White, heterosexual, conservative, fundamentalist Protestant dominance, without oversight or opposition, federal or otherwise. The Southern states are a perfect, real world example of this desire.
Other terms in this umbrella include “individual liberty,” “foundational freedom,” “Biblical principles,” “God,” “Christ,” and “the divine hand of providence.”
“Radical left/leftist,” “socialist,” “Marxist,” “woke,”; these are umbrella terms, applied to anyone who supports the rights of traditional minorities, especially women, gay/transgender persons, as well as other forms of sexual expression that doesn’t conform to heterosexuality, Indigenous persons, those who are Black or Brown, those who protest to protect animal species and the environment, those who support “controversial” medical practices, such as abortion and vaccinations — and White, heterosexual, Protestant allies of these causes (i.e. Reverend Raphael Warnock).
“Anti-Christian,” “Anti-Scripture”; persons who do not support the limited “Biblical” interpretations of Scripture or Christianity accepted by the fundamentalist Right. Examples include young earth theory, hyper-capitalism, rugged individualism, dominion (especially in religion, politics and the environment) and replacement theology.
Like any abuser, they like to project their deeds onto their progressive “enemies.”
According to Posner, “…the Christian right’s perspective on almost every other issue in the culture wars: Progressives were the real over-reachers and evangelical Christians the true victims.”
This is what I was taught. I can tell you, for a fact, that it’s wrong.
In addition to projection, the fundamentalist Right employees another tactic by abusers — gaslighting.
This particularly wicked form of psychological and emotional abuse, in which the abuser forces the victim to question their own reality. In short, their eyes don’t really see what they see; and they’re ears don’t really hear what they hear.
The tactic is similar to projection. This feeds into the persecution complex: it isn’t us who are the oppressors or abusers, it’s the radical, Marxist Left.
I’ve personally been the victim of such abuse, often at the hands of the fundamentalist Right, and their enablers. Often, by those closest to me.
I wasn’t the atrocities of the fundamentalist Right that I had heard or read about that turned me toward the Left; it was “Leftist sob stories” or “liberal talking points” that had brainwashed me to ideological and theological progressivism.
I’ve only come to realize, that the common thread connecting all these individuals: their own inability to think or reason for themselves. Whatever TBN, Rush Limbaugh, or their church said was truth. One around which they could shape their entire lives, including my own. To even question this “truth,” was blasphemy.
The tactics are one and the same, and will be out in full force in 2022, as they were in 2020.
I believe that we are close to losing one of the greatest experiments in representative democracy the world has seen, to a group of narrow-minded children, whose only desire is to preserve the false construct that the world they’ve created is the natural order of things. It’s not. As Hillary Clinton put it, we are in a “constitutional crisis.”
We have a long road ahead of us. The time to prepare is now.
