Civics Tests and American Fascism

This is all going to be in response to this political news, “Vivek Ramaswamy, the youngest GOP presidential candidate, wants civics tests for young voters 18 to 24”. Feel free to read that, but I am going to jump to the core of all this and then editorialize a bit. This is a blog and not perfect, but feel free to correct me in the comments.

There are dozens of layers to this, but I have to start somewhere, “(Ramaswamy)'s proposing a constitutional amendment that would require citizens 18 to 24 to pass a civics test in order to vote — the same one immigrants take to become naturalized U.S. citizens. Under his proposal, young Americans could, as an alternative, perform six months of military or first-responder service. But if none of these requirements are met, they would have to wait until they turn 25 before they could vote in their first election.”

What he is describing is a Literacy Test, which was part of an arsenal of legal bear traps used by Southern States to bar non-whites from voting and prop up white supremacy as an institution for decades longer than it should have been stomped to death by Union Soldiers, “Poll taxes, literacy tests, fraud and intimidation all turned African Americans away from the polls. Until the Supreme Court struck it down in 1915, many states used the "grandfather clause " to keep descendants of slaves out of elections.”

Remember this part of "Selma"? Literacy tests were what was happening.

I guess I have to commend Ramaswamy for acknowledging that he will need a constitutional amendment to allow this sort of thing to exist. Really wish he would acknowledge WHY he would need an amendment. You know, the voter suppression on behalf of White Nationalism. But then he would open himself up to the obvious criticism, “This is voter suppression and would DEFINITELY be used for boosting White Supremacy”.

If you are unaware, voter registration varies by state. For instance, whether you have a political party when you register can dramatically affect your ability to participate in primary elections. This quirky variation between states would mean that the citizenship test standard would be the baseline certainly, BUT! Once you open the door to allowing testing there is no reason why “citizenship” can’t be played with.

Think about the massive calls for Critical Race Theory, a law school topic, to be banned from public schools. Then think about Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Most recently at time of writing, the push to say “Slaves benefited from slavery” should also be looked at. What if a state decides to put this question on the test, “"T/F: Slavery benefited the slaves?"

Following all these converging points you can see how “teaching to the test” becomes an absolute nightmare as non-white students might have to say, “slavery was good actually” in order to vote.

Really, I feel like I could end it right there. This is a tool of White Power being brought back from the dead to serve the interests of White Power. I am sure the extreme irony of a man campaigning on his youth and vigor with a non-white name like Ramaswamy trying to block young people from voting (and let’s be clear it won’t stop with young people) to help bolster white nationalism is completely lost on Ramaswamy. But then, he is just the token brown guy they are going to put on stage at the debates. The Republican party is not going to vote for him and many of them would see him forcefully relocated out of the States before ever voting for him.

Here is where I segway to an important point, you do not have to be white to be a tool of White Supremacy. You don’t have to be rich to be a stooge for Capitalism. You do not have to be male to be a tool of Patriarchy. You do not have to be Heterosexual or Cisgendered to be a tool of… Well, those would also be factors of Patriarchy. Ramaswamy is a tool of White Supremacy, he is like Candace Owens, Milo Yiannopoulos, Blaire White, Ben Shapiro, and other provocative tokens that will be around as long as they are useful and then dropped the moment they are not.

You do not have to be white to be a tool of White Supremacy.

Let’s not pretend it is anything more than that for this guy. He is either tremendously stupid or so far gone that trying to treat him as a serious person is just a giant waste of time and mental energy. I will break out this surprisingly evergreen quote that sums up this situation and so many before.

“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play.

“(The anti-Semites) even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.” ― Jean-Paul Sartre

I call out to people to recognize this for what it is, but if you need more convincing, I will further point out the absurdity of all this. The qualification is a citizenship test that is updated to reflect some impermanent current factoids like the name of the Vice President, but it also has a bunch of random factoids.

You can pick almost any of them to illustrate how hollow it really is, but I think a good one to call out is, “67. Name one of the writers of the Federalist Papers”. This is the only section that references the Federalist Papers. It does not ask what the papers are. Does not ask what any of them said. Does not ask you to have one thought in your head about anything other than who wrote them.

I don’t think people understand how damning that really is. To quote the CBS article again, “The campaign told CBS News the amendment is part of Ramaswamy's central campaign message calling for a revival of civic duty for young people and renewed national pride. He thinks civic engagement among young people is too low and believes this can be reversed with more knowledge about the country and Constitution.” Civic duty is not an act of thought and consideration. It is not spiritual, it is not patriotic, it is not action, what civic duty is to them is performance. You know the right trivia and you don’t think about it. It is resuscitation.

Here is another one, “92. Name one state that borders Canada”. Do you know the answer? That is right, the answer is WHO CARES THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH VOTING. You desire to want a higher minimum wage or whether police can use no knock warrants should not ride on a game of Trivial Pursuit. The fact that this test could be easily dunked on by the vast majority of young people… assuming they aren’t poor, it is rather hard to recall bullshit trivia when you haven’t had anything to eat or you haven’t had time to study up because you were too busy working to pay off lunch debt. You know, poverty, something they might have an opinion they would like to express via voting.

But whatever. Like I said, Ramaswamy is a tool of White Supremacy. This isn’t going to get traction. For now. But then, give it a couple of years and an amendment won’t be necessary. The Supreme Court in the last decade killed the Voting Rights Act and undid Roe v Wade. Poll Taxes and Literacy tests might be right around the corner, and this is just the GOP telegraphing their next big power grab to keep Generation Z from tipping things slightly more progressive.

This movie is somewhat underrated. Its opening credit sequence is perhaps one of the best I have ever seen and should be shown in social studies courses all over America.

No. I am sure there are no long-term plans for taking away more and more access to voting. I am sure we’ll all be fine, and we aren’t living thru the Electric Boogaloo of the Weimar Republic as President Biden continues to means-test to death anything remotely impactful, don’t want to upset the white supremacists after all.

I do not look forward to saying, “I told you so” as they black bag me to some undisclosed location.

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