Voting Checkmate

I've been hearing all these analyses of the Supreme Court's decision to strike down part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that explain what just happened. Forget the intellectual legal talk: Here's what happened.  The Supreme Court said that part of the Voting Rights Act is still needed to curb racial discrimination but that the methods of enforcement  repeatedly passed by Congress that govern certain states and local jurisdictions have to be scrapped and reworked by that same Congress. What the Court did, essentially, was the equivalent of saying that people need cars to get around but that automakers should be allowed to offer engines as optional extras unless Congress intervenes with a new regulatory method of regulation to ensure that everyone who needs an engine ought to get one.  And when you have a Congress that can't pass anything unless it's a proclamation to honor a baseball player, this voting rights decision pretty much means that brown people, old people, students, and the poor are screwed.

The Voting Rights Act is in legal limbo effective immediately, with no way to enforce it and with the states now having leeway to design their voting laws as they see fit.  The directive to Congress to tear up the earlier  method of enforcement and start over is based on the preposterous conservative idea that all voting jurisdictions in the U.S. should be treated equally, with no recognition or acknowledgement of some states and counties (or parishes, in deference to Louisiana) being more racist and more restrictive than others.  So Texas, in an effort by Republicans to curb the voting power of its "minority" (non-Hispanic whites are actually the minority in Texas already) population, now requires photo ID for voting.  North Carolina, with its Republican governor and Republican legislature, is cracking down with new limitations on out-of-state college students.  And so on, in more than half of These States, until Republicans will suppress enough voters to ensure a governing right-wing plurality in this country that will be as permanent as an ink stain on a dress shirt.  And then the Voting Rights Act will be even more irrelevant than it's just become.   

This means that when non-whites and Hispanics (who can be of any race) become the majority of the U.S. population by 2043, a date no further in the future than Sally Ride's journey on the space shuttle as the first American female astronaut is in the past, we could have a minority party, largely representing a minority demographic, still controlling the levers of power and preventing any meaningful progress or change in this country to benefit the black, brown, tan, and yellow masses.  White conservatives will be outnumbered but will still be in charge.  I can think of only one country that's ever pulled something like that, and it got banned from competing in the Olympics for it until it cut that crap out.

I would therefore suggest that Americans denied their right to cast ballot should, accordingly, take their problem in the United Nations.  Don't call your congressman, because you know what he'll say. Should I quote it?