voter rights | The Direction of Intention

The Epicenter of Dumb [David’s blog on saturday morning smack-dab]

Posted on May 3, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

“The message here, girls, is clear: yes, if you marry the son of a billionaire, you too can have the life of a medieval peasant!” ~ Van Badham, The Guardian

If you wonder how far down the rabbit hole* we’ve gone, you need look no further than “MAGA Republicans marking Women’s History Month by pushing a bill that could block millions of women from voting just for changing their last name after marriage.” It’s called the SAVE ACT. Restricting a woman’s right to vote was a top priority of the Republicans and the new administration.

Here’s all you need to know: “In every presidential election since 1996, a majority of women have preferred the Democratic candidate.”

So, welcome to the Womanosphere. Branding servitude, scrubbing the 19th Amendment. Moving women back into pre-Civil War times. Apparently greatness necessitates a glossy paint job covering over women’s suffrage.

I suppose I can understand why white guys with big tires on their Silverados voted for this dangerous nonsense. I will never understand why women, people of color, veterans…or anyone with a half a brain, a sliver of heart, or a remnant of moral compass thought this Project 2025 march-to-authoritarianism was legitimate or remotely a good idea. The elimination of Constitutional and Civil rights, the gleeful resurrection of segregation, a broad brush white-washing of our history. The devaluation of women.

I’m dumbfounded. I’m staring at the very epicenter of dumb. It is brutal. It is dark. It is ugly.

I’m going to go make Kerri a sandwich.

*“Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” is often interpreted as a symbolic journey of growing up and facing the uncertainties of life, particularly during adolescence. (AI Overview). In other words, MAGA world refuses to grow up and face the uncertainties of life – like free and fair elections. It’s apparently easier to rig the elections, throw up obstacles to voters, than it is to come to the table with honesty, with ideas to legislate that serve the greater community. They are swirling in perpetual adolescence; stunted growth. The Womanosphere (insert eye-roll) is just the latest jaw-dropping example.

read Kerri’s blogpost about the WOMANOSPHERE

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Filed under: smack-dab | Tagged: 19th Amendment, artistry, civil rights, constitutional rights, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, dumbfounded, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, SAVE act, smack-dab, story, studio melange, suffrage, the melange, voter rights, womanosphere, Women's Rights | 4 Comments »

An Outrageous Fantasy [David’s blog on Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on April 2, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

To fuel our escape fantasy of a thru-hike on the Pacific Crest Trail, we periodically wander around REI and fake-shop for backpacks and sleeping bags. We test shoes and ask questions about sun shirts. We scrutinize hiker stoves and sporks and water filtration options. We discuss the merits of tents. And, since we have no actual knowledge about any of it, we laugh at our made-up opinions. We delight in pretending.

I’m updating one of my favorite Horatio observations. He’s said (and I’ve oft-quoted) that the tension in these un-United States is between those who espouse an “every man for himself” philosophy and those who maintain that “I am my brother’s/sister’s keeper”. My update? The every-man-for himself crowd is actually, more accurately, believers that some-people-are-better-than-others. The tension as revealed in our present day is between those who believe in equality and those who do not. We are witness to the struggle between those who think government should work for everyone (brother’s/sister’s keeper) and those who believe government need work only for the superior few.

Consider the full-court-press now underway to demonize and eliminate DEI and the lifting of federal building bans on segregation. Consider the inundation of legislation aimed at inhibiting a woman’s right to vote. Witness the explicit dismantling of social programs and the social safety net in order to provide massive tax cuts to the wealthiest citizens. The whitewashing of history. The ugly and empty rhetoric about restoring “merit-based” hiring, implying that all people of color, all women, advance and have advanced not because of their skill or talent but because of their skin color or gender. In other words, an agenda firmly rooted in advancing the mythos of white male superiority.

The privileged few pushing down the many in order to elevate themselves. It’s Ayn Randian nonsense. Pushing others down is the first action of a drowning man. It’s an arrogant fantasy, laughable, like trickle-down-economics, shackling the majority to uplift the make-believe-white-superiority of the corrupt few. My long-ago colleague, Ana, called it “vampiring”.

It’s white fragility.

At REI we inevitably wander over to the section beneath the corrugated sign, “EAT”. We discuss eating dehydrated meals. Eventually we conclude that on the trail we’ll require a chef to drone in our meals each day. A basket will arrive in the morning with baked goods, scrambled eggs, and hot coffee. There will also be a sack lunch in the morning delivery. It would be too much to ask the chef to make three deliveries a day. At night, a hot meal arrives – with wine, of course – since the chef can accurately track our location.

We laugh at our outrageous fantasy since we know it is an outrageous fantasy.

We wonder why the red-hat crowd remains blind to their outrageous maga-fantasy. They’re laughing as their heads are being systemically – and obviously – pushed beneath the water by an oligarch and a weak flim-flam-man. Vampires, both. How long before the red-hat-crowd realize that they are being sucked dry, that their outrageous fantasy is not laughable, that the not-so-funny joke is on them, too?

read Kerri’s blogpost about EAT

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Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Seeing | Tagged: artistry, Ayn Rand, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, DEI, fantasy, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, MAGA, merit based, rei, story, studio melange, the melange, vampire, voter rights, white fragility | 1 Comment »

Play A New Game [on DR Thursday]

Posted on September 24, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

“To know what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice.” ~ Confucius

When I do not know what to do or say about the state of the world, I draw pictures. That’s been true all of my life. Apparently, when I was very young, I was in a constant state of not knowing what to do or say. I repeatedly drew an imaginary cabin in the woods. It was a place of peace and solitude. I came into this world with a bit of Thoreau imprinted on my soul.

I know things are bad when my drawings lapse into caricature. These sketches might look like nasty-grams to Mitch McConnell but they are, in truth, ruminations on our system. Last night the streets were again alive with protest. Yet another black American was murdered (in her home) and the system turned its head and looked away. A very long trail of tears. I feel like I need to climb to the top of the mountain and scream, “OUR SYSTEM IS DOING WHAT IT WAS DESIGNED TO DO!”

Suppressing black Americans, as designed into our system, is the same action as elevating white Americans. It’s a mechanism, a single action. A seesaw. This is not the first era in which citizens took to the streets to protest the inequities between black and white America. The protests are immediate and necessary but they do not come close to touching the system.

Legislation will not touch it (a system never assaults itself). Police reform will not change it as systems are great shape-shifters; a new form of suppression/elevation will arise. A system has to be acknowledged before it can be addressed and the acknowledgment can’t come from the angry people in the streets – it must come from the people in suits-and-ties who deny systemic racism exists, the ones who fear the loss of their supremacy. [Isn’t it remarkable that leaders in a country founded on slavery, celebrated lynching with picture postcards in a Jim Crow era, while a terrific battle was being fought en route to civil rights legislation were rigging tax codes and redlining and on and on and on, can deny the existence of racism? That IS the system talking].

The system is dancing right in front of our eyes. While the streets are alive with BLM protests demanding justice and equal rule of law, Mitch McConnell, awash in hypocrisy, is doing what he wants to do with no regard to precedent, rule, or ethic. The system is Lindsey Graham and his fellow red senators following their leader without shame. Laws are made of words – so are creeds and constitutions – as are ethics and morality. Words have no meaning when they are so easily discounted.

We’ve built our crumbling castle on a foundation of Manifest Destiny. A chosen people who believe they can do what they want to do to whomever stands in their way. Native Americans will tell you that government treaties were made to be broken. Words mean nothing when winning-at-all-cost is the name of the game. Laws are made of words – so are creeds and constitutions.

Winning at all cost IS the name of the game. It is the system. It is a game that cares not for who is thrust through the meat grinder. To watch Mitch is to see the system.

Winning at all cost is not governance. Undermining elections is not governance. Gerrymandering electoral maps is not governance. Suppressing voters is not governance. Whipping up fantasies about voter fraud is not governance. How is it possible that the people occupying the seats of a representative government do not believe in the democratic process?

It’s not new. It’s the system.

Our constitution and creeds will matter when our words matter, when we can say what we mean and mean what we say. Black lives will matter when the words written into our creeds and constitution guide us rather than disguise us. In the meantime, we will take another step on the road of cowardice, all the while pretending to be righteous.

It’s enough to make me return to drawing pictures of my cabin in the woods.