WaPo op-ed explains Republican concern about voting fraud. . .nonsensically

Why do many Republicans express concern about election integrity? Is it because changes in voting rules make voting fraud, which has occurred throughout America’s history, easier to accomplish? Is it because they believe voting fraud is widespread? Is it because they’re sore that Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election?

For Theodore Johnson of the Washington Post, the answer is: none of the above. The answer, instead, lies in panic over the fact that the U.S. is becoming a majority non-white country.

Johnson bases his argument on a recent poll in which, he says, 87 percent of Republicans disagreed with the statement that a majority non-White population would strengthen American customs and values. He claims that it’s “a small step from such beliefs and fears to antidemocratic actions.”

But Johnson fails to explain why anyone should agree that a change in America’s racial composition will strengthen our customs and values. To agree with that statement is to exalt one or more race over another. There’s a name for that: racism.

Indeed, Johnson walks away from his ridiculous premise in the concluding sentence of his op-ed. He states: “We are only exceptional if the color of our democracy is not seen as an impediment to the content of the nation’s character.”

This means that Johnson should join with the 87 percent of Republicans who disagree that a majority non-White population would strengthen American customs and values. Otherwise, he’s embracing the view that the color of our democracy helps determine the nation’s character.

Johnson doubles down on nonsense when he attributes the January 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol to racism. He bases this claim on the fact that “for the third time in four presidential elections, a Black Democrat was on the winning ticket.”

Does Johnson really believe that Kamala Harris was on the mind, even in its deepest recesses, of anyone who participated in the Capitol rioting? If so, surely he’s alone in thinking so.

Tripling down on nonsense, Johnson claims that the events of today “feel like a dangerous, tragic sort of echo” of the end of the 19th century with its “lynching and racial discrimination in voting.” Huh?

Lynching is a thing of the past. So is the voting discrimination of the late 19th century.

Johnson can’t keep his story straight. In the paragraphs directly above his discussion of the late 19th century, he points out that blacks have been on three of the four most recent winning presidential tickets; that since 2008, the number of racial and ethnic and racial minorities in Congress has nearly doubled, and that black mayors are leading the largest cities in the U.S., including some in red states.

This is the antithesis of the late 19th century, not an “echo” of it.

When he’s not indulging in non-sequiturs and misstatements of fact, Johnson relies on ipse dixit. For example, without analysis or explanation, he equates use of the term “woke” to epithets such as “race traitor” and “scalawag.”

But as I discussed here, the term “woke” was embraced as a self-description by leftists who think they possess a higher state of consciousness because they believe in precisely the things — e.g. gender fluidity, climate change as existential threat, and Critical Race Theory — their critics label “woke.”

Rarely has an epithet been hurled with more justification. .

Most of the beliefs conservatives describe as “woke” are unrelated to race. Therefore, the word is not at all analogous to “race traitor.” If anything, “race traitor” is analogous to epithets favored by the left — like racist, fascist, xenophobe and, above all, “Uncle Tom.”

Johnson claims that “a swath of the right” has, through its comments, “made plain the fears it harbors about living in a nation where people of color genuinely participate in power.” However, he cites no evidence that any such comments have real currency among conservatives (note his use of the weasel words “a swath.”)

It’s true that many conservatives complain about the way majority black cities are run. But when we do, it’s usually in the context of concern for black residents who are disproportionately victimized by crime and stuck in terrible schools.

That Baltimore is horribly run has no effect on me. It just seems tragic that a once-proud and fairly well run city (including under Kurt Schmoke, a black mayor) in my state has descended into chaos and despair.

Apparently, Johnson thinks that expressing this sentiment is evidence of racial anxiety. The racial anxiety implicit in this kind of defensiveness belongs to Johnson.

I don’t doubt that the Washington Post has published op-eds more inane than Theodore Johnson’s. But none comes to mind.