Thread by @dogemperor

@LabyrinthWeaver Don't blame all Kentuckians. There is a significant group of us who've TRIED to get him out (in fact, I've voted against him every election I could, and he's been in office since before I hit puberty).

The whole "voting out" is tricker than it seems, though:

1/x

@LabyrinthWeaver 1) Kentucky has the highest rate of African-American voter disenfrancisement in the US (upwards of 24% *permanently* barred from voting due to felony disenfranchisement, mostly for nonviolent drug offenses). The ONLY way to get civil rights restored is governor pardon

2/x

@LabyrinthWeaver Kentucky also--until this year--did not have any usable means of early or absentee voting (and even this year you had to note "covid" as an excuse--and the General Assembly is about to roll even this back to old rules). Even in-person absentee voting is normally unavailable

3/x

@LabyrinthWeaver And this becomes a problem because KY also has the earliest close of polls in the US--6pm local time, with employers only required to give an hour off to vote (which makes voting impossible with long lines or if public transportation is involved--the infrastructure is shit)

4/x

@LabyrinthWeaver KY also has a habit of mysteriously dropping people from voter's rolls just before voter registration deadlines--also among the earliest in the US, typically 60 days before election. Otherwise, provisionals have to be filed.

And there's other issues to boot, too.

5/x

@LabyrinthWeaver Among other things, KY's voter reg system STILL does not handle hyphenated last names gracefully, and requesting a ballot ONLY allowed you to use state driver's license or ID (to get around that issue) this past September.

And yes, this is the ONLY system with the issue

6/x

@LabyrinthWeaver Also: Older voting machines (and fewer of them) tend to be put in areas with high African-American or otherwise "traditionally progressive" areas, leading to breakdowns and long lines...or Louisville Metro getting ONE polling location in May

7/x

@LabyrinthWeaver Then there's the racism dynamic.

Most of the really hardcore McConnell votes are actually in Thomas Massie's district, which is...white-flight counties surrounding Louisville, as well as Cincy suburbs and north Appalachia near OH border...

8/x

@LabyrinthWeaver As well as the 2nd district (Brett Guthrie's) which includes the southern "white flight" counties and the military bases (Ft. Knox, Ft. Campbell, Bluegrass Army Depot where they store the chemical weapons)

There are active Klan groups (and neo-Nazi groups, too) in that part

9/x

@LabyrinthWeaver And Appalachia, historically, didn't have huge prejudice issues (and was actually a Union stronghold)...till the coal companies started union-busting, and the coal companies used African-American labor as "scabs", and....well...it got very Nasty and never recovered

10/x

@LabyrinthWeaver And the media in a LOT of Kentucky (especially outside the cities) is...right-wing media from other states (Sinclair in Massie's district in particular), or "Godcaster" radio stations that actually run right of even OANN, and there often isn't a local newspaper at all

11/x

@LabyrinthWeaver And so the whole line of "they'll save your jobs" (of which there are precious few; maybe 5000 people work in coal mining, almost all jobs outside cities in KY are military or service industry or agricultural) gets rolled out, and a lot of urban-versus-rural dialogue...

12/x

@LabyrinthWeaver Which gets not only religious angles thrown in (implying the cities are effectively Slaaneshi dens of decadence and depravity) but a whole lot of *racial* rhetoric, with the known undertext of "urbans" = "African-Americans and Hispanics".

13/x

@LabyrinthWeaver Add to this the fact there is no functional recall procedure, and the fact that politics are infamously corrupt and there is no meaningful accountability (cref: Breonna Taylor and the utter fuckjob; cref: LMPD Explorers sex abuse scandal)///

14/x

@LabyrinthWeaver And there's also the fact that even advocacy for reasonable things will occasionally get you attacked, physically, depending on where one is (I have friends who will not drive cars with pro-DNC bumper stickers in parts of the state as it's all but asking to be shot)...

15/x

@LabyrinthWeaver Hell, considering that in LOUISVILLE there has been a mass shooting by someone trying to start the Racial Holy War by their lonesome and (in a separate incident at another store) I know someone else who almost got shot by a b*gal** due to asking the chud to wear a mask...

16/x

@LabyrinthWeaver But weirdly, Appalachia isn't quite as bad as the Karen Centrals in the white flight counties. Which is where you tend to have the really deep racism

But make no mistake, racism seriously plays into it.

17/x

@LabyrinthWeaver So people basically assume that politicians are going to be corrupt bastards, and probably the rural voters that aren't kept Afraid Of The Brown People and aren't being given cutbacks claiming they'll save the coal industry or set up KY as Hemp Central USA...

18/x

@LabyrinthWeaver (As an aside on that, KY would have been far better to go full recreational, but...religion is big, and fully a third of the state is still dry post-Prohibition. The dominionist wing is a very powerful political force in KY, and is known to play with other lobbies...

19/x

@LabyrinthWeaver (Like the horse-racing lobby to keep casinos out, or the liquor lobby to keep direct-to-customer sales and cannabis legalization out. But yes, KY used to be about two-thirds dry till the fast casual restaurants revolted....

20/x

@LabyrinthWeaver ...the same fast-casual places that are often the only employers besides Wal-Mart, Loves, Pilot, and Dollar General. Pretty much they refused to set up shop unless counties went "moist" and allowed sales of liquor by the drink.

This led to a lot of "moistening")

21/x

@LabyrinthWeaver But back to our story. Basically another way McConnell has blown smoke up rural voters posteriors outside the coal industry is, well, ag--he's been very good at ag promotion and ag porkbarrel stuff and promising hemp (before the CBD craze) as the next Dippin' Dots

22/x

@LabyrinthWeaver And so the rural voters that aren't swayed by Fear of a Black Planet, or swayed by being one of the lobbies he's courting...get swayed by ag bucks, or at least the promise thereof.

That, and claims that somehow the Dems will keep you from being able to hunt

23/x

@LabyrinthWeaver Yes, that last one is Important in getting fear in folks. Hunting is actually a non-negligible way that less well-off Kentuckians in rural areas get meat in their diet; a fair amount of hunting here IS subsistence hunting in all but name.

The gun lobby weaponises this.

24/x

@LabyrinthWeaver And the very clear subcontext is "the Swarthy Urban Elites who can just go to Whole Paycheck and buy a bison steak want you to starve, knowing your nearest Piggly Wiggly or Food City or IGA or Wal-Mart is a 50-mile drive and the meat is green".

25/x

@LabyrinthWeaver And that, kids, is how a cursed Appalachian apple-core doll has continued to con and fuck over Kentuckians for some 36-fucking-odd years in Congress.

But some of us are trying to get him out. Suggestions on how to functionally deprogram 56% of voters in KY are welcome

26/end