So said Rep. Artur Davis (D-AL) to John Tanner, the man in charge of voting rights in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, last week in a hearing on Capital Hill.
This simple rebuttal was in reference to Tanner’s appearance before the Georgia NAACP where he actually said “because our society is such that minorities don’t become elderly. The way white people do. They die first.” More importantly, Tanner’s statement follows years of advocating for a law requiring a photo ID to vote, which was clearly designed to disenfranchise elderly black voters in Georgia. So when Tanner finally appeared before his committee, Davis wasted no time in exposing his utter idiocy and willful ignorance:
Other money quote, “once again you engaged in an analysis without knowing the numbers.”
I point this out not because it’s amusing (though it clearly is), but because Davis’ levelheaded, unemotional, and irrefutable line of criticism and questioning is the perfect tonic to the past seven years of faith-based fear-mongering. This is precisely how you defend the truth against the Bush administration’s known proclivity to fix facts “around the policy.”
Why we as people aren’t more forceful in the prosecution of bald-faced lies is beyond me, but if there is one lesson I hope we learn from the Bush era it’s this: we cannot afford to let these little lies and even bigger crimes against humanity go unpunished, for every day that passes without a sound provides more cover to their actions and legitimacy to their deeds. We must work day and night to expose every falsehood and fraud perpetrated by these mendacious criminals, and enlist friend and foe alike to turn back their massive onslaught against what is fair and right.
To do any less is to concede that all is already lost.
