Bruce Charlton asked the question recently "What is the purpose of old age?" http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2019/04/what-is-purpose-of-old-age-romantic.html
He asks the question in the context of his observations that so many people are trying to maintain their youthfulness by various means, by having facelifts or engaging in vigorous (and inappropriate) exercise, by behaving as they behaved in their youth with drinking and partying or trying to climb Mount Everest. That last one is not a good idea as we have seen recently.
He partially answers his own question when he observes that these efforts to stay forever young are a fear of old age and ultimately a fear of death, which is a recent phenomenon. The Victorians had no such fears or doubts, they accepted it as a fact of life and that acceptance lasted well into the 20th century for most people. All four of my grandparents died in their own homes with family members at the bedside, the last one in 1973.
But there are far worse fates than death -
Bette Davis was correct because old age brings with it new and unwelcome problems. We all begin to creak and crumble and fall apart with aching limbs, arthritis, rheumatism etc. In my case it is sciatica and a mysterious ache in my right foot which turns into pain if I walk too far. Also I find that I can no longer do the things I used to do; climbing a ladder is now inadvisable, running up or down stairs is no longer an option, and as for moving furniture - is it a lot heavier than it used to be? And then the unspoken difficulties like trying to cut your toenails or struggling to remove the tops from jars. Rescuing food from its packaging has undoubtedly prompted an endless stream of profanities on a daily or weekly basis up and down the land!
But we have to adapt to the infirmities and the difficulties of old age because the body lets you down, eventually.
Old age brings other worries of course. Not least who is going to look after us all when we need it. The latest statistic I can find (for 2017) shows almost three million over 65s living alone. But that is another story for another time. The question here is 'what is the purpose of old age' and the cold hard truth is that old age is a time for facing up to the inevitable end of this life and to prepare ourselves for death and transition to the next life. The poet John Donne (1572 - 1631) expresses it here very clearly-
"Since I am coming to that holy room,
Where, with thy choir of saints for evermore,
I shall be made thy music; as I come
I tune the instrument here at the door,
And what I must do then, think here before."
If you will allow, I shall burden you with my own understanding and how I have approached old age and death. My father was 58 when he died after a short illness and that was too soon but we, the family, had to accept it. Thus began my own search to try to make sense of it all and I rapidly became aware of my own mortality and very quickly came to terms with the fact. So life went on but with a slightly different perspective on anything and everything. Like Bruce Charlton, I would read a great deal and travelling and working in other countries and cultures added fresh insights into how other peoples dealt with these things.
Many years later a very close friend of mine had a severe stroke and was left unable to talk and was in a wheelchair having been paralysed in her right arm and leg. I say close friend but in fact she was by my side when my father died and was very much the shoulder to lean on. After almost five years in that condition she died, coincidentally on my father's birthday. Her sister said to me "she didn't want to be here any more" She had decided to go and she did.
It is difficult to explain how I felt at the news of her death because the feeling was and is beyond words. She was here and then she was not here. Science holds that energy can be neither created nor destroyed so what happened to her life energy, that which animates the body? Where did/does that go?
The effect on me was profound and lasted a long time and may well have been a contributory factor in my subsequent epilepsy. And then one day, a few years later, she came back! I know that sounds absurd and you can dismiss it as wishful thinking if you like but I know what I felt and it was not brought on by thinking about her. But it happened and it happened during what I now understand to be a lucid dream. She was here with me and it was real, in fact it was much more real than everyday reality in a way which cannot be explained. It was real but there was no 'great revelatory message': the content was fairly mundane, as in real life. In a way it was shocking because it was beyond any normal experience, bewilderment is the best word to describe my feelings. I had some very long conversations with the neurologist at the hospital but she could not offer any explanation. She knew of the concept but had little experience of it with patients or among colleagues. Science is, after all, just another belief system, a secular faith.
F C Happold in his book Mysticism writes -
"An experience of the sort which may, without justifiably stretching the meaning of the word, be called mystical may happen to anyone, sometimes quite unexpectedly; but when it occurs it is clearly recognizable. It may happen only once in a lifetime; but, when it does happen, it brings an illumination and a certainty which can rarely, if ever, be reached by the rational consciousness and may change the whole tenure of a life."
And change me it most certainly did. I still cannot articulate how and why it has changed my outlook on life, I just know that it has. For a time I genuinely lost the will to live but it was replaced by a feeling of being more alive than before. Over recent years I have relaxed into a sort of low level reverie and now have a form of hyperaesthesia making colours more vivid and visual awareness is heightened such that I am aware of things actually vibrating, usually described by poets or art critics as shimmering. I have even tried to depict the vibrating nature of reality in a few paintings. Perhaps I am just going mad, I don't know but it is a delightful, divine madness.
It may be that we need some kind of shock or a 'revelation' to remind us why we are here. If it happens in old age it helps to focus the mind on what is important and to realise that there are more years behind us than ahead and this is not necessarily a bad thing.
“To die will be an awfully big adventure.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
This is my own personal response to Bruce Charlton's question. You may have a different view, you may have a different experience or possibly none at all. No matter, we are all different and we must all deal with old age and beyond in our own way. There are many roads but only one destination.
And finally from Bob Dylan a beautiful meditation on our final years. As always with Dylan the meaning is ambiguous and we can read into it what is most meaningful for us. There is an interpretation of the song on Dylan's website and the writer speaks of a Taoist concept of “Darkness within Darkness, the way to all understanding” but I prefer the words of the metaphysical poet Henry Vaughan (1622 - 1695) -
"There is in God (some say)
A deep, but dazzling darkness;"
- and I know that dazzling darkness is a darkness filled with light!
N.B. My reference to science being a belief system, a secular faith is not some throwaway insult. In F C Happold's book there are quotes from St Augustine of Hippo, Nicolas of Cusa and Max Planck all saying exactly the same thing.
The Band were originally a backing group called The Hawks for the rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins. After they left Hawkins they were 'adopted' by Bob Dylan and were with him on the world tour of 1966.
Guilt-edged profits: Wiggiaatlarge has a go at the eco-panic industry...
Saving the world for fun and fame
We have been hearing an awful lot from the eco fanatics, scientists with an agenda, various public organisations, NGOs and of course celebrities on how ‘we’ are slowly bringing the world as we know it to an end, whether it be the results of climate change or bio diversity in the plant and animal world, everything, absolutely everything is ‘our’ fault.
In the lull in the non-going Brexit negotiations a golden window of opportunity for all these with vested interests has been given, a chance for all of them to come out of the shadow of Brexit together in full battle mode, led by a sixteen-year-old girl who no one has heard of but who everybody with a bandwagon to jump on has attached themselves to like limpets, a saint for the green movement in waiting.
Both the CCC and the UN have made big statements of impending doom and time frames are put out as the D day for all this to come about lest we adhere to ‘conditions’ they put forward as solutions, conditions of course that cannot be questioned as all those who question are deniers and therefore beneath contempt.
By chance ? The other affiliated eco health warnings and suggestions have come out of the woodwork at the same time. Never has there been so much about what we eat and drink that is bad for us and never have so many animals been the target of the green/vegan lobby for not just making us less healthy but also the animals must stop farting as they are polluting the world.
Billions of trees must be planted, a trend started by the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan who promised Londoners 2 million trees to counter traffic pollution. No numbers of trees planted are available, but he is well on the way to bringing London to a standstill, which according to all those same voices is a good thing, though of course London will be open to drivers with special dispensation ! And those others who can afford the ridiculous fees, with traffic being restricted to electric vehicles in the not so distant future.
Now at the same time we have the Royal College of Physicians piling in, stating our air quality is killing 40,000 people a year. I am never sure how they arrive at these figures ie filtering out people who would have died from respiratory diseases anyway from those who have directly from the current state of our air we breathe in.
I don’t think anyone would not want to live in a world that did not have a decent environment, that has never been the problem; the problem as with so many things from the top down these days is what the message really stands for. Is it just for our own well-being and that of the planet, or as many sceptics rightfully point out the globalists who have found a new vehicle with which to soak the general public of their cash or plastic as it soon will be? Seems fine for plastic to be used for this purpose but evil for everything else.
What repeatedly is never discussed in this quest to cleanse ourselves of all the world's ills, is the feasibility, the damage to our country and above all the cost. The cost of course to those who will see us rubbing sticks together to keep warm is a cost worth paying so they can feel good about themselves and pretend we are showing the way to the rest of the world, who will be eternally grateful, not a message any time soon that will be getting through, yet we must persevere with the message - it is our duty ! There is a total intolerance to any divergence from that which is put out as truth.
As with all these many green ‘issues’ when articles are put out by all of the bodies concerned and individuals everything is headlined and taken at face value, no one seems to be questioned as to the authenticity of anything, if they say the word scientist then that is the magic password for the piece to be unquestionably true in every aspect. It has become so silly that even solutions that are patently absurd are tacked on to these statements and put out as something you can do to save the planet. There is a long list but a couple of examples are, that sharing your cordless drill with your neighbour is going to make a difference, apart from the fact your neighbour will already have a cordless drill, everyone has one and using the thing at the same time would involve having a task to do anyway is laughable.
Banning the school run from dropping the darlings off within the school precinct: wonderful, do grown up people sit around a table and say, "that’s a good idea, put it in the piece?" The darlings will simply be dropped off a hundred yards short and the nuisance for householders will simply be moved that hundred yards or so.
The more serious subject of converting everything to electric and doing away with the evil internal combustion engine has already started by the banning in towns of entry for certain types of vehicle; nothing wrong with it in principle but what of the shortcomings of that move and the further controls on car use?
There appears to be a lemming like attitude with politicians who jump on bandwagons to please minorities in almost every sphere. The green agenda is being pushed from many different organisations with differing points of view as to what is important, but the hand of big business is in there somewhere: subsidies are par for course in the drive towards emission-free vehicles and all that is necessary to power them and provide for them.
The costings for infrastructure needed are constantly lied about and the infrastructure is not there and nowhere near available for the dates supplied to end the use or production of carbon-fuelled automobiles, never mind where will the power come from.
A government that on one hand is closing down coal- and now gas-powered power stations and cannot get one new nuclear power station off the drawing board after god knows how many years is playing games. So-called green power is nowhere near to providing current needs and certainly however many windmills they build will never be able to supply the total necessary when and if we go carbon neutral (whatever that means), and on a still day you would be well advised to invest in a hamster in a treadmill.
On the one hand the government has sanctioned 6000 offshore windmills, which will never plug the gap and on the other hand the back up power stations are being closed (coal) apart from the Drax stations that import wood pellets from Canada and pollute the atmosphere more than coal does and of course at greater cost ! The cost of maintenance of offshore windmills has been largely hidden as it is still a relatively new source of power, but offshore maintenance is high because of the environment the windmills are in, and the replacement time span short and very expensive.
What is also notable by its absence is the efforts to make coal and gas clean. There have been several feasible methods put forward but all are ignored, why ? Clean coal can be viewed with a sceptic's eye, but apart from a mixed success/failure in the US it has been shelved elsewhere. There must be a way to overcome some of the other problems outside of CO2 but no one wants to know, well here anyway. It doesn’t make sense: the cleaning of coal is relatively cheap and we are sitting on hundreds of years of the stuff; if it can be used cleanly then why not ?
The electric car is also not the saviour of the planet it is deemed to be. Each battery costs 17 tons of CO2 to produce, not exactly eco friendly and the stage when these same batteries have to be replaced at enormous cost has not been reached yet so the enormous job of recycling them if it is possible has not even started.
The costs plusses and minuses of battery versus ICE powered cars can be seen here, it is not nearly as clear cut on several fronts as one would like to think.
So despite not having a long time objection to the electric car, there is a long way to go before they are the go to form of transport and all the other matters have to be in place, something that is not going to happen within the target years projected.
It is also a convenient fact that is buried that along with the replacement of gas and coal, the cost of electricity will rise not by the percentages we are being fed now as a cost worthwhile but by as some say as much as double or more. Not only is electricity more expensive to produce this way despite our being told wind power is now affordable (conveniently forgetting all the latent limitations on production that way) and the fact that you have to have back up power stations at the ready for when the wind doesn’t blow, but also the claw back from fuel duties not received and subsidies that are not sustainable to the green energy industry.
From the first claims that we were destroying the planet there has been data supplied forecasting impending doom. There will be no snow in winter after ten years, said one notable climate scientist: yeah right, sea levels will start to inundate eastern England... hasn’t shown any measurable rise at all despite the fact the east of the country is sinking. "The Arctic ice is melting": graphs and maps show this it seems every year, oh and polar bears are nearing extinction,; actually, polar bears are increasing in numbers and the Artic ice has increased and decreased as a natural cycle says NASA - or not if you believe some other organisation !
The sea levels have certainly risen world wide but not because of anything man has done. Since the last glacial age several thousand years ago we have been warming up and the ice sheets have slowly melted. This has nothing to do with man it is simply a natural cycle, and no doubt one day the world will return to a glacial phase. What can we do about it? Nothing.
And remember the ozone layer and the big hole all caused by CFCs? It's not for me to say it was or not, but the ozone layer was not discovered until 1913 and the hole in it, not a hole actually but a thinning, was discovered in 1976. If the banning of CFCs has caused the thinning to stop or slow, well done, but there is no record of whether the thinning existed before 1913 so we cannot be sure it is not just a natural cycle.
The trouble with all these projections is they can never be questioned. Anyone who does is called a denier which is patently untrue, but when scientific papers - on which countries base future dealing with climate change - are totally discredited as were those of the UEA you have a problem of belief in those that do the research and questions arrive as to their motives. So many new organisations spring up on the back of potential world catastrophe; it is a whole industry in itself and a very profitable one for those that can get associated with it.
Plastic has become the whipping boy for the eco fanatics. Almost everything about plastic is bad, from being ingested by sea creatures to litter to excessive packaging and on. The fact is that plastic being a by-product of oil is, as night follows day, bad by association. There is nothing wrong with plastic: it has made so many things possible that were impossible or extremely difficult and costly to produce, before becoming an everyday product with the use of polymers. The use of plastics is so universal, so engrained in everyday life it would be virtually impossible to replace it at this stage of our evolution. There is nothing wrong with plastic, only how humans misuse it and dispose of it; that is not a fault of the product but of man.
The ongoing onslaught on the meat industry is again interesting, but not from the point of view of whether should you eat meat or not - that should be a personal choice, not a diktat of government or vegan extremists.
But an article in the Times business section showed how the way forward is planned: cattle, you see, are contaminating the atmosphere and we should reduce the number of cattle and our meat intake to help this aim of reduction in CO2 emissions. At this moment in time vegans account for 1% of the population with a further 12% of what they call flexitarians, I don’t know either, but for some reason we are being told by big business we should get with the movement. The article speaks of a business that many are getting behind, the next big thing, so institutions are pulling money from anything that can be tainted as a possible climate pollutant and putting it into schemes such as faux meat production. The CEO of one such company described the meat industry as “on a cliff edge” - well, he would say that.
In the same article as with so much else, there was a hint that to help the fledgling new faux meat industry (and naturally you would be helping yourself), tax on meat should be expected at some time if people do not change their wicked ways.
And the government has just announced it is forcing pension funds to put their money into renewables and not fossil fuels. How dare they tell anyone what to do with OUR money? If renewables show a better return so be it, but no company should be forced to put people's money into something just to massage a politician's credentials.
Organics were the trend not long ago, a good message but very expensive. You only have to compare the two products in a supermarket to see how much more you would have to stump up to be organic in total. And organic farming is not the saviour of the soil it was made out to be: as with so many of these ‘natural’ ways there is a downside.
The downside is never ever made public in the same way as the supposed gains, never when there is money involved.
Monsanto are a favorite whipping boy of the green movement. If you believed all the reports about Monsanto you would think they were the devil incarnate put on this earth just annoy us. Glysophate has been touted as a cancer inducer and campaigners want it removed from use at once. The problem is not a single study actually comes down on the side of the greens on this, it is all maybe.
Every time a chemical is withdrawn , and many have been for good reason, there has to be found a substitute. In most cases this is a much more expensive item than the one it is replacing, again putting pressure on margins and in the end consumer food prices. Glysophate has been an extremely effective weed control agent, there is not anything else that comes near at this moment in time and for the moment it has been reprieved, but that is not good enough: more tests have been promised under pressure from the green movement, they will not stop until it is banned, whether justified or not. The amounts found in land and crops are miniscule and have no threat to health, but the fact traces are there gives the green movement the means to justify carrying on. This has been going on for years and still they can’t find proof positive of harm: all chemicals and all ‘natural’ substitutes leave traces in soil and food, yet all the papers giving glysophate the all clear are ignored. As with everything else the zealots appear to have people on the inside who persuade, and of course they do, lobbyists who work for organisations, subsidised to a large degree unwittingly by the taxpayer.
What to eat and drink and what not to eat and drink? The message changes constantly. Red wine? Ah, that is a good one: according to the Times today ‘researchers are suggesting that a diet of Mediterranean oily products (heard this before) and red wine can help with dementia. There was a time when I drank red wine to forget about everything but there you go ! Red wine has been good for you and alternatively bad for you almost on a yearly basis, depending on which research group has issued their papers on it. You would think by now they would have given up but I am sure another group are waiting to publish on the evils again as I speak.
The elephant in the room is not a new one: it is the explosion of world population. Nature no longer takes its toll on birth statistics by controlling with disease or famine, much (rightly) has been corrected by the west and science, but now that the family survives, they still have the same number of children and in the likes of Africa the numbers are frightening. All are to be fed, housed and clothed, none can afford the ideals of the west's eco movement and so what will happen to the aspirations of the green movement? Absolutely nothing of consequence: the sheer numbers of people will swamp any progress made. You cannot impose restrictions on people who have little in the first place; to them it is all about survival. Wood burning stoves, vegan diets, wind power? They couldn’t give a stuff, there are more pressing things in their lives.
The huge damage that has been done to the likes of the Amazon basin by man is a visible thing, it is tangible unlike so much else which is hyperbole, but how do you stop forest clearance when it is done either to further big business that all governments are in thrall to, or to provide food for the burgeoning population.
Common sense of course does not subsidise new eco projects but it does massage politicians' green credentials and throwing a few billion around at these various schemes is not that difficult when it is other people's money.
At the end of the day common sense will be trumped by virtue signalling and endless amounts of money will be spent on schemes that will do little for the planet but will hurt us as a nation. There is no point being world leader in something the bulk of the planet ignores or could not afford to follow.
Perhaps there is no long term answer. Only a population reduction will effectively halt the demands on the earth and where have we heard that before?
Not that Gardiner was addressing the audience question, which was asking whether the Tory leadership contest was akin to changing the captain of the Titanic after it had hit the iceberg. Or indeed that it was his turn to speak (do get a grip, Fiona.) But at least it bought a bit more time for Rory Stewart to scribble notes, his drawn face bent over his notepad.
The one thing that won’t have been on Rory’s jotter is a fully-articulated political philosophy – the Conservatives have long prided themselves on not having one. In this respect they resemble Labour and LibDem, for all of them have become debating-point opportunists; and that is why, with luck, they are doomed.
For all the splother from our mainstream parties, none of them shows any understanding of the EU. On they bang about economics, when anyone who takes the trouble to read can see that the EU is a political project aiming for Empire. Why, Verhofstadt has just said it openly. To Remain is not to stand still, but to keep seated on a train headed for an unpleasant destination.
The train won’t get there and it would be well for us not to be on board when it derails. One reason is that we are jointly liable for the EU’s debts and can be called upon to make good shortfalls or even bail them out in a major crisis, as the Bruges Group explains.
But it’s about more than finance, and it’s time for us to reconsider our principles - even if, on the Right, they are rather fuzzy (as giant corporations come to dominate, is freedom a Left issue, or a Right one?)
Some on the Left side are starting to draw designs on their pads. Here is Costas Lapavitsas, ex-MP in the Greek Parliament, giving the rationale for his recent book “The Left Case Against The EU.” It's well worth watching, but for the time-poor I give a rough summary below.
He has written this book for three reasons: the public is ill-informed about the EU; the Left has a false ‘dream image’ of the EU and lacks a coherent argument for its position; others can learn about the EU’s approach from its treatment of Greece’s Syriza government in 2016.
The British Left used to be Eurosceptic but now has a ‘completely imaginary picture’ of the EU. Also, it has lost its belief in a socialist alternative to neoliberalism.
On the common currency/EMU: it was created by the French to ‘tie Germany in’ after the latter’s reunification. That was a miscalculation – the Euro has helped German business, especially in exports, and Germany has emerged as the ‘hegemonic power’ of Europe. France is losing to Germany economically and politically.
The Eurozone crisis was systemic, but that was not obvious to EU functionaries. Lapavitsas had thought they would see sense and rebalance the member economies, especially Germany’s, but no.
The EU’s behaviour towards Greece was ‘abominable’, with a disregard for democracy. Greece was treated as ‘a kind of new colony’ [RN: remember Verhoftstadt’s aides saying the same about the UK on camera? Here’s a Greek word for them: hubris.] And in Cyprus, the EU took savers’ money to rescue the banks.
Since Maastricht the EU has been a ‘paradigm of neoliberalism’, the ‘four freedoms’ acting as ‘powerful levers’ and enforced by the ECJ. The EU is a neoliberal ‘juggernaut’; Brussels is ‘one of the main lobby points for big business.’
The Left has advocated ‘Remain and reform’, claiming that what it wants can be achieved within the existing structures of the EU. Lapavitsas replies (a) in that case, why is reform needed? Actually, the EU blocks such attempts; (b) It’s been tried and found wanting, as Greece discovered in 2015. It failed immediately. Britain may be bigger, but will get the same opposition.
The EU has ‘a long history of democratic deficit,’ widening over the last two decades. (1) Economic policy has been ‘depoliticised’ and the democratic vote means very little – a Left Greek government and a Right Italian one were both told to comply with EU policies. So what is the point of voting? (2) See how the EU intervenes when challenged: forcing re-votes after a referendum result it doesn’t like; asserting the power of the Council of Ministers and replacing Greek and Italian governments.
The vaunted ‘freedom of movement’ is not about individual rights, but corporate ones: the EU favours capital and allows it to relocate labour as it wishes. Lapavitsas says ‘the local community also has to be protected’ and the Left has forgotten its tradition of workers’ internationalism.
Corbyn’s Labour is conflicted It needs a more radical program than 2017’s. It needs a profound industrial strategy, less dependent on the service sector and the City. It needs a plan for State aid, public procurement and financing, in a way that the EU will not allow. The EU imposes severe restraints, the WTO less so. We need to address inequalities of income and wealth, and to reform trading practices.
Where does he see the EU in ten years’ time? It faces existential crisis, not only among peripheral countries but most of all in its core. Italy is stagnant. France cannot compete with Germany and if it adopts German policies will fail; the public are rebelling. Add in the democratic deficit and people’s sense of powerlessness and the EU finds itself in a very difficult position.
Lapavitsas cannot see monetary union surviving – it will probably go, in the next global crisis. After that the EU will change into a loose alliance, an ‘empty shell’; the Maastricht years won’t come back.
The European Left needs to get its act together ‘or the political outcomes will not be very good at all.’
In the middle of all this current political chaos, fake or otherwise, I think we deserve to have some real and creative chaos which is genuinely inspiring and joyful.
If you are of a nervous disposition, look away now (as they say on the telly) but if not, fasten your seatbelts and turn up the volume for the unique and legendary Rahsaan Roland Kirk!
In the good old days, the primary paths to power were generally simple. Things like birthright, marriage, assassination and conquest.
Now that most countries are democratic, at least in theory, one must claw to the top of some power structure, and then be elected.
One way to do the latter is to convince enough voters that they need you. This carries a high risk of failure.
To increase the odds, one could take the route favoured by Saddam Hussein, and famously described by Stalin, “It doesn't matter how the people vote, only who counts the votes”. While effective, this method requires a large conspiracy, which is hard to maintain.
In some places of the US, such as Chicago and Miami, Florida, a popular method used to be what is called the 'graveyard vote', having people impersonate dead voters. In New York, they just got enough street dwellers drunk and marched them to the polls.
With better modern record keeping, these methods are much less effective. In fact, despite claims by Republicans of millions of illegal aliens voting, and massive voter fraud, repeated investigation has only uncovered a handful of cases nationwide in the past two decades. Most of those were Republicans, claiming to 'test the system'.
It is the South, now primarily Republican, which has outdone itself, with the simple tactic of voter suppression.
We can begin with the founding of the Republic. The slave-holding states realized that their population was mostly slaves, and so apportionment of Congressional seats by population would leave them with little power. Hence, the allocation of two Senate seats per state, and the famous '3/5 compromise', where slaves counted as 3/5 of a regular person.
After the Civil War, the 14th and 15th amendments now allowed all former slaves to vote, so a new tactic was needed. The answer was to arrest the now-homeless freemen under vagrancy laws. Not only could they not vote while in prison, but also were generally prevented from doing so if they ever got out. An added bonus was that slavery was still allowed for people in prison, so they were a tremendous source of free labour, a system which lasts through today. This method was supplemented with poll taxes, which the African-Americans couldn't afford to pay, and literacy tests, which were strangely harder for people of colour.
Under the cover of claiming massive voter fraud, there have been major moves to require 'valid' identification to vote. This sounds reasonable enough, doesn't it? Now consider:
1.Texas accepts a state-issued Concealed-Carry Weapons permit as valid, but not a state-issued university ID card (those 'liberal' students)
2.Many older African-Americans in the South cannot get their birth certificates, as most were not born in official hospitals, and so cannot get ID.
3.In Arkansas, the single office to get a state ID (for those without a driver's license) is only open for a few hours on the fifth Wednesday of a month (not a joke).
And then there are the other clever techniques used most recently in 2018:
1. A bus in Georgia was taking a group of African-American retirees from a nursing home to the polls. The white workers at the home stopped the bus, and dragged them off.
2.In Georgia, there is automatic voter registration when a driver's license is renewed. But, it only registers the person for the national elections, not the local and state ones, keeping things like the Sheriff's position away from 'those people'.
3.A law in Arizona required voters to have a street address. Most Native Americans use rural post boxes, without one.
4.Dodge City, Kansas, closed its single polling station, and moved it a mile out of the city, miles away from any bus route.
5.The state party in charge after each census gets to decide the Congressional map for the state. In the last elections, Republicans have so gerrymandered the districts that they were awarded 12 of 16 seats in Congress for Ohio while only getting 52% of the vote.
While our leadership lectures the rest of the world on democracy, we behave more like a banana republic.
___________________________ Further reading (Ed.):
