When you've lost The Saturday Evening Post... (re: filibuster)

[Tanuki]

https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2022/01/considering-history-the-filibuster-has-long-been-used-to-protect-power/

"Considering History: The Filibuster Has Long Been Used to Protect Power

While the filibuster started as a measure to protect the voices of a minority, more recently it has been used in quite literally the opposite way: to protect entrenched and powerful forces.
...

As other senators, and particularly other conservative southern Democrats, began to use the filibuster more regularly, they did so directly in service of entrenched powerful forces, including white supremacy. In 1946, progressive New Mexico Senator Dennis Chávez introduced a bill to make permanent President Roosevelt’s World War II-era Fair Employment Practice Committee (FEPC), a federal government entity which had since its 1941 creation sought to help minorities obtain wartime jobs and to address and challenge workplace discrimination more broadly. Chávez had the votes to pass his bill, but five conservative southern Democratic senators — Louisiana’s John H. Overton, Georgia’s Richard B. Russell, Maryland’s Millard E. Tydings, North Carolina’s Clyde R. Hoey, and Tennessee’s Kenneth McKellar — filibustered for weeks, eventually forcing Chávez to withdraw the bill.

That 1946 effort became the playbook for southern Democrats and other conservative senators seeking to oppose anti-discrimination and other civil rights legislation. In 1957, South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond set a new record for the longest filibuster, speaking for more than 24 hours in opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1957 (which would guarantee federal protection for African American voters). Thurmond did so in large part by appealing to some of American history’s most powerful and iconic texts, reading the entirety of the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and George Washington’s farewell address. Thurmond eventually tired and ended his filibuster and the law passed, if with a number of its most important measures removed or limited (such as the power of federal judges to enforce the law).
....
Too often, our current debates over the filibuster not only ignore but overtly mischaracterize these histories. Joe Manchin claimed that the filibuster has been “the tradition of the Senate for 232 years,” while Kyrsten Sinema called the filibuster a defense against “partisanship.” As the Senate, President Joe Biden, and others continue to debate whether the filibuster can or should continue to exist at all, it’s incumbent on all of us to challenge these inaccuracies and myths, and to engage instead with both the specific histories and the overarching role through which the filibuster has long served as a tool of entrenched powerful interests."...(more)

[Fullduplexxx]

1. Just more powerless words

[BComplex]

2. Agree. And until we address the minority control of our country, we're going to continue to have

these issues.