Scheduling Note: It’s been a long and hard year, right? So This Land is going to take a break. There will be one more issue later this week. Then we will see you early in 2022.

In the premier issue of this newsletter, I presented the case that the extensive Republican effort to suppress voting, gerrymander congressional districts, and gain control of vote-counting and election-certifying mechanisms in the states ought to be considered an attempt to implement political apartheid. That might have seemed hyperbolic, but in the months since the GOP has demonstrated how it is pursuing both systematic strategies and underhanded bureaucratic shenanigans to attain and maintain power and limit the popular will. Its recent moves in Georgia provide a clear example of this.

Last spring, Republicans in the Peach State passed a highly restrictive election bill, which was then enthusiastically signed into law by GOP Gov. Brian Kemp. Passage caused a hullabaloo, with voting right advocates describing it as a blow against democracy, though some pundits and voting experts claimed the measure was not as awful as critics claimed. With no statewide election yet conducted under this law, it’s hard to know whether it will yield a significant change in turnout beneficial for Republicans in critical congressional races next year or for a GOP presidential candidate in 2024. But white Republican officials are already using a key provision of this bill to disempower Black voters and others.

The Georgia law allows the GOP-run State Election Board to seize control of county election boards. As Reuters recently reported, in Spalding County—which is between Atlanta and Macon and has a population that is 45 percent people of color—state Republican officials purged the five-member local election board of its three-person Democratic majority (all Black women), appointing three white Republicans in their place. One of them, who happens to be its new chair, backs Donald Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election.

Elections have consequences, and so, too, changes in election boards. In October, the new GOP-manipulated board in Spalding County killed early voting on Sundays. Reuters notes, “A year ago, Sunday voting had been instrumental in boosting turnout of Black voters.” Spalding is one of six counties where Republicans, using the new election law, have reorganized the election board. In the five other counties—Troup, Morgan, Pickens, Stephens, and Lincoln—Republicans shifted the power to appoint election board members to county commissions, which just happened to be controlled by Republicans. Prior to this, appointments to these election boards tended to be split evenly between Ds and Rs, in adherence to the quaint notion that the boards ought to be nonpartisan.

County election boards determine the all-important logistics of an election. They can set polling locations and early-voting procedures, and they play a key role in overseeing any disputes over ballots and vote tallies. They run the show, and they referee disputes. This is not the place for partisan hacks, especially those who embrace disinformation and conspiracy theories about the election system. As Saira Draper, director of voter protection for the Georgia Democratic Party, told Reuters, “We are talking about a normalization of Republican takeovers of local functions.”

Reuters provided yet another example:

In western Georgia’s Troup County, the Republican-controlled county commission now appoints all election board members, a power previously shared by three cities and the two political parties.

Lonnie Hollis, one of two Black female members, will leave the board at year-end. Hollis, who has served since 2013, said the restructuring was aimed at unseating her because she fought to increase voter access. Her efforts included advocating for the first voting location in a predominantly Black church in the county, which she said has multiple precincts in predominantly white churches.

What happens in Georgia doesn’t stay in Georgia. It could affect all US citizens. In early 2021, the Reverend Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, beat Republican Kelly Loeffler by 2 percentage points. Because that was a special election, Warnock must run again in 2022. What happens in that race could decide which party controls the US Senate. Ditto for Georgia’s House contests. Republican manipulation of local election boards could determine the national political landscape. (A scary reminder: Some Republicans have proposed making Trump House speaker should they gain control of the House next year.) There is also a high-profile gubernatorial battle on Georgia’s ballot, with Kemp seeking another term and being challenged in the GOP primary by Trump-backed David Perdue. (Should Kemp and Perdue’s race be close, who will be the first to cry fraud?) Stacey Abrams is the likely Democratic candidate for the general election. Will GOP chicanery create roadblocks for her? Ditto for the Democratic presidential nominee in 2024.

Georgia is a microcosm of what the Republicans are doing from sea to shining sea, as they pass state laws that place authority for elections into the mitts of partisan Republicans. Theirs is a quiet, racist power grab.

On Friday, President Joe Biden, in a speech at South Carolina State University, decried GOP attempts to throttle voting: “This new sinister combination of voter suppression and election subversion, it’s un-American, it’s undemocratic and, sadly, it is unprecedented since Reconstruction.” Yet it is unclear if Democrats in the Senate can find a way to evade the filibuster and pass any voting rights legislation to impede the GOP war on democracy. That’s largely because two Democratic senators, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema remain unmovable. It seems they’d rather preserve an archaic Senate rule than protect democracy, much less their own party’s political interests.

If the Democrats could okay the measured legislation now under consideration, they would still face an unrelenting Republican crusade at the state and local levels to skew the system. The GOP is heart-attack serious about its in-plain-sight drive to rewrite election rules and procedures in its favor. They know their survival as a party depends on that since the popular vote tends to lean Democratic. The big question is whether all the Democrats realize that their survival as a party also depends on the outcome of the GOP’s assault on elections.

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at thisland@motherjones.com.

A Mailbag Reminder

Last issue I made a request: As we come to the close of 2021, please send me your thoughts about this year. Did the developments of 2021 provide any optimism? Did they scare you? Are you encouraged or alarmed by what’s happened politically? What do you expect, fear, or hope for in 2022? Write me at thisland@motherjones.com. And please include your full name.

Trump’s Most Outrageous Fundraising Email?

I receive a lot of fundraising emails from Donald Trump. Several a day. Denouncing and demonizing Democrats, liberals, the media, Hollywood, Big Tech, and others. Offering all sorts of silly premiums: floor mats, Christmas cards, and membership plaques. And utilizing an assortment of scammy incentives. You have only 10 minutes to make a contribution and be part of the list of supporters presented to me…Your gift will be matched 10X…I know you’re one of my best supporters, and I need your help by midnight tonight. It’s a nonstop cavalcade of grift and greed. And the other day, I received what might be the most disgraceful one yet. The subject heading: “Vladimir Putin.” The missive opened, “The world is laughing at us. Vladimir Putin looks at our pathetic surrender in Afghanistan - leaving behind dead Soldiers, American citizens, and $85 billion worth of military equipment - and then he looks at Biden. PUTIN IS NOT WORRIED BECAUSE BIDEN IS WEAK. Sleepy Joe is unfit to be President and I am calling on him to RESIGN in DISGRACE.” Trump then asked the recipient to “contribute ANY AMOUNT RIGHT NOW to DEMAND Joe Biden resign.” He claimed the donation would be matched by 300 percent.

The level of breathtaking absurdity and mendacity here is impressive even for Trump. Not Biden but Trump was the guy who cut the deal to withdraw from Afghanistan (and who tried to have a quick bugout before he left office). And the matching offer is a well-worn con. But Trump truly insulted reality by deploying Putin as a fundraising device—this from the conniver who won the White House partly because of the covert attack on the 2016 election mounted by the Kremlin to help Trump. As has been well-documented, Trump aided and abetted Moscow’s assault on American democracy in a profound act of betrayal. I recently noticed this line in the bipartisan report on the Trump-Russia scandal produced last year by the Senate Intelligence Committee: “The Trump Campaign publicly undermined the attribution of the hack-and-leak campaign to Russia and was indifferent to whether it and WikiLeaks were furthering a Russian election interference effort.” Indifferent to a Russian operation to subvert the US election? That, no doubt, gives Putin the giggles. As well as Trump yukking it up with Sergey Lavrov, Putin’s foreign minister, and Sergey Kislyak, then the Russian ambassador to the US, in the Oval Office during a 2017 meeting. That was the encounter during which Trump shared classified information with the pair and told them he was not concerned about Russia’s intervention in the 2016 campaign.

Russian Foreign Ministry Photo/AP

And Putin must have hardly been able to contain his guffaws when Trump stood next to him at the 2018 Helsinki summit and said he accepted Putin’s assertion that Russia did not mess with the American election. Good times.

Now Trump, who was (and remains) Putin’s useful idiot, is raising campaign cash with the claim that Biden looks foolish to Putin. If the Russian leader is on Trump’s email list, he must have gotten a good laugh out of this.

The Watch, Read, and Listen List

The Shrink Next Door. Paul Rudd and Will Ferrell are fantastic comic actors, yet there is nothing funny about them in this limited Apple TV+ series based on a true-story podcast of the same name developed by business journalist Joe Nocera. For years, Nocera had a neighbor in the Hamptons named Dr. Isaac “Ike” Herschkopf, a psychiatrist. As far as Nocera could tell, a fellow named Marty Markowitz, apparently an employee of the doctor, worked the grounds of the Herschkopf home. But one day, Herschkopf disappeared, and Nocera eventually figured out what had transpired: Markowitz had long ago retained Herschkopf as his shrink, and over many years Herschkopf had inserted himself into his patient’s life in an unconventional and unethical manner, gaining control of Markowitz’s personal wealth and his lovely Hamptons’ manse, hosting elaborate parties for Manhattanite swells who assumed this was the good doctor’s property. For decades, Herschkopf exploited Markowitz to an unfathomable extent, while supposedly treating him for various psychological ailments. Not surprisingly, Nocera’s weird tale became a No. 1 podcast, and just as not surprisingly, it was snapped up for a television deal. The result is an eight-part series with Rudd as Dr. Ike and Ferrell as his patient-turned-mark. The main question in The Shrink Next Door is how this could have happened: How could Markowitz have allowed Herschkopf to Svengali him for a whopping 27 years, and how did this shrink get away with this swindle for so long?

The television series explores this odd-couple matchup without delivering a conclusive answer. We watch the wily Dr. Ike, a man with sweeping social ambitions, slowly take over every aspect of Markowitz’s life, and that includes persuading him to sever all ties to his family. Herschkopf and his wife move into Markowitz’s master bedroom in the Hamptons, and Markowitz is relegated to a guesthouse meant for a caretaker. Rudd and Ferrell each approach their roles with subtlety and clarity. Rudd plays a schlub on the make; Ferrell is an insecure schmuck. Unlike, say, Anchorman, in which they jointly generated a blast of zany energy, this outing has no hijinks. The show steadily chronicles a bizarre but straightforward relationship: a wolf and a sheep, a predator and prey. Over the decades, they just get grayer, as Herschkopf’s exploitation becomes more outrageous. It’s obvious that we’re waiting for that moment—flicked at in the first episode—when Markowitz tries to break free. When he finally makes a move, there’s not a lot to cheer, for the ultimate cost for Markowitz is not the millions of dollars Herschkopf sucked out of him but all the years he’s lost as a willing-but-manipulated victim.

Bright Lights, Susanna Hoffs. One of my favorite cover songs is the Bangles’ take on Paul Simon’s “Hazy Shade of Winter,” and in her post-Bangles years, Susanna Hoffs, a co-founder of the band, has developed a wonderful catalog as a cover artist. With Matthew Sweet, she recorded Under the Covers, a three-album collection of covers from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Each of those discs is full of gems, as is her new assembly of covers, Bright Lights. In it, her sweetness-with-an-edge voice explores an eclectic mix of tunes that shaped her teenage listening tastes. There’s a lovely duet with Aimee Mann on Badfinger’s “Name of the Game.” On “Him or Me—What’s It Gonna Be?”—a hit by Paul Revere and the Raiders—Hoffs adds a new tension to this first-person plea by sticking to the original perspective of a guy singer asking his female love object to pick him or another fellow. (“I won't share your lovin' with another man.”) Bright Lights—which takes its title from Richard Thompson’s “I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight”—features one track written long after Hoffs’ adolescence: Prince’s “Take Me With U.” Her rendition comes with a bit of history. Once upon a time, Prince gave the Bangles a song, “Manic Monday.” It was the group’s first top-10 hit. (Hoffs and Coldplay’s Chris Martin performed this number for a Grammy celebration of Prince last year.) Hoff’s stripped-down version of “Take Me With U” fittingly contains a hint of melancholy. A true standout on Bright Lights is Hoffs’ dreamy rendition of Nick Drake’s already-dreamy “One of These Things First.” It takes a lot of nerve to record a Nick Drake song. How to match his evocative guitar playing and plaintive singing? But Hoffs pulls it off and achieves the hard-to-attain goal of a cover artist: to honor the work of another musician while also claiming it as your own. Listen to the Drake cover:

And enjoy the video of Hoffs’ collaboration with Mann:

Read Recent Issues of This Land

December 18, 2021: Mark Meadows, the chief’s chief coup plotter; Dumbass Comment of the Week; the Mailbag, MoxieCam™; and more.

December 14, 2021: Denounce Julian Assange, don’t extradite him; why WandaVision is marvelous; hanging out with Neil Young and Crazy Horse in an old barn; and more.

December 11, 2021: Trump’s newest—and biggest—potential conflict of interest; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Tucker Carlson Edition); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

December 7, 2021: John Lennon and the NRA—four decades later; Chris Christie: Trump is afraid to lose in 2024; an inspiring documentary about Jacques Cousteau; and more.

December 4, 2021: Donald Trump and the Cruddy Pan Theory of human behavior; Peter Thiel, kingmaker?; Dumbass Comment of the Week; the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

November 30, 2021: One big reason to fear a Trump restoration: revenge; why The Beatles: Get Back is one of the greatest documentaries ever; Tick, tick…BOOM! is Lin-Manuel Miranda’s love letter to theater geeks; and more.

November 23, 2021: How dangerous is Peter Thiel?; No Time to Die as a daddy-daughter film; spending time with Nick Offerman; Aimee Mann’s fabulous new album; and more.

November 20, 2021: Should the Democrats really push the panic button?; the Steele dossier and Donald Trump’s betrayal of America; Dumbass Comment of the Week; the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

November 16, 2021: New information on how Donald Trump killed 400,000 (or more) Americans; Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. on the witness stand in a Trump corruption trial?; American Rust shines with Jeff Daniels; Bruce Springsteen and John Mellencamp face the final song; and more.