It is no idle project, not a casual thing, this deliberate and calculated unraveling of what was once a source of hope – a liberal bastion in the shallow South, a place where for just a few moments, at the end of a war between brothers, a year or two at most – where people believed they could be free and prosper.
The Old North State, once again overrun by racists and carpetbaggers and venal, raging, truth-denying thugs.
Jim Wright (https://www.stonekettle.com) is angry about what we could have done and didn’t do. So am I.
What we have accomplished instead is a relentless assault on democracy in the name of capitalism, dressed up as a fight for freedom. “Independence!” is the rebel cry: freedom from difficult decisions, freedom from humility, freedom from some painful truths. Free to be poor, sick, uneducated and dead from overwork.
Free to own the libs. Free to lie to gullible masses about practically everything under the sun, from how vaccines are dangerous to how school vouchers improve education to how the poor and desperate are stealing YOUR opportunity. The lying bastards may be banking money, but their souls are selling for a song.
There will be payback. Business and industry – where the real money is – are looking at us and seeing that we’ve become increasingly unhinged. First Madison Cawthorn and the ghost of Mark Meadows (has anyone seen Mark Meadows lately? Turns out he didn’t live here when he lived here. . .) and now would-be Governor Mark Robinson. Not to ignore the jewel in the crown: Michele Morrow.
Morrow, who has publicly called for the execution of both Obama and Biden, and home-schooled her own children because she believes that public education is some kind of left-wing indoctrination factory, is running for? You guessed it – Superintendent of Public Instruction. The good news? There’s not much left to ruin. We’ve flushed our public school system down a PFAS-polluted river, while promoted online sports betting as the bread and circus for the next generation of suckers.
Investors see where Robinson – three times bankrupt and still owing five years of tax filings – says that he doesn’t approve of incentives for business investments in the state. That, coupled with an endless stream of invective from Robinson and others against LGBTQ, liberals, Jews, and just about everybody else, including Martin Luther King, Jr., does not sit well with some players. Connecticut is actively recruiting businesses exploring NC opportunities to consider locating in their state instead.
North Carolina could be defining the New South. Instead, we’re the same old tired plutocracy all dressed up in pretty new clothes, with crypto-fascist Trumpian acolytes dancing down the state house aisles hand-in-hand, spouting the same old tired agenda that doesn’t work for anyone anymore. It doesn’t work for the poor – we’ve got plenty of poverty – and it doesn’t really work for the working classes. It only serves a few, and even among those oligarchs are people who would rather live in a place less characterized by low standards and cultural chaos.
You’re a true custodian of the common welfare, Tom. Thank You.