Accommodation

by | Aug 29, 2016 | Editor's Blog, North Carolina, Politics | 11 comments

If you want to see the forces that created Donald Trump, watch North Carolina. In 2013, the GOP took over control of state government. Almost immediately, the forces of reaction that had been kept in check for almost 50 were unleashed. Instead of trying to temper them, control them or reject them, the Republican establishment turned a blind eye and accommodated them. Now, they’ve created uncertainty and instability in a state that used to be seen as a model of moderation for the country.

In exchange for the tax and spending cuts of supply-side economics, the free-marketeers stayed silent as the reactionary wing started imposing its will. Nobody from the old establishment spoke up when they started passing discriminatory legislation. There was silence when the legislature passed an “anti-Sharia law” clearly designed to stir animosity toward Muslims. Nobody spoke against the steady drumbeat of anti-LGBT legislation that has drawn criticism from across the country. And they even played along with the discriminatory voter suppression laws when the GOP legislature claimed to be combatting non-existent voter fraud.

For native Southerners, none of these sentiments are new or even surprising. We’ve just kept them in check in North Carolina since the days of Jim Crow. Now, with their silence and complicity, the movement conservatives who rationalized that the importance of their ideals justified their unholy alliance with the reactionaries of the Old South have unleashed these forces on the country, and North Carolina, again.

In reality, the conservative movement is not sustainable by itself. The tenets appeal to far too few people, mostly free-market ideologues and rich people who want to hold onto to their wealth for generations. Too survive, they’ve had to ally with reactionary forces and rationalize that the anti-abortion, anti-LGBT, anti-immigrant, pro-gun, anti-government and, now, openly white nationalist crowd wasn’t really rooted in racism.

They were wrong. In North Carolina, the movement conservatives still have their head in the sand. They’re still defending the voter suppression laws as protecting the integrity of elections. They’re still blaming the furor over HB2 on the Charlotte City Council. They don’t even mention the anti-Sharia law legislation.

Donald Trump isn’t an accident. He is a culmination. The conservative movement that began with Barry Goldwater and peaked with Ronald Reagan is all but dead. It’s been usurped by its allies, the alt-right crowd that believes white people are victims. Trump is the personification of the reactionaries’ victory over the Republican establishment.

In North Carolina, the movement conservatives are still trying accommodation.

11 Comments

  1. Ebrun

    Nate Silver just projected that Donald Trump has a 51.4 percent chance of winning NC. Guess this state is just overrun with “deplorables.” What’s a poor, beleaguered liberal to do do? Maybe they should built a wall around UNC system campuses.

    • Apply Liberally

      So, what’s your point, my little teenaged friend?

      Here’s a passage from Silver’s news release today:

      “In Silver’s “polls-plus” model, the Republican nominee had a 34.7% chance of winning in November. Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton was sitting at a 65.3% chance of victory.

      But the model showed the Electoral College projection tightening significantly. Silver’s model had Trump as more likely to win Florida, North Carolina, Iowa, and Ohio, the latter of which has voted in step with the nation in every election since 1964.

      Clinton, in Silver’s model, held a 294.2 to 243.6 edge in the Electoral College projection. A total of 270 electoral votes are needed to secure the presidency.”

      • Ebrun

        Silver just upped the odds of Trump winning NC to 55.2 percent. But don’t worry, all Hillary has to do is hold Pennsylvania (and Wisconsin, Colorado, Virginia New Hampshire and Michigan) and she will be elected with much less than 50 percent of the popular vote.

        • Progressive Wing

          Trump still has a steeper road. He has to win NC, AZ, FL, OH, NV, IA, and then either PA or MI or WI or the combo of NH/2nd district of ME.

        • Apply Liberally

          Of course, Ebrun, you conveniently left out Silver overarching forecast on the candidates’ chances of winning it all:

          Hillary Clinton: 59.3%
          Donald Trump: 40.6%

  2. Harish

    I completely agree with you on everything. But you are a southern democrat. Never forget where you are coming from. You are coming from a land of racists, bigosts, misogynists. You should play to the crowd here. You cant speak against anti-sharia, anti-abortion, anti-LGBT laws. You have to atleast be a middle man. Be indifferent to these laws.
    Be a populist in economic issues and conservative or atleast be a middle man in social issues. Democrats used to win in NC even after 1964 because they are conservative socially, liberal economically. Thats the strategy.

    There are very few people here who support you on these social issues. In NC-08 the college graduation rate is 16%. You cant depend on educated people to win you the election.

  3. Bill Cokas

    Thanks for stating so succinctly what I’ve been watching in horror for the past three years.

  4. Jay Ligon

    The Republicans stand up to the straw men they create. Perhaps our lawmakers played too many video games as children – or as adults. They brandish swords at fire-breathing phantasms, posturing as heroic saviors of the mythical kingdom. The GOP conjures up imaginary adversaries which they slay by stabbing the mist.

    For example, Sharia law has never threatened any American or North Carolinian unless they choose to reside overseas. Religious laws are always unconstitutional because they violate the establishment clause of the First Amendment. We can thank Thomas Jefferson for that piece of brilliance. Our legislators may be good with the light saber, but they are not knowledgeable about the constitution. Their ignorance of the basic principles of American jurisprudence has resulted in a series of unconstitutional statutes being stuck down the instant the matter is brought before a judge who is not drunk. The lawmakers waste their time and our money fighting battles where there is no enemy.

    They pretend to protect children from a boogie man we have never seen. They pretend to maintain purity at the ballot box from an interloper as rare and as invisible as pixie dust.

    This legislature, however, has been the passageway for a host of real villains and monsters. Our racist legislature pretends not to notice that they have passed laws which are racist or bigoted. They shocked, shocked to hear that their laws are an obstruction to blacks, minorities, elderly and disabled people. They pretend not to understand rulings of the high courts which do not mince words. The courts have called out the legislature for their racist laws.

    It doesn’t matter whether our lawmakers are too ignorant, too dishonest or too duplicitous to do the job they were elected to do. These Republicans have betrayed the state, and, if the people get a chance to vote, they will be turned out. The sooner the better.

    • Progressive Wing

      A smack-on blog by Thomas Mills, and insightful reaction posted by Jay Ligon.

      Once again by-your-leave, Jay, I’ll be sharing your post. Thanks!

      • Jay Ligon

        You always have my permission to use anything I wrote you find useful on this site.

    • Jay Ligon

      The former Soviet states and client states made the transition from Communism to their current political economies through an unusual form of insider trading. What happened in Russia was replicated throughout the former Soviet states. The intelligence services knew that the Communist system would be breaking down, and they knew that private ownership of public enterprises was going to happen. The intelligence officers, like Putin, knew that oil, food, transportation, construction and other industries would end up in private hands, and they made sure that they themselves were the private hands. Massive amounts of state wealth was transferred to a few oligarchs when communism crashed and burned. The West did not concern itself with the manner in which wealth was disseminated among the former members of the KGB and other intelligence, because it was such a relief to see a powerful enemy move toward Parliamentary government and something like capitalism. And it was none of our business.

      The fate of the people in Eastern Europe was mixed. Young people took advantage of free market opportunities, and countries like the Czech Republic, Hungary, Estonia and others have thrived in the new market economy. The older generation was accustomed to pretending to work, while the state pretended to pay them. A work ethic was rare in the old Soviet Union, because there was no reward for hard work. The value of the ruble was fictitious, and when it was allowed to float on world markets, the currency collapsed as did pensions and savings. The elderly and retired suffered greatly during the transition.

      Each country had a different experience. West Germans spent a vast amounts of money on East Germany. They rebuilt East Berlin, cleaned up toxic waste dumps left behind by the Soviets, guaranteed their worthless currency by exchanging schillings for marks at full face value and honored the pensions earned in the East, even though the pension funds were worthless. Germany did not have the problem wealth transfer to oligarchs that occurred in most former Soviet states.

      Russia is a special case. Powerful organized crime organizations seized power. Billionaires were created overnight through sleight of hand as title to industries transferred from state ownership to private individuals. The worlds leading Communists became the world’s richest capitalists in an instant.

      It was a dynamic period of change, and there were no rules for such a massive transition. In the end, some of the world’s richest humans were die-hard communists until they picked the locks to the world’s treasures. It would be like finding out that Fort Knox and the Fortune 500 were suddenly in the hands of a few CIA agents. And there would be nothing you could do about it.

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