NC Congressmen Feature PRominently In Trump’s Government-In-Exile
To a naive soul, it might seem that Madison Cawthorn fears for his reelection. The Western North Carolina showman was recently down in Florida attending a fundraiser in his own honor to which donors must have contributed $50,000 for the privilege of seeing him in the...
Sinking into Trumpism
The Carolina Journal yesterday published a cartoon slamming Rep. Liz Cheney and Rep. Adam Kinzinger, the two Republicans on the Congressional Commission to investigate January 6. The artist portrays Kinzinger and Cheney as ventriloquist dolls sitting on Nancy Pelosi’s...
Alarmism and hyperbole
This week, we started edging back into COVID panic again. Some places started masking up again. One friend said an organization with which he works is considering cancelling or delaying a retreat. I think it’s all alarmism, driven largely by bad headlines and spiking...
The Military can Drive Social Progress
In a country where conservatives have long been suspicious of centralized institutions, the military has been a bastion of trust. Going to war for America is considered the apogee of loyalty, courage, and virtue, so when our armed forces make a foray into new cultural...
Underminiing the outrage machine
Yesterday, Governor Roy Cooper angered conservatives by not imposing a mask mandate. Instead, he left decisions up to local authorities and business owners as to whether or not to require masks. In doing so, Cooper stripped away a conservative outrage platform,...
What NC Politicos Can Learn From Jesse Helms’s Diabolical Success
For 30 years, Jesse Helms loomed over North Carolina politics like a Confederate statue. "Senator No" tied with his fellow racist demagogue Furnifold Simmons for the longest tenure of any Senator elected from the Old North State. Since he departed the scene, only...
Notes from Scandinavia
I’m back from Sweden. It was a great trip. I learned quite a bit and look forward to going back to learn more. The first lesson I learned is that magnesium gel caps explode under pressure. They cover everything in a white pasty substance that’s hard to get out...
The Right-Wing MEdia Created Trump, but He Helped Create IT
Right-wing media increasingly resemble Pravda, the Soviet state newspaper that propagandized on behalf of the regime for decades no matter how much oppression and destruction the Kremlin inflicted on people across the globe. Donald Trump, anyone can see, is a...
How Much Has Changed in NC Politics, and How Much Hasn’t
The sense that North Carolina had entered a new era in 2008 was intoxicating, like drinking a magic elixir in one gulp. The Obama campaign had built momentum month by month, reaching a crescendo of excitement in the last weeks of the campaign, and what looked like a...
Democrats Still Need an Economic Message
For all their struggles in subsequent years, North Carolina Democrats still haven't felt the depths of futility that pervaded the party in the wake of the 2012 election. As I recently said to a colleague, the Donkey Party could not even afford to hold a full banquet...
North Carolina’s Future is South Carolina. Republicans are to Blame.
The valley of humility is about to become an abyss. Over a century ago, a Charlotte newspaperman contrasted North Carolina with its more aristocratic neighbors to the north and South, calling Virginia and South Carolina mountains of conceit and saying that N.C....
NC Republicans Are Policy Imperialists
When UNC announced its hire of Nikole Hannah-Jones, my first response was not excitement but "well, let's hope for the best." For anyone who had followed the antics of UNC's political overseers since 2011 could tell that a smooth implementation of the hire was...