NORTH CAROLINA REQUIEM: IT HAS GONE THAT FAR

The North Carolina Republican Party is in power in the legislature. They are acting like an authoritarian father errant disciplining children. The children and the mother may outnumber the father by far but the father has ultimate authority by strength. The government of the State of North Carolina is a structure that is no longer democratic. They were elected, which means it is what the people wanted; therefore, they legitimately have the power (the police and if need be, the National Guard). The family metaphor for the government is George Lakoff’s, the author of the book, Moral Politic: How Liberals and Conservatives Think.   Seldom have I read a book that was more spot on.

The Republican controlled State legislature is running out of control. Everyday they are disciplining the “children”. Read about it in the headlines, and see it on TV. When the people, (the undisciplined children) stand in the balconies and yell “shame, shame”, the senators and representative ignore them. When they enter the capital building, they are trespassing and the police arrest them.  Everyday they are passing laws the counter to the wishes of vast majority of the people in the State. They put 71,000 North Carolinas off unemployment insurance the people paid for. The cut the unemployment insurance payments in half for those that still have it. McCrory said it was to pay back the debt to the U.S. Government in one year rather than in ten years; thus, created a debt crisis. You can carry guns everywhere but you cannot have an abortion anywhere. Utility charges are going up 17% on homeowners but only 7% on businesses; the power company employed McCrory before he become governor. They have taken over all state commissions such as the utilities commissions; they have taken over school boards, who have handed the school curriculum to the Biblical law; they are suppressing votes of poor and black people; they are gerrymandering legislative districts to squeeze out black voters, they are demeaning women in terms of health and abortion issues.

But worst of all, they are putting in Bush style tax cuts in North Carolina, the very thing that caused the United States economy to collapse. Corporate tax rates are falling to zero and the tax rates for the people are falling as well. While I have a problem with the Southern attitude of some of the electorate over racial issues, I have a bigger problem with all of the electorate over taxes. They will love the Republicans for lowering taxes, while the infrastructure of the State falls into ruin; bridges, highways, schools, etc. It seems there individual greed for a few dollars causes them to abandon their altruistic sense of the common good. They act as if they won the Civil war; they seem oblivious of the drive toward re-segregation. They allow their xenophobia control their lives but the sad thing is that the people elected them so they believe it allows them to control all of our lives. They have abandoned the equalitarian concept has reverted to the bestial level with the strongest is in charge; the authoritarian father model. They seem to have abandoned our hard-earned humanization.  As Lakoff pointed out, it is well to note conservatives think it is the “natural order”, a hierarchy of subservience; thus, the morally correct thing to do. It is the husband and the wife, the father and the children, the legislature and the people. 

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