From North Carolina, With Chagrin

     I live in North  Carolina.
     Nowadays,  this admission is embarrassing.  You may understand if you've been watching television comics.  Among them my state has become an object of ridicule. Or perhaps you've been reading the national press.  There, my state is being described with astonishment and regret.
    These portrayals involve a certain amount of caricature.  The comedians do it for effect.  The journalists and commentators are simply using some necessary shorthand.
    So let me supply a few details from a first-hand perspective.  And as I do, let me mention with bewilderment that I knew our new governor, Pat McCrory, face-to-face for many years.  I was a working journalist. He was the long-time mayor of my home town. I knew him -- back then -- to be a bright, knowledgeable public official with an open-minded awareness of his obligation to serve all the citizens of his city.
    Gov. McCrory --  in office less than a year -- is a Republican.  Not long ago Republicans also gained control of both houses of our legislature for the first time in more than 100 years.  Together, in just a few months, they have loosed a tide of deeply conservative change in state law and policy.
    In the interest of full disclosure I should say that I find many of these changes objectionable and some of them downright appalling, especially as they afflict women, poor people and minorities.  This, however, is not the whole of my point. Perhaps one example will illustrate.
    Among the new laws is one restricting access to voting.  It sets stringent standards of photo identification for would-be voters.  The law has stirred up waves of criticism.  Gov. McCrory has stubbornly defended it and decried "scare tactics" from the "extreme left."
    This kind of language from Pat McCrory baffles and dismays me.  It goes to a level of demagoguery that should be beneath any decent man.  The fact is that this voter law has occasioned vigorous concern among people of moderate mind and informed perspective.
    To these citizens of North Carolina their governor gives the back of his hand.
    And there is the snapshot that reveals the new character of our public affairs.
    While North Carolina politics and policy have wandered left and right in modern times, the center line has remained just that.  The heart's blood of this state's civic ethic has been a kind of sleeves-up, centrist pragmatism.  Our latter-day conservative revolution is wrong because it is fundamentally and knowingly out of tune with the long-manifest outlook of the North Carolina electorate.
    So, how did that electorate come to elevate public officials who would break faith with their obligation to represent all the people?  The answer comes in two parts.
    The first part has to do with the influence of big money.  One rich man, who now holds a high office in the McCrory administration, for years systematically backed conservative causes and candidates. Eventually they prevailed in controlling numbers.
    And as Republicans mounted the march of the bag men, they were aided by a second factor at work in North Carolina.  Many of us don't vote, and many who do are not paying attention.  In this we create a vacuum for big money to fill.
    Of course Republican leaders would not agree with me.  They would deny favoring an aristocracy of wealth willing to buy power to which it is not rightly entitled.  They would deny betraying an ethical obligation to serve all the people without regard to party affiliation.  They would deny that our governor has lost his bearings, and that our legislature has sunk to whooping through jack-leg law just because it can.
    They might say they are clearing government-made debris off the road to a better future for North Carolinians.  They might say they are creating a good, conservative, business-friendly climate to help North Carolina's economy grow and its citizens prosper. I think they might say they are creating a new brand name for North Carolina as a state that is hospitable to enterprise and ripe with opportunity for all who are willing to work.
    They might ask why they should be deterred in this by coverage in the national press and the antics of a few TV jokesters.
    I would say they should be deterred because the nation can see in the press the whole truth: Much of what's happening in this state has nothing to do with government streamlining or economic stimulation.  It has to do with fat-cat manipulation, bully-boy politics and narrow-minded social attitudes that are directly at odds with the obligations of proper government to a populace of diverse needs.  With purchased political power, a band of partisans has forced their pet agenda on the rest of us.
    I say all this from a point of view that is not within a country mile of the "extreme left."  (And I say the new voter law is a high-tech poll tax.)  Nor do I think all those TV jokesters can be dismissed as mere funnymen.  Their jibes at North Carolina are a warning that our Republican bosses are indeed creating a new brand name for this state, and that it could be "Laughingstock."
    Advocates of plutocracy are not limiting their attention to North Carolina.  Some of them tried to buy the White House for Mitt Romney (who, in a little-noted voice message, urged business leaders to "explain" election issues to their employees.)
    And Americans from shore to shore belong to that vast power bloc that determines the outcome of many elections:  People who don't vote and don't bother to remain informed.
   In North Carolina, while the boodle boys were arranging for our state government to become household staff to the upper crust, many of us were looking the other way. We now have a lot of work to do to reclaim what's ours.
    Let's hope people elsewhere wake up before the same thing happens to them.