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Crisis of the Republic What If They Gave An Election... And Nobody Came?
Results of the recent primary election in New Hanover County suggest that the alarming trend toward the depletion of democracy in America is continuing unabated. And if the trends here are mirrored elsewhere, the results may yet be more devastating as the future unfolds. In New Hanover County a grand total of 14,068 voters turned out for the May 2 primary. Recent tallies in New Hanover show there are more than 130,000 registered voters here, and election officials say the turnout here was less than ten percent. Voting Democrats outnumbered Republicans in the contest by 2,037 ballots, with females outnumbering males by a little less than 1,000, and African American voters comprising a little more than 19% of the total, indicating that Black voters are only a little more enthusiastic as voters than their white counterparts. Across the state the results are much the same. But perhaps the most startling fact about the election was the failure of the Democratic Party to produce a slate of local candidates to offer a challenge to incumbent office holders for the fall. With two seats available on the New Hanover County Commissioners Board, only one Democrat, Randy Crow, managed to file for the election. The results of the primary show that the two incumbents, Robert Greer and Bill Caster as winners of the Republican Party primary, will face Crow as the sole challenger in November. In perhaps the only Democratic contest that amounted to anything, Thomas Wright defeated Laura Padgett in the Democratic Primary election for State House District 18 by 2,816 to 1,335 votes. Wright will face Republican, Sheila Roberts in the fall. In two House districts, which include portions of New Hanover, Republican candidates Carolyn Justice and Danny McComas will run unopposed by Democrats in the general election. And of four seats available on the New Hanover Board of Education, Democrats will manage to contest only three in the fall. Two local offices, the New Hanover County Sheriff and County Prosecutor, are held by Democrats who will run unopposed in November. And why is it that the well-funded Republican Party establishment thus far finds it unnecessary to challenge these Democratic incumbents? In spite of the fact that the Democratic Party has been in resurgence in New Hanover since at least 2000, with increasing voter registration and voter participation among Democrats, the failure to hold a primary here suggests that the Democratic Party is dead in the water before the fall election. Most apparent in this is the fact that local Democrats who are currently holding office have done little to help energize the party. Thomas Wright, Julia Boseman, Mayor Broadhurst, and Sheriff Sid Causey in each case have had their cameo roles in the current regime, but have essentially shown little interest in their fellow Democrats. Broadhurst is leaving the city for a high paying bank job in Greensboro. Wright is spending extra time presumably on the mammoth report of the Special Commission on the Wilmington 1898 Riot. (Will yet another revision be necessary prior to the 2008 presidential election?) Sid Causey does not show up for Democratic Party events, but does show up for Star-News events. And will the Wilmington Star-News in anticipation of the election, probe the inner workings of the Washington establishment the way they did back in the days of Bill and Monica—when front page headlines about Whitewater and Hillary were an every day occurrence? Well, if you are waiting for exposés of Enron, the year 2000 Florida election scandal, the 2004 Presidential Ohio election fraud, the Abu Ghraib/ Guantanimo prison torture scandal, the Plame-Wilson scandal, the Downing Street Memo scandal, the Bush decision for war in Iraq, the Bush budget outrage, or what the Bush White House knew about the threat of terrorism in America prior to 9/11, the fact is—you’d better go elsewhere than the New York Times owned Wilmington Star-News. But as the next election rolls around, they will be polishing their liberal image even as the fires of conservative indignation are stoked up here in God’s little backlash borough. Why should Wilmingtonians have to go to the Los Angeles Times, London Guardian, the Washington Post, to Al-Jazeera or even the Associated Press—in order to find the articles that the Star-News refuses to run for area readers? Can Al-Jazeera or the L.A. Times be counted on to tell readers here the truth about local and state government? All of this may be true, you may say, but what about the Carolina Civic Voice? Surely those liberals will be putting the word out in the months leading up to November 2006? For those who care to know, we should make it clear that New Hanover County is by far too closed minded to support or even tolerate a publication such as the one we’ve struggled to produce here since 2001. On how many occasions can we say we’ve seen their welcoming smiles, only to learn that our free-distribution advertising based magazines were tossed out just as soon as our backs were turned? And how many times did we hear reports that our distributors or advertisers received telephone calls from the conservative Right threatening retaliation if our publication continued to appear? And how many times did we hear them condemn our publication as “socialist” or “communist” or “disloyal to America” or simply critical of President Bush? So this is the way it is in New Hanover County. No opposition party. No opposition press. For all our reports and commissions on the subject of 1898, the curious fact remains that political life in New Hanover bears a striking resemblance to the one-party era of local government that began in the wake of the 1898 white supremacy campaign of terror. And for all the press coverage on the subject by the Star-News, it seems that too many people have yet to fully grasp that the story is really about conservative rule and race exploitation. Is Middle America on the road to democracy and public interest government? Or on the downward track toward the establishment of a totalitarian one-party state based on the rule of a military-corporate elite? We can guess what it will look like if it is the latter. The strange and vacuous stares of the silent crowds in a culture of mass entertainment fundamentally lacking in a sense of truth or social or environmental responsibility—where pious smiles suggest that everything is okay, while more bullying bravado and intimidation from the ruling regime are the reality. More government spying declared as absolutely necessary for the protection of our national security—while the assault on those who dare to criticize the regime is strangely absent from the nightly news—that is instead replete with media stunts designed to convince a bewildered public that failed policies are actually working. And while the Washington regime slashes away in the continued privatization of public programs, offering taxpayer subsidies for the international corporations which impose policies of deregulation and privatization in countries around the world that have done us no harm and seek only to promote the best interests of their citizens, we see that more capitulation from the Democratic opposition brings only more indifference and scorn from bewildered voters who can no longer believe in the political process in America. The nature of the regime is only too apparent for those who will see it. Here in Cape Fear country, the results of Bush conservatism have mirrored the ultra patriot conservatism of the Cold War era and the proto-fascism of 1898. In the 1950s, we were told that Communism posed a threat to American freedom, then conservatism unleashed COINTELPRO and a federal political police force to reinforce the one-sided democracy that already existed in the South. The arguments of Social Democrats, liberals, women’s rights advocates, those African Americans who sought only the same rights and opportunities as other Americans, were co-opted by the radical right which used them to achieve the political ascendancy it now enjoys. If this is not clear to the American people in our time, perhaps they will one day understand it as the political consequences of conservative rule become more apparent. Today in New Hanover, the screeching billboards tell us the tale—only persons of character can be trusted. And we know full well that in Bush country it simply means Big Brother rules. Isn’t it time we started thinking about a responsible strategy that can effectively unite Americans for the liberation of the U.S.A. from the ultra patriot politics of Bush Incorporated?
John L. Godwin is editor and publisher of Carolina Civic Voice. Send comments to editor@carolcivicvoice.org.
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Carolina Civic Voice Summer 2006 Vol. 6, No 2 |
