In ”How Democracies Die” a couple of political science professors outline the process that has repeatedly been followed as democratic government give way to autocracies, in the 1930s in Europe and in the postwar era in Peru, Venezuela, Chile and as we speak in Turkey and elsewhere.
The process always shares several features. Democratic guardrails are dismantled, norms overthrown, mutual forbearance and tolerance abandoned in favor of extreme partisanship. Opponents are branded illegitimate, civil liberties are curtailed, and propaganda replaces reality.
The book, unsurprisingly culminates with alarm bells about the Trump Administration, which is following the same playbook. It also accords my adopted home state of North Carolina a dubious honor. It is singled out for systematically and successfully employing all the tricks in the anti-democratic toolbox to deprive its citizens of representative government.
The authors warn that North Carolina may also offer a template for other states to follow if they too are anxious to abandon their birthright. They point out that, before the onslaught, North Carolina was a purplish state — relatively diverse, prosperous and well-educated compared to its Southern neighbors.
Beginning in 2011, thanks in part to an investment of money and effort from right wing oligarchs including the homegrown Art Pope, both Houses of the General Assembly turned Republican for the first time since 1870. In 2013, the trifecta was complete with the election of Pat McCrory, a Republican governor.
The agenda since has been to turn back the clock and consolidate the party’s hold on power. Republicans aggressively gerrymandered the state racially so that an evenly divided electorate went from electing 7 Democrats and 6 Republicans to the U.S. House to sending 9 Republicans and 4 Democrats to Washington.
Soon the Republicans also passed draconian laws to infringe voting rights for Democratic leaning voters including students, the poor, and minorities. Attempts were made to curtail early voting, require voter IDs, restrict voting hours and reduce the number of voting places in Democratic leaning counties. The overlords in Raleigh have also taken to minimizing the role of local government by overriding city legislation at the state level.
They also passed abortion restrictions, a ban of same sex marriage, and a bathroom bill that became a cause celebre nationwide. They turned down Medicaid money in order to avoid offering Obamacare, thus dooming the state’s less fortunate residents to poorer healthcare options and leading to the closing of many rural hospitals.
Several states with the lowest pay for High School teachers have made headlines lately when their teachers went on strike, notably worst paid Oklahoma and the fifth worst, West Virginia. But North Carolina, that once boasted one of the oldest and most admired university systems has seen its funding slashed and its High School teachers are now fourth from the bottom in pay. No statewide strike has been forthcoming, perhaps because resistance to the autocracy appears hopeless.
In the moves most reminiscent of a banana republic, when Gov. McCrory, a tool of the Art Pope machine, was denied reelection, he refused to concede for a month and instead called a special session of the legislature. It passed rules to make McCrory’s political appointees permanent, depriving incoming Democrat Roy Cooper of the ability to appoint his own people to as many as 1,000 positions.
At the same time the Senate gave itself the power to deny the governor his choice of cabinet appointees. And, instead of retaining executive control of election boards, the Republican legislature dictated equal representation by each party, but with the deciding vote in Republican hands in election years, thus tilting decision-making over local elections in their favor. The legislature also shrank the appeals court by three seats to limit the governor’s power to make judicial appointments.
Many of these actions have ended up in court, and several have been slapped down, including gerrymandering characterized as bringing “surgical precision” to discrimination, but that doesn’t do much to allay the fear that our democratic institutions are fragile and can be undermined by a sufficiently ruthless, well-funded and unscrupulous faction.
I’d tell everyone to go vote, but in my city, county, and congressional district my vote has been rendered meaningless in recent elections by partisan contrivances, as the presidential vote seems to have been in 2016 by enemy action, assisted by American quislings. In fact, it appears that while we weren’t paying attention, a silent coup has taken place and we are now living in occupied territory, ruled by a tyranny of the minority. What’s next? Mandatory performance of the party salute?