If you’re feeling shell-shocked these days, you’re not alone. A constant daily stream of bad news…

Gun massacres continue while North Carolina U.S. senators win huge support from the National Rifle Association (NRA). Hush money – some $11,408,380 of it – to keep the bullets flying! This as school shootings grow to highest number in 20 years. More than 311,000 children have experienced gun violence since Columbine High School in 1999.

Roe v. Wade reversal by Supreme Court in direct opposition to the wishes of the vast majority of Americans.
Tawdry evidence from the January 6 Committee piles up while legislatures across the land use the Big Lie to politicize election boards, pass vote suppression laws, and prepare to overturn elections that don’t go their way.

Again rearing its exceptionally ugly head is independent legislative theory, forecast in earlier editions of this blog.

Invented by North Carolina and Pennsylvania legislatures, they hope to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to take up and issue a favorable ruling. It posits that states should have unchecked power to manage federal elections. A disaster in the making!

A hint by the North Carolina legislature that they will redraw the current U.S. House map during the December lame duck session. The present map – which almost represents the political makeup of the state – was drawn by court-ordered special masters and thus good for 2022 elections only. We can expect that map will be gerrymandered to the hilt.

So…where do these people with all this political power – who condone and create this tsunami – come from? People seemingly with no respect for norms, laws, democracy, human life, freedom of personal choice. A half dozen from North Carolina including U.S. and N.C. senators, a former presidential chief-of-staff, an N.C. House leader, and a U.S. House member…ALL gained entry into the political “hen house” by winning elections in districts rigged to guarantee their success. Races in which their opposition – if there was opposition – had not a chance in the world of winning. 

A scathing remark in the June 26 Letters From an American offered this: “Citizens trying to persuade one another, and then voting is indeed precisely how democracy is supposed to work. But choosing your voters to make sure the results will be what you want is a different kettle of fish altogether.”

That democracy cited – is OUR DEMOCRACY – and it is under relentless, savage attack. Chilling for certain, but even more so when the culprit isn’t a foreign power, a war, an illegal crime cartel, but one of our major political parties. Who in their wildest nightmares could ever have believed this possible!

Elections are underway for November 8. Vote like your life depended on it…because it may. Work to urge others to vote – and all the way to the bottom of the ballot, including the two crucial N.C. Supreme Court justice seats. 

Lastly, the Big Lie has impugned our election system and attacked election officials from sea to shining sea. It began even before the 2020 elections, immediately after the largest, most successful election in American history, one conducted amidst a world-wide pandemic.

Speak out and support your local election boards and workers. They are heroes deserving heartfelt praise and support…

…and we’re way too close to this coming about. Make sure it doesn’t happen!