For decades, North Carolina’s economy thrived largely due to its relatively moderate government and its relatively well educated population compared to its neighbors. The current Republican administration seems determined to do away with both. They have apparently determined that the best way to stay in power is to keep everyone ignorant and poor by destroying public education and through backward social legislation that scares off they very types of businesses and professions that might actually build the economy.
When I moved back here from California eleven years ago, I was pretty happy to be back in the “sane” part of the South. I didn’t realize I’d gotten here just in time for the birth of a new Mississippi. Ad campaigns notwithstanding, North Carolina is starting to feel a lot less like home.
I’ll stay, mainly because I have a pretty good life and a really good job, and because I want to piss off the assholes who have taken over a state that may not have been perfect but that used to be a hell of a lot better than it is now. Staying will be my own little way of telling Phil Berger and his mob to bite me.